The UK government commissioned the Hargreaves report into Intellectual Property Reform and their recommendations (summarised by RLUK) were:

Professor Hargreaves’ Review made a number of important recommendations, including that exceptions at national level should include format shifting (vital for preservation), non-commercial research, and library archiving, and that EU exceptions should support text and data mining. There were also proposals on orphan works, which will allow a pragmatic solution to the question of how to digitize older material while still respecting rights holders

The Intellectual Property Office then asked anyone (this is useful modern democracy) to comment and got over 450 replies:

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copyright-summaryofresponses-pdf

including one from me, and one from the Open Knowledge Foundation Open Science Group.

Worth reading but most sections include “both sides” of the case. “Both sides”? Don’t we all want reform? Well some people are very happy with the status quo. They have good businesses, especially scholarly publishers where universities give them content, they add near-zero value and then sell it back to the world. And the UK is very strong in this area – we have lots of wealth-generating publishers. Wealth-generating? Income generating, perhaps. But adding value?

Anyway there is substantial resistance to Hargreaves from publishers. Why should people like me be allowed to mine the scientific literature? It could destroy British industry. The Royal Society of Chemistry’s view (on this blog) is that I can only text-mine “RSC content” if I can guarantee they won’t lose business. And I can’t guarantee this.

Well if its’ that fragile, it’ll crash anyway.

So a number of MPs have tables an “Early day motion”. This is Houses-of-Parliament-speak for something the MPs want, rather than the government. The RLUK has provided some background:

http://www.rluk.ac.uk/content/help-support-reform-uk-intellectual-property-laws-early-day-motion

They need support (ONLY FROM BRITS, I am afraid – anyone can write to Obama but it doesn’t work in reverse).

So you can write to them using www.writetothem.com

I don’t need to as our MP used to work in our lab.

BUT YOU DO. And RLUK’ll expect 100% effort from UK librarians on this.

And everyone else needs to as well.