Westminster eForum: Jeremy Silver talks copyright and confidence

We're still at the Westminster eForum on file-sharing, copyright and digital consumers, with Jeremy Silver next to speak on the subject of 'Copyright and Confidence: What should be the new relationship between public service and the creative industries?'.He's a digital media entrepreneur, and acting CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition, and stresses that he's speaking more in his own right than on behalf of FAC.”I want to take the debate on from where we left off earlier… and try to suggest a new kind of framework that we might consider,” he says. It's not fully-fledged, he warns, but it's a big step in the right direction.First, a spot of history: playright Ben Jonson, who was the first author to publish his works by printing a copy of his plays and depositing it in the stationer's office. “It strikes me we haven't moved on very far,” says Silver. “These concerns and issues have been with us for a very long time.”So what issues need to be grappled with? “Reproduction as the very core of copyright – the right to copy – is clearly today becoming unenforceable,” he says. “It's eroding before our eyes, and hence all the difficulties we're going through… [...]