In 2011 the Hargreaves Review stated that in some respects UK copyright law had failed to “keep up with technological and social change”, and recommended that the UK implement all of the copyright infringement exceptions available under the InfoSoc Directive (see text box). The Hargreaves Review also recommended that UK law should be clarified to ensure that exceptions to copyright infringement could not be overridden by contract.

During the next three years, these recommendations were developed, leading to the expectation that five statutory instruments, introducing the following amendments into UK copyright law, would come into force on 1 June 2014...