5th March 2012
The Minister for Research and Innovation, Mr. Sean Sherlock, TD, has today (Monday) announced online consultations for the work of the Copyright Review Committee, and their wide-ranging Consultation Paper [http://www.djei.ie/science/ipr/crc_consultation_paper.pdf ] (PDF, 1.4MB) which examines the current Copyright legislative framework to identify any areas of the legislation that might be deemed to create barriers to innovation.
The Minister said:
“I welcome the Consultation Paper which I was delighted to launch on the 29th February last, and I encourage the widest possible participation in the consultation process. I am committed to reviewing and updating the Copyright legislation currently in place in order to strike the correct balance between encouraging innovation and protecting creativity, and the work of the Committee is very important in this regard.”
The Committee now has a dedicated website at http://www.djei.ie/science/ipr/crc.htm
and it will be directly linked from the Department’s homepage until the Review process is complete. The Committee’s site provides various ways to participate in the consultation process. As well as by post and email, the Committee has prepared an online questionnaire [https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CRC12] to reply to the questions they pose in the Consultation Paper. It is available from the Committee’s website.
“I hope that interested parties will find this innovative option to be helpful” the Minister added.
“I am also grateful to the Irish Internet Association for providing an online mechanism to collate its members’ views and to gather the views of others on the Paper. Moreover, I would also welcome any similar initiatives undertaken by other online representative groups. The wider the consultation on the Committee’s work is, the better the outcome will be.
The Committee hopes to provide draft heads of a Copyright and Related Rights (Innovation) (Amendment) Bill, 2012, to implement its recommendations, and one of the questions which they pose in the Paper is whether all of the amendments to the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 which are still in force should be consolidated into that proposed Bill. I welcome this suggestion, and its implementation would provide an opportunity in due course to update the provisions of the various Regulations in force (including the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2012 (S.I. No. 59 of 2012)) if and when they are being incorporated into that Bill.”
The Chairman of the Committee, Dr Eoin O’Dell, welcomed the Minister’s remarks, and said:
“I particularly welcome the Minister’s view that the various Regulations now in force might be updated at a later stage. In the meantime, I hope that discussions will engage with the issues in our Consultation Paper, and that those who are interested in doing so via the internet will participate in our online questionnaire.”
Submissions on the Consultation Paper can be made via the “online questionnaire” on the Committee’s website, or directly to the Department. In either case, submissions should be received by close of business on Friday 13 April 2012. There will also be a public meeting from 10:00am until 12:00 noon, on Saturday 24 March 2012, in the Robert Emmet Lecture Theatre, Room 2037 Arts Block, Trinity College Dublin. Attendance is free and open to anyone interested in the work of the Committee, but registration is necessary.
To make a written submission, or to register for the public meeting, please email the Review at copyrightreview@djei.ie or write to Copyright Review, Room 517, Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Kildare Street, Dublin 2.
ENDS