With the UK Government announcing it will not be implementing the EU Copyright Directive, the authors’ community in the UK have criticised this move away from protecting authors’ rights. IAF members the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and the Society of Authors have both issued statements urging the Government to reconsider its position.

Among a range of reforms, the Copyright Directive establishes positive mechanisms to ensure authors have a right to appropriate and proportionate remuneration for their work. This is supported in turn by rights to clear accounting for how their work is used and the power to renegotiate remuneration. The rights concerned here represent a modern step to protect authors’ rights to fair remuneration in a world where content is consumed more frequently and across a wider range of media.

ALCS has written to Baroness Morgan, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, to ask for a meeting to discuss the UK Government’s approach to implementing plans from the Copyright Directive and how this will affect authors, and to raise the concerns of creators. The Society of Authors released a statement which highlighted the values of the Copyright Directive, how it would ensure a level playing field for authors and the fact the UK Government had supported the Copyright Directive throughout its development.

Read the letter from ALCS Deputy Chief Executive Barbara Hayes here.

See the full Society of Authors’ statement.

Recent Bookseller coverage of this issue.