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We read the Brexit copyright notices so you don't have to… No more IP freely, ta very much

Buried on Friday PM, just before pub o'clock

Among the daily two-dozen or so government updates on Brexit progress slipped in as everyone went to the pub on Friday were a bunch considering the impact on copyright and intellectual property.

First up: anyone using an EU satellite decoder to access programmes included in a UK broadcast (to avoid a charge) will be breaking the rules after Brexit.

So please stop doing that from exit day, if it comes. But if you're accessing programmes in your native language or otherwise using an EU decoder for any reason except to avoid paying you can continue to do so. Clear?

Also changing are rules on EU Portability Regulation. This currently allows people to access online services from anywhere in Europe as if they were at home. So you can use Amazon Prime or Netflix, for example, if you are a Brit temporarily in another European country. European citizens have the same rights when visiting the UK.

That will end come Brexit. Providers will no longer have an obligation to make sure that is possible, although they may continue to do so on a voluntary basis.

The EU Orphan Rights Directive will also be binned. In simple terms this covers copyrighted items – films, books or photos – where the rights holder is either not known or cannot be found. It covers quite large amounts of material held by archives and museums and offered online. The BFI, for instance, offers 170 orphan works on a dedicated YouTube channel.

Government advice is for cultural institutions to remove any orphan works from their collection online, consider applying for a UK orphan licence or if they have a UK license find a way to limit access to only UK residents.

Database owners relying on sui generis protection rights are also heading down the swanny. UK citizens and residents will lose sui generis protection after Brexit. The government advises considering copyright or licensing agreements to protect your database. However, there is a caveat:

"Database rights that exist in the UK prior to exit (whether held by UK or EEA persons or businesses) will continue to exist in the UK for the remainder of their duration."

Finally, the Home Office is spending £1m on advertising to encourage more people to sign up to the EU Settlement Scheme. This will be made easier if you've got an iPhone 8 or newer because the document check app will not work on these Apple devices. iPhone 7s and 7 Pluses will be able to run the application after an upcoming iOS update. ®

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