As the newly elected Board of Governors we wish to extend our appreciation and gratitude for the trust that has been placed with us by you the members. You will hopefully be aware that the constitution is very vague as to the function and operation of the Board. Accordingly there is a lot of behind the scenes work that we are now undertaking to address this before moving on to the rest of the constitution. We ask your patience if from the outside it appears as if we have gone quiet and aren’t doing anything. Quite the opposite, we are hard at work and aim to present our proposals for constitutional amendment to you the members as soon as we can, starting with defining how we as the board will function.

We will not lose sight that it is you the members that ultimately decide what constitutional amendments come into force, and this is not a one way process where we expect members to passively sit back and wait for our proposals. If you have ideas, concerns, or suggestions for constitutional amendments we encourage you to contact any Governor on the Board. We will consider your ideas and put them through the same rigorous process of debate as any of our own idea. Bear in mind however, that there may be a multitude of other proposals that delicately interact, so if you don’t hear back from us promptly don’t think that we are ignoring your proposal.

Finally we fully understand that in order to maintain the trust you have placed in us we need to make sure there are clear channels of communication, that we maintain a high profile and not 'drop off the face of the earth', and we behave with respect to both you the members and the office of Governor. With this in mind we hope to have a process for communicating our progress in place as soon as possible.

Three hundred years ago, today, Copyright was born.

Conceived in 1709 the Statute of Anne, as it is sometimes known, came into force on 10th April 1710. Despite going by the nickname of Copyright Act 1709 it was born with the much grander appellation: 'An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned'.

Taking another look at that impressive title, we can imagine how the 'parents' intended for their product to develop. If they had been cursed with considerable foresight, and saw how Copyright grew-up and developed I believe they would be as horrified as those of us who can see Copyright for the monster it has become.

If we try and draw a parallel between the Statute of Anne (Anne) and recent Copyright legislation, including the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988 (CDPA1988) and the Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEAct) we can see a stark difference in their intent.

Anne speaks about 'encouragement of learning', breaking the monopoly held by publishers, a 14+14 year protection limitation, and fines for infringment were to be split between the Crown and the author. The very central tenet of Anne was to create a mutually beneficial system between creators and the public that would encourage creativity by giving short-term protections to commercial exploitation whilst ensuring that the very creations themselves would become the free public property of society (public domain).

Contrast this with the language of more recent legislation:

• In the CDPA1988 protection terms are extended in some cases to 70 years after the death of an author - anyone finding me a dead author who is encouraged to further creativity by this length a term wins a prize.
• When we come to educational provisions (Remember, Anne was an act for the encouragement of learning) the CDPA 1988 makes the following provision 'reprographic copying is only permitted within the limit of 1% of the work per three-month period' and 'Works may be performed in educational establishments without infringing copyright, provided that no members of the public are present (s. 34): the parents of pupils are considered members of the public'

So who does get excused from 'respecting' these new Copyright laws? The CDPA1988 states that 'Copyright is not infringed by anything done for the purposes of parliamentary or judicial proceedings'. Should we be surprised? Those ...