oh dear, so much for the new year's resolution of trying to post more information on copyright - this is the first of 2013!

To make up for lack of information, here's a substantial post - the draft of my next copyright newsletter - you're seeing it first!

And for previous editions of the newsletter, please visit my pages on Colleges Scotland website -

 http://www.collegesscotland.ac.uk/colscot/campaigns/copyright.html

Happy reading!

Copyright Maze Newsletter – March 2013

Good morning from a very sunny Dundee – just a brief newsletter today, to bring you up-to-date on some interesting topics that I’ve come across recently.

Pinterest (and other social networking sites)

I don’t know if you’ve come across Pinterest yet, but it’s been on the go for some time and appears to be gaining rapidly in popularity. It’s a very attractive photo posting site where users can create pinboards of pictures of favourite subjects and it is gaining considerable use in educational circles for the way in which images can be collected and pinned in subject areas – geography, history, sciences, hairdressing, beauty therapy, photography etc are already popular areas.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?  And it uses the wonderful technology that is at our fingertips these days – and you know there’s a “but” coming! But – it has stirred up some considerable copyright controversy in its relatively short life.

As with virtually all other social networking sites – Facebook and YouTube come to mind, there are copyright issues which educational users need to be aware of. If you are pinning images to your Pinterest pinboards, do you have permission to do so?  Fine if the pictures are your own or you have actually received permission from the rights holder, but if you don’t own or have the licence to use them, then you are potentially infringing.

Pinterest, in common with the other social networking sites, is purely a platform for you to use – it takes no responsibility for what you do on the site – although, like Facebook, it will happily grant a licence to any future user to exploit any pictures which you own, without reference to you.  It’s the classic first term in the list of terms and conditions – by using the site, you grant the site operators a wide ranging licence to sublicence and exploit your materials.  You still retain the copyright, but you’ve effectively given away the management of the photograph and won’t be able to do much about any infringement of your work that you come across – if the “infringer” has copied (pinned) the picture from Pinterest, they will claim that they did this legitimately under the Pinterest terms and conditions.

This may not be particularly important to an individual, but if a college is allowing access to such sites, it is opening itself to considerable risk.

So if a college allows use of Pinterest and other such sites, it really should be very clear on what is allowed in the way of pictures that are posted – does the college have ownership and is happy to give an automatic licence to whoever uses the pictures through the site, or is the college licensed to carry out the postings, by the rights holder of the picture?

I know, I know – is this Alan trying to rain on the parade? No, it’s just Alan trying to protect member colleges from being caught out unnecessarily and perhaps having to face up to charges of infringement.  As with all potential copyright infringement, the college may never be caught – but can the college afford to take that risk?  Financial penalties and loss of reputation are not ideal accomplishments for colleges.

My colleagues at JISC Legal have recently published an excellent and comprehensive paper on Pinterest and similar sites – for those of you who need more detail into what I have tried to explain in the first few paragraphs, then I strongly recommend that you read the paper, which you can get at –

http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/ManageContent/ViewDetail/ID/2705/Pinterest-Image-Sharing-Websites-and-the-Law-5-December-2012.aspx

New Zealand Universities take a stand

Yes, I know, we are not in New Zealand, nor are we the university sector, but there was a very interesting development there recently.

There are eight universities in New Zealand and they are being taken to the NZ copyright tribunal by Copyright Licensing New Zealand (CLNZ) for non-payment of the copyright licensing fee that covers photocopying in the universities.  I’m not sure if CLNZ is the equivalent of our very own CLA, but it looks as though there are similarities.

There was similar action in the last couple of years in Canada – it appears that academic establishments elsewhere are taking a stand against their licensing agencies and societies, looking for better value for money.

At the time of writing, I haven’t received the CLA proposals for the new “education” licence they are to offer to schools and FE throughout the UK, but I know that the proposals for the HE licence, which is due for renewal in August – same time as the FE licence, have been published, so I am hoping that ours isn’t far behind.

The NZ university story can be accessed here –

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10870331

Boundless!

And in one bound, I move on to the next item, which in some ways, is closely related to the previous item.

Many of you know that I am keen to review how Scottish FE colleges deal with licences and try to determine whether or not we feel there is value for money in these licences.

As stated in the previous item, we don’t yet have the proposals for the new FE licence, so I don’t know if there will be any moves, up or down, in the fees.  But even if they stay the same as current levels (and there will be movement in the overall charge which is a multiplier of the CLA fee and the relevant student numbers for each college) the “new” colleges are going to face what appear to be large bills.  If we take Edinburgh College, for example, the combination of the three colleges making this new entity, brings with it a CLA bill, based on last year’s figures, of £65,000 (+ VAT, of course).  If nothing happens in the next few years regarding collective licensing, that means that Edinburgh College will pay well over £300,000 over five years, for a CLA licence alone.

So, what’s going to happen?  I don’t know yet.  What I am trying to do is to encourage colleges to look at their resource requirements to see if there are any alternatives to photocopying and scanning third party materials which have to be done under the CLA licence.  We know of a number of alternative resources already – many of the JISC projects which colleges subscribe to, are rich in resources – I-Tunes U, Khan Academy and Open government offer considerable resources at no cost.

In the last newsletter, I mentioned www.Bookboon.com which hasn’t gone away since then – it seems to be going from strength to strength judging by the number of new titles it is adding to its list.  I still have reservations about the content quality of the texts, and I don’t know if students will be happy to work with books which carry advertising (but that seems to the way of the digital world), but this could be the way forward.

And to get to the point of this item, I’ve come across a fascinating website (it is American, but it’s the principle that’s important) called Boundless.  It’s well worth a visit just to see what the future of book publishing could be.  All texts are free, with the bulk of them being published under Creative Commons licences. Registration is required, but it’s straightforward and lets you in to a site that, in my opinion, is very well structured and presented.  In addition to the texts, there are a number of other resources available for the reader –and no CLA licence to worry about.

I haven’t any idea how they are raising finance to keep such an organisation going – they do list a number of investors and may have future plans for a commercial charge, but for the moment it’s free and well worth a visit – you can find it here – www.boundless.com

And finally

Just a reminder that I’m still here and still very keen to help out any  member colleges with any copyright questions, queries etc that you might have – also happy to come to your college to talk to staff and students about any aspect of copyright.

One of my projects at the moment is participation in one of the workstreams which was formed as a result of the Hargreaves Review into copyright.  This is taking me to London on a monthly basis and I’m thoroughly enjoying my involvement in a committee that is charged with trying to make copyright collective licensing easier to understand and administer.  It has provided me with the opportunity to meet relevant people from each of the licensing agencies and I have meetings soon with PPL and PRS – they are keen to talk about licensing in FE, so we might manage to get some changes made to what are quite complex licences – watch this space!

Some articles that you may find helpful –

Photographers - http://www.own-it.org/news/who-owns-the-copyright-the-photographer-or-the-client

Social networkers - http://www.own-it.org/news/you-own-it-but-facebook-can-use-it

For lovers of copyright quirkiness - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2013/jan/02/keep-calm-and-carry-on-trademark-books-poster-copyright

For librarians – it’s American, but useful - http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/02/opinion/not-dead-yet/copyright-and-libraries-help-not-dead-yet/

For musicians - http://www.thecmuwebsite.com/article/cmu-tips-making-money-from-copyright/ - and the whole website at www.thecmuwebsite.com is very interesting.