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!