The aim thus far has been to demonstrate that the United Kingdom's existing approach to the permitted acts brings copyright into conflict with a number of important rights and interests and causes a range of real difficulties for both individual and institutional users. We hope that this analysis will speak for itself to some extent. In particular, we hope that our exploration of the practical difficulties that users face in various circumstances will give owner representatives pause for thought and will help counteract their natural reflex to oppose measures that would liberalise the exceptions. In the next three chapters we build on this analysis by exploring some of the reasons why the United Kingdom has adopted an overly restrictive approach to the exceptions. We argue that a variety of factors – political, constitutional, institutional and accidental – together with judicial attitudes have to be accounted for. An exploration of these factors reveals that the current approach to the exceptions does not result from the adoption of a coherent or well thought through approach to copyright as a whole. In so far as copyright can be said to have been consciously shaped, our analysis suggests that for the most part it has been crafted to reflect the interests of powerful and well-organised groups that are able to operate effectively at both the national and international level.