Copyright Exhaustion – What it Means
After Brexit, the UK is looking into changing to a lesser know intellectual property framework known as “Copyright Exhaustion”.
With our current framework, regarding books and publishing, it gives the owner certain exclusive rights.
One of these rights is the “Distribution” right. This allows the owner to control distribution of their work for the first sale. For example, they could have the book sold abroad, for a specific price.
Copyright exhaustion, unfortunately, could mean that the owner no longer has this right. An example of how this would affect things is if the owner of a piece of work wanted to sell it abroad.
In India, books are generally sold at not even a third of the price of the actual value of the work. Currently, the owner of the work can ensure they receive the full price, but with this change, it could mean a huge loss of income for the owner.
Quoted from Save Our Books, a campaign to stop this change:
“If the government introduces the wrong framework, this decision could:
- Significantly harm author incomes.
- Prompt a relocation of publishing away from the UK.
- Further support online retail giants and damage the already suffering British high street.”
If you want to help support the cause, and prevent this from changing, follow the link below to get more information on Save Our Books!
https://www.saveourbooks.org.uk/
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