Yesterday I attended a seminar run by Sarah Brear from the Copyright Licencing Agency. I think I know about copyright, but every time I’m asked a question about it I doubt myself. I am therefore always keen to refresh my knowledge. The session was principally about the licence our university subscribes to and what is permitted (and perhaps more importantly not permitted) under its terms, but also covered the basics of copyright.

I’m not going to regurgitate the whole session for you but pull out a few things I noted down that were either interesting, or new to me. I’ve divided them into two sections, those relating to copyright generally and then more specifically under the Basic HE Licence.

Copyright

Ownership – Sarah addressed the issue of ownership, in this case relating to the creation of work for an institution by an individual. The owner is generally whoever paid for the work’s creation. So, if as part of my job (that I am paid for) I wrote a paper my institution would own the copyright of that document. There may however be some exceptions stated in an individual’s contract.

Fair dealing – there is no definition of this in law. It is not a right, but a defence that you can use if accused of infringement. It should not be confused with fair use which is a US concept and is more generous than fair dealing.

Exceptions
These are general principles, but when applying them you should still make an assessment of each individual case:

• work copied by hand in preparation for instruction
• work used in examinations; for questions and answers, but not if either is to be published afterwards unless clearance has been granted
• work used in criticism or review for news reporting

The CLA Basic HE Licence

The CLA provides indemnity for subscribers so that if an individual (staff or student) infringes copyright it would be the individual, not the institution who faced prosecution, providing the institution can demonstrate good practice under the licence.

Distance learning students can access materials made available under the licence but overseas campuses, and the students attending them, are not covered as standard under the licence.

This week Apple announced that by the end of the first quarter of 2009 all music available to download from the iTunes store will be DRM (Digital Rights Management) free. Essentially this means that once you have downloaded a track you can store and play it on any compatible device. The new format is known as iTunes Plus.

The introduction of this new format for the whole iTunes catalogue comes with the news that single tracks will no longer be sold at the standard price of £0.79. Pricing will now be variable with singles priced at either £0.59, £0.79 or £0.99. There is also the option to convert your existing purchases to iTunes Plus for a charge of £0.20 per song.

I’m not sure what impact this is going to have on my music purchasing habits. I’ve had no real problem with the restrictions imposed by DRM. I buy pretty much all of my new music from iTunes which I play on my laptop and iPod. With the option to authorize up to 5 other computers there’s scope for me to expand this as I’ve still got some flexibility there. As I don’t buy music that often I think for me it’s worth waiting to see where it goes from here before I jump in and upgrade my account to iTunes Plus. I’ll reassess next time I’m looking to buy something.

For more info on iTunes Plus see the iTunes Plus FAQ

For more info on DRM see the BBC’s DRM Q&A