International Media & Archive Consortium warns of Judicial Review over UK Government plans to weaken copyright LONDON - A consortium of the world's largest news agencies, commercial licensing companies and commercial audiovisual archives has today called on the UK Government to rethink its plans to weaken UK copyright law and its use of secondary legislation. The Government's proposals are being implemented through the Enterprise & Regulatory Reform Bill, currently being debated in the House of Lords. Controversially, the Government proposes to make wholesale changes to UK copyright law via secondary legislation and without the benefit of Parliamentary scrutiny, which includes time for public review and comment. The consortium has delivered a Letter Before Claim to Business Secretary, Vince Cable, which is the first step in the process of initiating a Judicial Review - a formal legal challenge to the Government's planned legislation and the manner in which it proposes to introduce it.
The consortium includes The Associated Press, Getty Images, Reuters, British Pathe, The Press Association, and the Federation of Commercial and Audiovisual Libraries, who operate advanced digital licensing businesses of content on all formats. In order to meet the changing needs of users in the digital age, members of the consortium have, in recent years, invested heavily in the building of innovative digital delivery platforms and infrastructures which allow their content to be accessed and licensed easily and efficiently, also ensuring that content creators are fairly and promptly compensated for their work. This in turn incentivises an independent and thriving community to invest in creating new and rich digital content and, in doing so, benefits the economy and society as a whole. The consortium believes that the economic growth arguments originally put forward to justify the Government's proposals are without basis and has challenged the Government's plans to introduce its proposed changes through so-called Henry VIII clauses - secondary legislation which is not subject to the full scrutiny of Parliament, which includes visibility to the public.
The planned legislation has arisen from reforms proposed by Professor Ian Hargreaves in a report commissioned by David Cameron in 2010 and published in 2011. In his report, Hargreaves opined that British copyright law was not fit for purpose in the digital era and suggested a number of radical changes to the law which was calculated in Appendix EE to his report to create between £55bn and £79bn in GDP contribution for the UK economy over 10 years. This has been disputed by many in the UK creative industries. These doubts are vindicated in the IPO's follow up report of 20th December 2012 on implementing new Exceptions to Copyright, after review by the Government's Independent Regulatory Policy Committee. They reduce the minimum benefits from these new exceptions, which were included as part of the total in Appendix EE, from £4bn to £0.5bn, and the maximum from £26bn to just £0.79bn. These are reductions of 87% and 97% respectively for the smallest and largest projected benefits.
Many prominent rights holders both in the UK and overseas have expressed concerns that not only will such growth not be achieved, but that existing revenues will be damaged by the proposed legislation. Professor Hargreaves proposed a number of changes to copyright law, some of which have been supported by the consortium and other rights holders, including new provisions for private copying, new rights for disabled groups to use content freely, and the ability of archives and museums to digitise copyrighted content that they do not own but wish to preserve. However, the consortium is concerned about three proposals that it believes will damage the UK economy.
The first concerns the widening of exceptions to copyright which allows for content to be used without paying a licence fee under certain circumstances, which the consortium argues will remove many instances where creators can currently be paid for their work. The second contentious proposal concerns the shortening of the life of copyright in some circumstances, which again removes the ability of owners of copyrighted works to be compensated for the commercial use of their property. The third concerns a system known as Extended Collective Licensing which allows for third party organisations to commercially exploit the copyrighted works of others without their prior consent. The consortium and other rights holders are concerned that reducing or removing their ability to commercially license their content will have a direct impact on their ability to create it, leading to both economic and societal damage. There is particular concern in the area of news provision where much international news content consumed by the public originates from international news agencies, who rely entirely on their ability to commercially license news content in order to fund their newsgathering activities.
Not only are the proposals contentious but, crucially, so too is the manner in which they are being introduced. Firstly, many rights holders have repeatedly pointed out to the IPO that significant details about how the new legislation will work in practice have not been properly considered and that without such detail having been thought through, a huge amount of uncertainty will descend upon both users and suppliers of content. Secondly, many rights holders have expressed grave concerns that changes are to be made via secondary legislation without the full scrutiny of Parliament and visibility to the public which would ordinarily be given to such weighty changes in the law. If the copyright clauses in the Enterprise & Regulatory Reform Bill are passed in their current form, this will leave the door open fo
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
International Media & Archive Consortium warns of Judicial Review over UK Government plans to weaken copyright LONDON - A consortium of the world's largest news agencies, commercial licensing companies and commercial audiovisual archives has today called on the UK Government to rethink its plans to weaken UK copyright law and its use of secondary legislation. The Government's proposals are being implemented through the Enterprise & Regulatory Reform Bill, currently being debated in the House of Lords. Controversially, the Government proposes to make wholesale changes to UK copyright law via secondary legislation and without the benefit of Parliamentary scrutiny, which includes time for public review and comment. The consortium has delivered a Letter Before Claim to Business Secretary, Vince Cable, which is the first step in the process of initiating a Judicial Review - a formal legal challenge to the Government's planned legislation and the manner in which it proposes to introduce it. 
