Is copyright law fit for purpose in the Internet era?

Robert Ashcroft and Dr George Barker, Is copyright law fit for purpose in the Internet era? September 2014.
Bijdrage ingezonden door Robert Ashcroft, PRS for Music. Introduction: This paper will argue that the application of exceptions to copyright that benefit intermediary business models - combined with the limitation on the liabilities of intermediaries made possible in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA] in the USA and the eCommerce Directive in Europe - has led to the situation where rights holders are prevented from giving full consent for use of their works as required under copyright law and that this is damaging to the economy as a whole. (...)

Summary: The safe harbour regime was introduced before broadband, file sharing, social media and apps, and at a time when knowledge of what was passing through the network was limited at best.
This paper will argue that the unintended consequences of the safe harbour legislation have been the distortion of markets and investment, the creation of barriers to entry and the limitation of overall economic growth for the cultural and creative industries, both now and in the future. The failure of the law either to require the consent of rights holders, or to compensate them for the harm caused by such lack of consent, means that economic growth has been less than it should have been and that society as a whole is therefore worse off than it would have been had creators’ full consent for the use of their works on the Internet been required, or had their lack of consent been compensated for. (...)
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