Turns Out That Brexit Means Rotting Pigs' Heads, And Losing An EU Copyright Exception
Surprising no one who understands anything about international trade, the UK's departure from the EU -- Brexit -- is proving to be disastrous for its economy. Among the latest victims are Scottish fishermen, who are no longer able to sell their catches to EU customers, and the UK meat industry, which has tons of rotting pigs' heads on its hands. And it turns out that Brexit will be making copyright worse too.
It concerns the slightly obscure area of what are traditionally called "orphan works", although "hostage works" would be a better description. Whatever you call them, they are the millions of older works that are out of print and have no obvious owners, and which remain locked away because of copyright. This has led to various proposals around the world to liberate them, while still protecting the copyright holders if they later appear and assert ownership. One of these proposals became the 2012 EU Directive "on certain permitted uses of orphan works". It created a new copyright exception to allow cultural institutions to digitize written, cinematic or audio-visual works, and sound recordings, and to display them on their Web sites, for non-commercial use only. As Techdirt noted at the time, the Directive was pretty feeble. But even that tiny copyright exception has been taken away in the UK, following Brexit:
The EU orphan works exception will no longer apply to UK-based institutions and will be repealed from UK law from 1 January 2021.
UK institutions may face claims of copyright infringement if they make orphan works available online in the UK or EEA, including works they had placed online before 1 January 2021.
Now, in order to use orphan works in the UK, people must pay a recurring license fee based on the number of works involved. As a result, the British Library has started withdrawing material that it had previously digitized under the EU orphan works directive:
As many of you know, back in 2015 the British Library, working closely with partners at Jisc's Journal Archives platform and with copyright holders, digitised and made freely available the entire run of Spare Rib magazines. We are delighted that this resource, documenting a vibrant and important period of women's activism in the UK, has been so well used by researchers and those interested in the Women's Liberation Movement.
It is therefore with considerable regret that we are confirming that the resource, as a result of the UK leaving the European Union, will no longer be available following the end of the transition period. The decision to close down the Spare Rib resource once the UK leaves the EU was made on the basis of the copyright status of the digitised magazine, which relies heavily on the EU orphan works directive.
Brexit was sold on the basis that it would make things better in the UK. And yet the change to copyright brought about by Brexit turns out to make things worse for scholars and the general public. It seems that pigs' heads are not the only thing rotting thanks to Brexit.