25 signatures reached
To: Queen's Printer and the Controller of HMSO (currently Cambridge University Press)
Reduce Crown Copyright from 50 years to 10 years
Dear Queen's Printer and the Controller of HMSO
Crown copyright work which has been published will have copyright protection for 50 years from the end of the year in which the work was published. Unpublished works have a period of protection of 125 years. Please use the powers you have been granted by Letters Patent to reduce the term of copyright protection for all Crown works to 10 years.
Crown copyright work which has been published will have copyright protection for 50 years from the end of the year in which the work was published. Unpublished works have a period of protection of 125 years. Please use the powers you have been granted by Letters Patent to reduce the term of copyright protection for all Crown works to 10 years.
Why is this important?
The UK's copyright laws for government works are archaic. In the USA for example works of the Federal Government don't get any copyright protection. The restrictive Crown Copyright rules that currently apply in the UK make it harder for campaigning websites to reproduce government documents in full and don't help information-based businesses. This campaign isn't for the rules to be scrapped though but rather for the period of protection to be reduced to 10 years which means the government can exploit its works commercially for one decade if it wishes to do so. In the digital era a government copyright term of longer than ten years cannot be justified.
How it will be delivered
The current plan is to deliver the petition by hand if enough signatures are obtained.
