Commentary on the Engravers' Act (1735)

Legislation conferring exclusive rights, for a period of 14 years, on persons inventing and designing engravings and similar works. This was first occasion on which British copyright legislation extended to something other than literary works. The commentary describes the background to the Act, in particular the lobbying efforts of a small group of artists and engravers led by William Hogarth, and details similarities and differences which the legislation bore to the Statute of Anne 1710. The commentary suggests that, whereas the Statute of Anne essentially sought to regulate the production of the physical book, with the Engravers' Act the legislature began to articulate a more subtle distinction between the physical object and the subject of copyright protection, which was in this case, the engraved image.

The Statute of Anne and the Great Abridgement Swindle

There are many things that we know about the Statute of Anne with reasonable certitude. We know that it was prefaced by a period of sustained lobbying on the part of the book trade. We know that on January 11, 1710 a bill was introduced in the House of Commons in response to this lobbying and that, less than three months later, on April 5, 1710, the act that is now commonly referred to as the Statute of Anne was passed. And we also know that the Act that was passed differed in many significant respects from the bill as it was originally introduced to parliament.
There are, however, many things that we don't - or can't - know about the Statute of Anne. This article considers one of those things that we don't or can't know; the extent to which the Act was intended to regulate the unauthorised production of derivative versions of published work (in this case, abridgements) if, indeed, it was intended to regulate the production of such works at all.

Commentary on the Models and Busts Act 1798

The first occasion on which British copyright law provided protection for a medium other than print. The legislation conferred exclusive rights lasting 14 years on persons who created new models or casts of human or animal figures.
The commentary describes the background to the Act, in particular the lobbying efforts of the artist and sculptor George Garrard, as well as the subsequent case-law, highlighting flaws in the drafting that lead to a further act in 1814. The commentary argues that while the 1798 Act is pre-modern, in the sense of having a reactive and subject-specific remit, by severing copyright from its print basis, the Act paved the way for the emergence of the modern image of copyright as concerned with the promotion of ‘art and literature'.

Commentary on Fine Arts Copyright Act 1862

Legislation conferring copyright protection on paintings, drawings, and photographs for the life of the author plus a seven year post mortem term. The Act was also innovative in de-coupling the copyright term from the event of publication, in providing artists with a new form of ‘moral rights' protection, and in introducing the concept of "originality" as the standard threshold for copyright protection.
The commentary explores the background to the legislation, and in particular, the international copyright regime, the nature of the art market in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the role of the Society of Artists in lobbying for legislative protection, and the impetus which the International Exhibition provided for securing the same. The commentary also considers how the 1862 Bill, in its earliest incarnation, incorporated elements that would have signalled a radical departure from established copyright norms. In particular, the Bill proposed: that copyright protection should not be contingent upon registration; and that protection should be offered on a universal basis, regardless of an artists' nationality, and regardless of where the work in question was created.

Commentary on the Royal Commission's Report on Copyright (1878)

The first major governmental review of the national, colonial, and international copyright regime. The commentary explores the background to the Royal Commission and in particular the efforts of the Association for the Protection of the Rights of Authors in lobbying for law reform. The commentary also explores the extent to which debates about free trade and monopoly commended the attention of the Commissioners and provided a challenge to the dominant conception of copyright - that is, copyright as a property right. The Report affirmed that copyright should continue to be regarded as a property right, and acknowledged the need for reform and consolidating legislation. Beyond that, however, the Commissioners were in considerable disagreement as to copyright's purpose and proper scope, with few of the Report's major recommendations receiving the unanimous support of the same.

The role of the National Audit Office in Private Finance Initiative endurance

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) has become one of the UK’s most contentious public policies. Despite New Labour’s advocacy of PFI as a means of achieving better value for money, criticisms of PFI have centred on key issues such as a lack of cost effectiveness, exaggerated pricing of risk transfers, excessive private sector profits, inflexibility and cumbersome administrative arrangements. Nevertheless, PFI has persisted as a key
infrastructure procurement method in the UK and has been supported as such by successive governments, as well as influencing policy in the Republic of Ireland and other European Nations. This paper explores this paradoxical outcome in relation to the role played in the UK by the National Audit Office (NAO). Under pressure to justify its support for PFI, the Blair government sought support for its policies by encouraging the NAO to investigate issues relating to PFI as well as specific PFI projects. It would have been expected that in fulfilling its role as independent auditor, the NAO would have examined whether PFI projects could have been delivered more efficiently, effectively or economically through other means. Yet, in line with earlier research, we find evidence that the NAO failed to comprehensively assess
key issues such as the value for money of PFI projects, and in so doing effectively acted as a legitimator of PFI policy. Using concepts relating to legitimacy theory and the idea of framing, our paper looks into 67 NAO private finance reports published between 1997 and 2011, with the goal of identifying the preferences, values and ideology underpinning the
NAO’s view on PFI during this period. Our analysis suggests that the NAO sought to legitimise existing PFI practices via a selective framing of problems and questions. Utilising a longitudinal approach, our analysis further suggests that this patterns of selective framing persisted over an extended time period during which fundamental parameters of the policy (such as contract length, to name one of the most important issues) were rarely addressed.
Overall the NAO’ supportive stance toward PFI seems to have relied on 1) a focused on positive aspects of PFI, such as on time delivery or lessons learned, and 2) positive comments on aspects of PFI that were criticised elsewhere, such as the lack of flexibility of underlying contractual arrangements. Our paper highlights the possibility that, rather than providing for a critical assessment of existing policies, national auditing bodies can
contribute to the creation of legitimatory environments. In terms of accounting research we would suggests that the objectivity and independence of accounting watchdogs should not be taken for granted, and that instead a critical investigation of the biases which can characterise these bodies can contribute to a deeper understanding of the nature of lobbying networks in the modern state.