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When putting together the programme for the CLIC event on copyright, we were slightly unsure about how popular this event would be. It’s a worthy subject, but possibly not so interesting? How wrong we were!
The event was fully booked, the three speakers all gave really interesting presentations, and there were plenty of questions from the audience.
The morning started off with a presentation from Sue Evans (Welsh Government Library) on the topic of “How to survive a CLA copyright survey”. Sue has worked for a variety of libraries in her career, and three of them have been targeted by the CLA for a survey – so it could happen to you! One college she worked for was actually prosecuted for breaking copyright law, so it’s something you want to make sure you and your institution are doing right!
For the latest survey she was involved in, Central government actually volunteered to be surveyed. The Public Administration License they had, they believed wasn’t fit for purpose and was making them pay more than they believed they should. For instance they were paying for items with crown copyright, which meant they were paying to copy their own sources! So in July last year they arranged for a cross government survey to take place, and twenty three departments, including the library, were selected. They had to give the CLA details about how many copiers they had and where they were located, the CLA then chose which ones they were going to monitor. Surprisingly they didn’t pick the busiest one in the library, which would have seemed an obvious choice. A ‘yellow box’ survey was used, with these bright coloured boxes set up next to the copiers, and details of all copies were to be placed in them (e.g., title page, plus how many pages/copies etc). Everything that was placed in the boxes was logged and audited by the CLA – some departments found that people put wastepaper and rubbish in the boxes – but all this was logged too!
In addition a digital survey and a behavioural survey were also emailed out to people.
The results of their survey overall revealed that relatively little copying was taking place (perhaps if they had monitored the library copier this might have been different!); and it did make the point that they didn’t need the public licence. They will now get a central government licence which is 40 % cheaper!
Two issues that Sue mentioned at the end were communication and staff time. Many people contacted by the CLA as part of the survey said they knew nothing about it, despite prior emails being sent round (and hence also the misuse of the yellow boxes). The CLA had also said that there would be minimal impact on staff time, yet in reality quite a lot of time had to be expended as they had to monitor the boxes etc. All in all it was a worthwhile exercise. Very interesting to hear about what the institution went through, and Sue said she would be happy to give advice to people if they were faced with going through the same thing.
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| Gayle Evans (NMW) and Sue Evans (WG) |
Next up was Gayle Evans (National Museum Wales) speaking about “Copyright and orphan works”. We were immediately drawn into Gayle’s talk by pictures of snow shoes and lumberjacks! In a previous life she worked in exploration in Canada; but she is now Head of Knowledge and Information Management at the Museum, and responsible for leading projects on copyright and information governance. She took us on a whistlestop tour of the history of copyright, from the Ancient Greeks, through medieval scriptoriums, the printing press and up to the present day of the internet and fast moving technology. Many people don’t understand why they can’t copy and use things, and why the law is against them, when they have the technology and the ability to do everything at home. She talked about the Hargreaves report that was published in 2011. This recommended an objective based view of copyright, and that there needed to be a balance between economics and rights.
In the case of orphan works one doesn’t know who the rights holder is. This is a large problem, for example 90% or archive photos in museums are orphan works; the Imperial War Museum has 2 million orphan photos, and 1.9 million documents. You cannot reproduce or display orphan works, but do have a duty of care toward them, and a responsibility to preserve them. The potential revenue being lost due to not being able to use these items is estimated at £1-£7 million.
Hargreaves recommended legislation to licence orphan works; making the copyright licensing more efficient, but also a need to set standards for diligent searching (to attempt to find owners). Moral rights of owners need to be protected, with rights continuing for 20 years after a person’s death.
Discussions around Hargreaves’ recommendations are taking place in government, and it is hoped that a move to legislation will take place soon.
Gayle’s talk generated some in depth questions and discussions, before we broke for coffee and biscuits.
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| Andrew Reith (IPO) |
The final talk for the day was given by Andrew Reith (IPO) and was “An overview of copyright”. The IPO (Intellectual Property Office) used to be known as the Patent Office, and Andrew gave us a tour through the complexities and issues surrounding copyright and explained how Intellectual property is really important. He described how when Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion; it wasn’t really the minimal buildings and staff they were paying for, but the fact that Lucasfilm owned the Star Wars franchise.
Intellectual property covers patents, trademarks, registered designs, trade secrets, confidential agreements, and plant varieties as well as copyright. Andrew went through the criteria for copyright protection; for instance the work must be recorded in a material form, and should be original not copied. He also listed the eight forms a work could consist of, for example, broadcasts, films, sound recordings, written work (which also includes software), and published editions. Copyright lasts a lifetime plus seventy years for most of these forms, although currently sound recordings and TV broadcasts are for 50 years from creation/first broadcast. Cliff Richard, however, has been campaigning to get this changed – because all his early material will soon be out of copyright, and in fact later in this year the time limit will be extended to 70 years.
We were warned to be careful about who owns copyright, and were given the example of Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street. This iconic composition has been earning Rafferty £80K a year since 1978, however the guy who played the saxophone and came up with that memorable sound, (you know, the bit of the tune you really recall) was a session musician called Raphael Ravenscroft (not Bob Holness!) and he was paid a one off fee of £27!
Andrew went on to talk about moral rights, and how they still apply even though intellectual rights might have been sold on. So for example, you may no longer own the rights to your song, but you can stop the political party you hate from using the song as part of their propaganda. He looked at who owns copyright, which is sometimes not so obvious, and cases where there are more than one owner; and he also covered secondary infringement, exceptions to copyright permissions, and copyright for business. Although this may all sound a bit heavy, it was presented in an enlightening and clear manner, and was finished off with the top ten ‘Dead earners’ of 2012. Top of the list was Elizabeth Taylor with an income of $210m, followed by Michael Jackson with $145m and Elvis Presley with $55m.
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| Sculpture in front of Cardiff Public Library |
The IPO offer free online intellectual property health checks and are always available to answer your queries.
All in all it was a very informative morning, and what could have been a dull subject was turned into some fascinating sessions by our great speakers! After the event a tour of the iconic Cardiff Public Library was available for participants, which many of them chose to enjoy.
All the presentations will be made available on our webpages.
CLIC: Cardiff Libraries in Cooperation 