Copyright reform 'vital' for growth of jobs in digital sector

COMPREHENSIVE REFORM of legislation governing defamation and copyright infringement is needed if Ireland is to create jobs and investment in the digital sector, a seminar on regulation and the smart economy in Dublin was told yesterday.

TJ McIntyre, chairman of Digital Rights Ireland, said that although laws enacted up until 2000 had put Ireland at the “vanguard” of promoting a digital economy, since then legislation had become “reactive”.

This had resulted in a situation where many companies found themselves operating in a vague legislative environment as “the internet was not waiting for us to change the law, the internet was changing . . .”

Mr McIntyre said that, for example, the E-commerce Act had left internet intermediaries, which allow users to post content produced by a third party, in “a very weak position”.

If a situation arose where an administrator was unable to deal with questionable content posted on a site immediately, “does that mean we have five days of defamation damages cropping up?”

It was notable that the 2009 Defamation Act “didn’t take the opportunity to address these issues”, he added. After the seminar, Mr McIntyre said defamation reform was vital if Ireland was to attract high-tech jobs.

Copyright law had to “widen the circumstances in which users can mash up and share content, while . . . ensuring content creators get rewarded”.