On the 27th March 2014, the Government laid five draft Statutory Instruments on exceptions to copyright for adoption in affirmative procedure and commencement on 1st June 2014. Having reviewed all five drafts, the BCC took the view that some of the exceptions as worded exceed the enabling powers of section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 (‘the ECA’): quotation and parody; certain educational exceptions; unenforceability of contractual overrides of exceptions. In addition, some SIs directly conflict with Directive 2001/29/EC (‘the Information Society Directive’): private copying exception without fair compensation; quotation exception. Industry colleagues at UK Music and at the Alliance for IP share many of our concerns and individual members of the BCC have specific issues with some of the wording of the SIs.
As a result, the British Copyright Council took the unusual step of writing to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments (JCSI) and the House of Lords, Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC) explaining how the wording of these SIs fail to meet the specific requirements of EU law.