In a speech delivered May 24 at the Wesminister Media Forum, Richard Mollett, chief executive of the U.K.’s Publishers Association attacked the tactics adopted by opponents of strong copyright legislation. According to the U.K. newsletter BookBrunch, Mollett criticized organizations such as the Open Rights Group, search engines and ISPs, research councils, the British Library, and Consumer Focus, all of which he alleged were seeking to erode copyright to varying degrees. He accused lobby groups of "having the temerity to appropriate the language of freedom of expression as a cloak for their tawdry theft." There was "a grotesque attempt to draw moral equivalence between stealing someone's work and the struggle for political representation."
Mollet said that publishers, through the PA, must provide political support for copyright, and campaign "to ensure the sustained right of authors and writers to earn a living from their work and not be told by those who wish to take it without paying that it is their fundamental right to do so".
