Report calls for UK copyright law overhaul

The UK government has been urged to relax its stringent copyright laws to allow digital firms to source content freely and make the UK a great place for doing business. This will help digital firms to source content from whichever owners and encourage the kind of humour seen in US programmes such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, according to a new report.

Professor Ian Hargreaves' wide-ranging report on intellectual property, to be released today, calls for scrapping of strict laws on parody that keep comedians and other content creators as also those who create videos for internet services such as YouTube from caricaturing people's work without permission.

The Hargreaves report will argue that UK comedians, journalists and others are deterred from taking a more liberal approach due to prosecution fears. As against this, US performers are less inhibited under laws while parodying other people's material.

Last year's viral hit, Newport State of Mind, a take on Alicia Keys and Jay Z's hugely successful single New York State of Mind had to be pulled off YouTube after the seven co-writers of the original refused permission for this use of their IP.

Under the Hargreaves recommendations, writers Alex Warren and Terema Wainright would get clearance for the parody, which Universal Records denied.

"The case for introducing and updating this exception is strong in both cultural and economic terms," Hargreaves, chair of digital economy at the Cardiff School of Journalism, will say in the review. "A healthy creative economy should embrace creativity in all its aspects. A legally sound structure would not be mocked by pervasive infringement by otherwise law abiding citizens and organisations with the stature of the BBC."