Digital Rights Network

The pan-European Creative Economy conference took place last week in London under the auspices of the UK's presidency of the EU. It was certainly tough to get a place there (I applied and was 'put on the waiting list') but fortunately some non-rights-holder groups did get a look in -- though it appears they were still heavily outnumbered. As a consequence we are fortunate enough to have two thorough summaries which have been posted up in the original Creative Economy thread here: http://drn.okfn.org/node/37. (Ms Gibson's summary contains some very interesting information on the database directive).

From these reports it appears that, sadly, the government continues to listen to only one side of the debate in these matters. This is bad not only for consumers but for creation and innovation in the UK (and EU) economy (creativity and innovation to flourish depend, not on protectionism, but on diversity and competition). Nevertheless it is a promising sign that people such as Ms Childs, Ms Gibson (and I believe Creative Commons) were able to attend -- even a couple of years ago it is doubtful whether such a conference would have contained anyone except the rights-holders.