just being a little mischievous here - I found this on another copyright blog - the excellent 1709 blog which is a very useful fund of information and contacts. 

 

While on the subject of terms of use ... this Kat did not receive an e-greeting from the UK's Copyright Licensing Agency this year, though he assumes that it's nothing personal since he receives lots of news from the CLA.  One of the Kat's friends did however receive this year's greeting, illustrated above.  This friend, who prefers on this occasion to remain anonymous, wonders if anyone else noticed the little bit at the bottom left-hand side of the greeting -- the bit with the image of a small but unmistakably red bird, in the familiar shape of the Twitter bird logo.

Now, it's quite possible that the CLA has negotiated something with Twitter and that there is nothing untoward about the little red bird.  However, if you visit the web page entitled Twitter Trademark and Content Display Policy and scroll down to the logo's terms of use ("Using the Twitter brand and trademarks"), you will find the following list of no-nos:

"Don't: 

Use speech bubbles or words around the bird.
Rotate or change the direction of the bird.
Animate the bird.
Duplicate the bird.
Change the color of the bird.
Use any other marks or logos to represent our brand".

Red faces, anyone?

Good afternoon fellow copyright friends

Thanks for your attention in 2012 and I do promise faithfully to blog more in 2013 - it's top of my New Year Resolutions!

2013 promises to be a very interesting copyright year - The Hargreaves Commission has published the plans for changes to legislation and those of us connected to the education sector look forward with particular interest to some very interesting proposals.

Our friends at the Copyright Licensing Agency have already started things off with an innovative approach to licensing for English schools through an agreement made with the DfE - no word yet of this coming to Scotland, but it's certainly something I'll be following with interest - if they can do something for schools, there's no reason why they can't do the same for FE.  If you want further information, go here - http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a00219131/copyright-licence-deal-to-save-schools-time-and-money

I know that for many, copyright is not the most entertaining subject in the world, but for all those sceptics - and for the afficiandos, there was the most wonderful TV programme on BBC 4 a couple of nights ago. Called "The World's Richest Songs" and written and presented by the excellent Mark Radcliffe, the programme told the story of the top ten highest royalty earning songs, interspersed with fascinating accounts of near misses and why all creators should try their damnedest to keep hold of and manage their copyright.  The programme is still available on the i-player at -
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01pjrt5/The_Richest_Songs_in_the_World/ and thanks to the wonderful world of rights, it is downloadable and can be kept for another 30 days.

If you, and students, where appropriate, have any interest in copyright at all, this is well worth seeing - it brings copyright alive and putting aside some of the smarminess of Bob Mann and Cynthia Weil (you'll see why if you watch), it shows how essential copyright and the bigger picture of intellectual property are to the running of any economy that encourages creators to create and users to use - and respect!

Thanks for reading - will be back soon!