Over the past year NLA media access and the Newspaper Publishers Association have been contributing to an initiative called Licences For Europe, the European Commission's review of the state of copyright, licensing, business models and developments in the digital world.
We welcomed the chance to be involved with this initiative – particularly on improving cross border licensing. NLA media access itself does a lot of work in this area and we already have direct deals in place with 1600 ex UK organisations, ensuring UK publisher content can be readily and legally accessed abroad, as well as cross licensing agreements with 14 countries, which we are extending to include digital rights.
A great deal of time, effort and thought goes into these initiatives from NLA media access, UK publishers and our international representatives at IFFRO and PDLN. As the copyright consultation carousel turns once more it is worth bearing in mind that Licences for Europe, as with UK consultations on the Hargreaves and Hooper reports, arrived at the not very surprising conclusion that optimising copyright law via a licensing model works for the vast majority of stakeholders.
And that just might be because, according to the Global Intellectual Property Index, the UK and other EU states have some of the best copyright regimes around.