C4C has been encouraged by the UK Government’s willingness to implement suggestions from the report it commissioned in November 2010 by professor Ian Hargreaves. The ten recommendations in his resulting May 2011 Independent review of IP & growth were broadly adopted in the initial Government response three months later. Now the final part of the response, published today, provides a more detailed roadmap for implementing the Cardiff University digital economy professor’s suggestions.

Promising a “modern, robust and flexible” approach to IP that will help boost the UK economy by up to £7.9 billion, the latest response highlights changes to the framework for copyright exceptions that will appear in the Government’s 2013 legislative agenda. The response also details additional rights for what it calls the “vast silent majority” of legitimate users who pay for copyrighted works.C4C is particularly pleased to see expanded exceptions for press quotations, educational uses, library archiving and non-commercial data mining for research purposes. We also note explicit references to cloud services in the report’s pledge not to impose levies for private copying. Throughout, the latest Government response places a welcome emphasis on fair dealing principles.

A statement on the UK Government’s running timeline on the Hargreaves report says changes to the exceptions framework “will be good both for creators and users of copyright works.” As a next step before formal legislation, the Government plans to publish the regulations in draft format for technical review.