This week in media law we have been looking at copyright.
Copyright is a branch of intellectual propertylaw and it protects the products of people's skill, creativity, labour or time. Copyright protects and literary, dramatic, artistic or musical work, sound recording, film, broadcast or typographical arrangement. This was laid done in the Copyright designs and Patents Act 1988. Reproduction of a substantial part of a copyright work may constitute infringement. I found it interesting to note that for a work to be protected by copyright it must satisfy the test of originality. (In othe words, some work or effort must have gone into it.)
In regards to news stories, there is no copyright in facts and information. However, copyright exists in the form of which the information is expressed by the writer and the selection and arrangement of the material as all of these aspects involve skill and labour. Even though there is no copyright in news stories, if someone from another newspaper is persistently taking facts and information from another and rewriting them, that may still be an infringement because there has been skill and labour gone into producing the news story. When reporting current stories, the defence of fair dealing may sometimes allow some quoting from another paper. Fair dealing with a copyright work for the purposes of reporting current events is not an infringement provided it is accompanied by sufficient acknowledgement of the work and its author and provided the work has been made available to the public.
An official of a sporting trade association may find it part of their duty to make material available to the paper free of charge, however the copyright is still the association's and can withdraw the facility, or start to make a charge or prevent another journal from copying it.
It is important to note that copyright material supplied to newspapers by outside contributors will normally be owned by the contributor. For example a photograph. Section 17 of the Copyright Act has laid down that publication without permission of a photograph of the whole or substantial part of a television image is an infringement. Also, those who provide a broadcast service must make information about the programmes available to any newspaper or magazine publisher, wishing to use it, through a licensing scheme. This was established within the Broadcasting Act 1990.
Permission must be sought to publish the whole or part of an artistic work such as a map or drawing.
As soon as speeches are recorded there is copyright in the spoken words, even if they are not delivered from a script. There are four conditions whereby it is not infringement to use the record of words for reporting current events. These are set out in section 58 of the Copyright Act.
1) The record is a direct record and not taken from a previous record or broadcast.
2) The speaker did not prohibit the making of the record and it did not infringe any existing copyright.
3) Theuse being made of the record, or material taken from it, was not of a kind prohibited by the speaker or copyright owner before the record was made.
4) The use being made of the record is with the authority of the person who is lawfully in possession of it.
The first owner of any work is the author, but in the case of work done in the course of employment, the employer is the owner, subject to any contrary agreement. There is no automatic right on the part of a newspaper or magazine or periodical to the copyright of work done by non-members of staff, even if the work has been ordered. The copyright can be assigned to the newspaper or magazine but an assignment is not effective unless in writing signed by the copyright owner.
If a freelance or a commercial photographer has commissioned a photograph, the copyright is owned by the photographer unless there is an agreement to the contrary. A person who commisions a photograph for private or domestic purposes is protected by the Moral Rights section of the Copyright Act. The right in this case is not to have copies of the photograph issued to the public even if he does not own the copyright. Moral rights given to the aurthor of work gives the author right to be identified, not to have their work subject to derogatory treatment and not to have work falsely attributed to him.
Crown Copyright protects civil servants who in the course of their employment have produced work. Crown Copyright has been used in the courts to prevent the publication of material and to threaten former public servants with action for revealing matters concerning their employment.
Disputes have arose between opposing newspapers due to section 30 of the Copyright Act excluding photographs from the defence of fair dealing. These disputes have arose when one paper has lifted photographs from another paper.
It is held that works must be made available to the public. The importance of this is emphasised by changes to copyright law brought about as a result of the implementation of the European Information Society Directive 2001 EC by way of the Copyright and Related Regulations 2003.
Fair dealing does not cover such things as using too much of a work than is necessary when reporting current events.
Copying of a published report is not permitted even though there is no copyright infringement in reporting Parliament, the courts or public inquiries.
An example of infringement of copyright was when The Sun used a still image from a security video showing the lenght of a visit by Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed to the villa Windsor. It was held by the Court of Appeal in 2000 to be an infringement of copyright which could not be defended either as a publication in the public interest or as fair dealing for reporting current events.
The Copyright and Patents Act 1988 states that nothing within the Act affects 'any rule of law preventing or restricing the enforcement of copyright on the grounds of public interest or otherwise'. A court would be entitled to refuse to enforce copyright if the work was;
1) Immoral, Scandalous or contrary to family life;
2) Injurious to public life, public health or safety, or the administration of justice; or
3) Incited to encourage others to act in a way injurious to those matters.
There is copyright in the typographical arrangement of newspaper arrangements. However the House of Lords held that a fascimile copy of the cutting of an article from a page which gave no indication of how the rest of the page was laid out was not a substantial part of the published edition and this was not an infringement of the copyright of the typographical arrangement.
The lenght of copyright was ammended by the Government in 1955. The length of copyright now stands at 70 years from the end of the year of the author's death. This decision now confirms with a European Union Directive.
The right of freedom of Expression under article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, was held to provide no defence for infringement of copyright over and above those defences already provided by the Copyright Act 1988.
An example of a remedy for the breach of copyright is 'civil action'. The owner of the copyright can obtain an injuction in the High Court or County court to restrain a person from infringing his copyright as well as seeking damages and an order for the possession of infringing copies of the work and of material used in the infringement.
Prosecution is the punishment for infringement, however this does not apply to journalistic activity.
Innocent infringement is where the infringer did not know and had no reason to believe the work was subject to copyright. In an instance like this the owner is entitled to an amount of profits but not to damages.
If the owner of a copyright work has encouraged or allowed another to make use of that work without complaint, this may destroy a claim for infringement of copyright. This is known as acquiescence.
I've found this blog which provides very useful information about copyright online.
I also found this link about a copyright settlement between Coldplay and Joe Satriani:
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