Speaking at the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Ms Mary Mitchell-O’Connor TD, today announced the long-promised Government approval for the drafting of a General Scheme of Bill entitled the Copyright and Related Rights (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2016. The Bill is in response to the Modernising Copyright Report published in October 2013, compiled by the Copyright Review Committee appointed in 2011. But the response does not cover all of the issues in the Report. Instead, the main issues covered the Heads will include:

• Facilitating access to books for persons with a disability, paving the way for ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or otherwise Print Disabled;

• Improving educational use, to permit teachers use modern day technology such as whiteboards without fear of infringing copyright, and to facilitate distance learning and education over the internet, in line with the changing provision of education and training in Ireland;

• Improving access to the Courts system for intellectual property claims, in particular to facilitate lower value IP infringement cases to be brought before the District and Circuit courts;

• Extending current copyright exceptions to promote non-commercial research including the introduction of a Text and Data Mining copyright exception into Irish law;

• Extending current copyright deposit provisions relating to books to facilitate the creation of a Digital Deposit on a voluntary basis;

• Creating an exception for use of copyright works to allow for caricature, satire and parody;

• Extending the concept of fair dealing in copyright works for purposes of news reporting;

• Making it an infringement, in the context of photographs, to tamper with metadata associated with the photographic works; and

• Allowing libraries, archives and educational institutions to make a copy of a work in its collection for preservation purposes and for catalogues for exhibitions, and so on.…

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