The Gowers Review has been published (PDF). I'm going to go through and provide a commentary as I read it. 
First off, it does not seem to realise the importance of IP as public good. Page 11 lists a number of things which are possible as a result of the IP system. Listening to the radio is an example. Listening to the radio has been massively increased by a lax regulatory framework. Radio would not exist today in as popular a format as it is if it weren't for the fact that it is an open market.
Similarly, branded goods - another example on page 11 (§1.3) - are a result of adding value to commodity goods. A pair of jeans may be branded Marks and Spencer or it may be branded Gucci, but the profusion of available jeans is as a result of turning jeans in to a commodity good. If one had to go through the same kind of rights clearance process that one has to go through to licence music in order to manufacture jeans, then jeans would not be available for companies to brand and sell in that manner.
§1.4 claims that "Ideas are expensive to produce but cheap to copy". Not necessarily. Ideas in certain markets are expensive to produce and cheap to copy - in other areas, it is vice versa.
§1.11 and chart 1.1 ignore an important component of patent law - patents have to be useful and true. Patents should be available for computer processors or molecules used in drug development. Patents should not be available for perpetual motions and other reality-distorting claims - as the United States Patent and Trademarks Office seems to think.
§2.19 does not realise the technological impossibility of creating Digital Rights Management schemes and TPMs. They don't work. It's not just people don't like them. It is and will always be possible to crack them - or they'll be so restrictive that you will never be able to crack them because you won't be able to use them.
Just as drugs get in to prisons, users will get around DRM.
§3.23 does not take account of the fact that optimal length measuremeents in copyright policy are close to impossible, since they are dependent on current model requirements rather than possible future model requirements. The cost to future development is unpreditable but usually stiff.
As Larry Lessig puts it, "When the only innovation that will be allowed is what Hollywood permits, we will not see innovation". The fact that the innovation is not quantifiable means that the status quo wins by default. That. Fucking. Sucks. Balls.
§3.26 is right on. We don't respect a system that has been continuously increasing the length of copyrights. Copyright is an agreement that is made between the work's creator and society, but the government renegotiates that through term extension whenever it likes! (Fortunately, they recognise this in §4.42)
The argument made in §4.22 (3) is equally easy to phrase in the opposite manner - a decrease in copyright terms would increase the incentive to invest in new music, because old music will drop out of copyright. The report does not take account of this kind of argument but do provide good ones in §4.30-4.33.
Chart 4.2 (p. 53 / p. 57 PDF) provides a nice long tail!
I'm glad to see that Google are not being Evil in the quote at §4.69.
I agree with the broad thrust of Recommendation 8 (p. 63/67PDF) but I think that it needs to go further than format shifting - it should specifically note that it includes the right to engage in time-shifting, place-shifting and device-shifting, and that technologial means should not be put in place to prevent those from taking place.
The hardware and blank media levies mentioned in §4.74 should be rejected - they're an insane idea more suited for the battier wings of a psychiatric institution than any sensible discussion of public policy. I'll make sure to bring my own DVD-R's with me when I visit France next week rather than buy them there! (Why should I pay the record companies a levy to back up my own data!?)
§4.76 is silly. Quite why should there be a limit. Copyright as a concept is flawed and should be replaced with distribution and sale rights. The "copying" in copyright is incoherent, and the legal gymnastic performed in this paragraph prove it to be so. I don't care whether you make a copy of my words - I care whether you pass them off as your own or sell them without permission. It's not the copying I'm bothered about.
Box 4.5 (p. 66/70PDF) does not take in to account the extremely expensive process of removing DRM from data for the purpose of preservation and archiving, nor does it take in to account the legal problems with doing so. The costs are high and the legal problems are many.
§4.104 is exceptionally naïve. The only way for technology to keep up with this kind of exception is to give full legal protection to the people who are hacking away to free content from the DRM around it. There's no way that Adobe are going to give a flying fuck what the Royal National Institute for the Blind think. But if the RNIB asked a bunch of computer geeks to help crack the DRM, they'd care a lot.
Also on DRM, I think the Sale of Goods Act should be extended so that you can get a no-questions-asked refund on any product that contains DRM.
§4.114: "The evidence suggests software patents are used strategically; that is, to prevent competitors from developing in a similar field, rather than to incentivise innovation." That's a big understatement.
All in all, Gowers was pretty much inoffensive. There are a few silly suggestions, quite a lot of obvious stuff, and a fair bit of really good stuff. It's all a big "meh" for me - although I'm glad they did seem to accept some of the suggestions that us lot on the "copy left" made.
