It looks like they're enabling something like fair use and realizing that the way orphan publications are handled doesn't make any sense. Not very exciting really considering these are regulations that are widely ignored by people who actually use any technology anyway.
Since there was a talk about abolishing patents etc. from the US system, I had my hopes up for a few seconds that England might've picked some of those ideals up. Looks like that isn't the acse. They're actually acting now on a study commissioned in 2006!
Sorry to be a little picky but it's not England, it's the United Kingdom. Of all of the member nations of the United Kingdom, England is the only one unrepresented in government. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales all have devolved governments of their own. England has no such government.
The sad fact is that the British parliament could pass a law, which can then be overturned in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland leaving England screwed. Furthermore, MPs from those countries all get to vote in the British parliament, then their devolved equivalents can vote against it locally (except in England as there's no English parliament). This happened most recently with tuition fees but can apply to almost anything.
Keep in mind, the British parliament can over-rule the Scottish one. The British law could include a clause "none of the above may be changed by the Parliaments of Scotland, Northern Island, or Wales". But contentious laws are already hard enough to pass.
There's tons of little loopholes all over the place. For example, the Isles of Scilly have a slightly strange legal status, and if they're not explicitly mentioned in a law, it doesn't apply to them (I was told this by someone at the council in St. Mary's but didn't ask for the specific statute).
To be honest, if a law is contentious enough for the scots to vote against it, then the devolved parliaments are just as likely push for their national reps to vote against it on the principle that it overrules them.
On the contrary, Copyright is a reserved matter to Westminster, and the Scottish, NI, and Wales devolved governments have no power to overrule the UK government.
At the risk of talking cross-porpoises, I was referring to the parent poster's incorrect use of the term England as a country with the ability to make it's own laws, as opposed to copyright law in general.
If the United Kingdom is properly the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, why are the citizens and government British? Maybe because anything else would sound dumb...
