Overview of content related to 'intellectual property'

Book Review: Copyright - Interpreting the Law for Libraries, Archives and Information Services

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Charles Oppenheim sees much to like in the new edition of this work by a well-known authority but identifies one potentially major drawback.

This is the fifth edition of what is, obviously, a very successful title. The previous edition was published in 2004, and five years is a long time in copyright law and practice, so it was felt no doubt that a new edition was due. However, as I will explain at the end of this review, that decision may have been unsound.

The book follows its normal format of a series of questions regarding UK copyright law and practice, with brief answers. The author is a well-known UK copyright expert and has a gentle, witty writing style, which makes it possible to read the book cover-to-cover if you so wanted. The main chapters, covering the basics of copyright, the major media types, licences, electronic copyright and other matters, is followed by lists of useful addresses and sources of information, and a good index [1].

It is always difficult to achieve the magic combination of accuracy and approachability in legal matters, but Cornish largely manages this. I did identify errors and niggles though. For example, question 2.11 [1] on copyright in facts fails to cross-refer to protection of collections of facts in databases, which is covered elsewhere in the book; the claim in 3.19 and 4.27 that a library, archive or museum when given a bequest of unpublished works can assume that it has also acquired the copyright in such materials unless it is told otherwise is incorrect; in 4.3, the author makes reference to 'trivial works' without explaining what he means by the term; in 4.37 it is claimed that a slide or PowerPoint of a book page made for teaching cannot be made legally, but this is not true, as there could be an argument that the reproduction is for criticism or review, and so is permitted (in any case, the CLA's scanning licence will also often allow this); when discussing the communication to the public right in 4.54, the author fails to note that placing copyright material on an Intranet or as an e-mail attachment is also prohibited; in 6.8, it is claimed that someone who transcribes an interview will own the copyright in the transcription, when in fact the transcriber will jointly own the copyright with the interviewer and interviewee; in 11.64, the author claims it is always an offence to remove or alter rights management information, when in fact it is only an offence when it is done with the intention of enabling or concealing copyright infringement - a very important distinction.

Creative Commons Licences in Higher and Further Education: Do We Care?

editor — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Naomi Korn and Charles Oppenheim discuss the history and merits of using Creative Commons licences while questioning whether these licences are indeed a panacea.

Creative Commons [1] is helping to instigate cultural change: it is empowering rights holders with the knowledge and tools to decide under what terms they wish third parties to use their creations, whilst permitting users easy and user-friendly means to use content lawfully without the necessity of requesting permission.

The RoMEO Project: Protecting Metadata in an Open Access Environment

editor — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000

Elizabeth Gadd, Charles Oppenheim and Steve Probets describe how the RoMEO Project is seeking to safeguard freely available metadata disclosed and harvested under the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.

The Open Archives Initiative's Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) enables the 'disclosure' of metadata by Data Providers and the harvesting of that metadata by Service Providers. Although there is nothing to stop commercial providers from utilising this open-source protocol [1], it has its roots in the open access community and as such is used by many open archives.

Copyright Issues in Projects Funded by the Electronic Libraries Programme

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

After several months experience of dealing with copyright and the eLib programme, Charles Oppenheim returns to the major issues that have a risen.

In this paper I will discuss some of the major copyright issues that have arisen as a result of experiences of the eLib.

Copyright Battles: The Shetland News

editor — Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000

Charles Oppenheim takes a look at the Shetland Times versus Shetland News copyright case, and its implications for users of the World Wide Web.

On 24 October 1996, Lord Hamilton gave in a Scottish court a preliminary interdict (equivalent to injunction in English law) to prevent the Shetland News, an Internet based newspaper, from offering links from its WWW pages to those of its rival Internet newspaper, the Shetland Times. Right now, the Shetland News is appealing for funds to help fight the case in 1997.

The wording of the interdict includes the following key text (I trust I am not infringing copyright by reproducing it):

Copyright Info on the Net

editor — Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000

Charles Oppenheim takes a look at some of the Web sites and Bulletin Boards that contain information on copyright issues.

Copyright is an exceptionally popular subject on the Web, as a simple search on Alta Vista or one of the Web Crawlers will show. The usual rag bag of articles, advertising announcements, academic sites and so on will be picked up by such searches. In this brief article, I want to draw attention to some of the sites that I find useful when wandering lost in cyberspace. The sites are in no particular order, and many of them are linked to each other. I have given them a personal smiley rating as follows:

:-| Good site

:-) Very good site

Copyright Corner

editor — Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000

Charles Oppenheim on the copyright issues that all eLib (and many other projects) should be aware of.

Part of the basic philosophy of the eLib programme is to explore issues to do with copyright, to engender culture change amongst librarians, users and copyright owners about copyright, and to explore novel contractual or technical means to overcome the difficulties that copyright poses. In this article, I look at some of the major project lines and the copyright issues that might be raised from them.

Copyright Corner

editor — Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000

Charles Oppenheim details some of the legal issues associated with electronic copyright management systems.

The owner of a copyright has the right to prevent others from selling, hiring out or renting, copying it in any form, performing the work in public, broadcasting the work on radio or TV, or amending ("adapting") it. These acts are the so-called restricted acts. Anyone who does any of these acts without permission is deemed to have infringed the copyright and can be sued for damages. Infringement is subject to the requirement that either all the work, or at least a "substantial part" of the work was copied.