Date: 8 November 2012
Venue: 7th floor of Bournemouth University’s Executive Business Centre
89 Holdenhurst Road, BH8 8EB

This interactive event offers the opportunity for discussion on evidence for copyright policy between social scientists, policy–makers and producers and users of copyright works. Copyright law is a topical and contentious area that affects a wide range of stakeholders with differing views on copyright policy. The need for evidence–based policy on copyright policy was emphasised in the Hargreaves Review and has led to several calls for evidence from stakeholders. The responses they provide to the Intellectual Property Office are varied in nature and quality; the IPO has responded by proposing guidelines on what constitutes acceptable evidence: ‘that it be clear, verifiable and able to be peer-reviewed’ (which itself is contested).

Besides being a matter of pressing public concern, copyright also attracts the interest of a broad range of social science disciplines each with its own rules of evidence. The emphasis on economic growth as the objective of copyright policy has shifted the need for evidence in the direction of economics but economic evidence is not always easily available. Nor it is the case that only quantitative evidence is regarded as valid.

The event, which is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, will take the form of panel and round table discussions between policy–makers from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), stakeholders from the creative industries and academics from economics, sociology, law and cultural studies with expertise in copyright. The focus is on what evidence from these fields of study is relevant and useful to policy–makers and those seeking to put their case to them. The event is open to members of the public.

This event is co-sponsored by CREATe, the AHRC/EPSRC/ESRC Centre for copyright and new business models, University of Glasgow.

Programme

Programme