Is copyright stopping us duplicating the US?
I went to the Essential Web event at the London Imax yesterday run by Library House, which had a range of interesting delegates from Web 2.0 businesses.
One of the aims of the conference was to look at why many of the big Web 2.0 successes to date are US-based businesses. One speaker, Zvi Schreiber from web operating system G.ho.st said that one of the disadvantages in his view for European businesses was the legal position. The US, he said, has led the way with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and its protections for web businesses, and Europe needed to adopt a similarly liberal approach.
There are many who would describe the DMCA as legislation that restricts rather than liberates. Zvi was referring in particular to the various exemptions which it creates for web hosts and certain other web service providers that might otherwise be the subject of a court claim for copyright infringement as a result of content they have not themselves created or seen.
Similar exemptions do exist in the EU, implemented in the UK through the snappily titled Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. However, if legislation does need changing to help UK based web entrepreneurs, now might be a good time to raise it as the wind of change blows through Downing Street!
http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/07/where_are_all_the_uk_startups/ is an interesting set of comments on this particular subject from a different perspective.
Posted by: Stuart Langridge | June 28, 2007 at 03:23 PM