The UK Campaign for Digital Rights (CDR), a citizen group that
monitors digital media issues, has published a critique regarding
the proposed implementation of the EU Copyright Directive. The
critique, according to the group, aims to “highlight flaws in the
proposal, and to make recommendations for their solution.”
The CDR claims that:
“as it stands, the UK implementation of the
European Copyright Directive will hinder research into cryptography
(in contravention of the express intent of the Directive itself),
make criminal current common practices of the music industry, give
software companies unwarrantied control over the creation of
software products interoperable with their own, and provide an
inadequate and entirely impractical mechanism for beneficiaries of
the Directive’s exceptions to obtain copyright works protected by
technological measures.”
The critique suggests that the consultation paper issued by the
UK Patent Office should define the term “academic research”, so
that immunity provisions regarding cryptography would not only
apply merely to bona fide academics, but also to amateur
cryptographers and generally to “everyone publishing information in
the furtherance of research into cryptography.”
The CDR also claims that copy-protection measures could be “a
significant inconvenience to professional music studios”. It
recommends amendments to the language of the proposal, so that
broadcasters and software developers would be assured of “freedom
from prosecution”.
