Pondering issues in copyright and CLA Licences

In true end of year fashion I’m thinking I should ponder forth on some of the things I’ve attended in the last month or so. Somehow I like to tidy off outstanding strands of one year before really contemplating the next one.

Copyright Webinar

I attended the Copyright Webinar for Scotland’s Colleges last month. This was given by Alan Rae, Copyright Consultant to Scotland’s Colleges who has a new blog here.

Mostly what attracted me to this was the fact it was a free webinar I could access from my desk, on an ever-relevant subject, but one which would come at it from an angle I was unfamiliar with (that of Further Education) which might give an interesting different perspective on some perennial issues.  I’ve also been trying to do more webinar type things recently, so it also fitted in with that initiative too!  All in all it was very enjoyable and really useful to hear another perspective, a lot of the issues are fairly common to all sectors.

The session was split into three main parts. 

CLA Licences and the rights they can (and can't) grant and potential changes

The first part dealt with the CLA and the on-going re-negotiation of their CLA licence Scotland’s Colleges are currently going through.  This is where I felt myself on thinnest ground listening to it all as it’s not my sectoral background (it’s a long way from the type of CLA licences I deal in in a law firm).  As the CLA Law Licence is in the middle of being re-negotiated it’s interesting to hear what’s happening with licences being re-negotiated in other sectors and how it is being approached there.  In this case it seemed to be more about aligning the new licence more to the existing Schools one rather than to HE.

The discussion gave me an appreciation of how entirely different the component parts that make up calculating a licence in education are from the commercial world and the sheer volume and size of the CLA licence in that context.  Scotland’s Colleges spend over one million a year on copyright currently, 600k of that being on the CLA Licence.

Other aspects of the discussion were a lot more familiar such as the extent to which (or not) a CLA licence is appropriate or necessary and in what circumstances and the cost issues. How do we deal with ‘born digital’ resources (through contractual terms and conditions mainly, do we want a CLA solution for as well, what if it’s more stringent?).  Do we need a CLA solution for free to view websites or in some contexts such as education can alternative resources be utilised or fair dealing exceptions or whether websites own terms and conditions will cover.

There was discussion of the potential usefulness of a web logging tool to solve perennial disputes about whether organisations pay more than they use or whether there is under-reporting during official CLA audits.

Social networks and copyright

This was mainly going over established ground that can’t re-use third party material unless have some form of licence, permission or legal defence no matter where it is posted.

There was interesting discussion of different approaches between different social sites however from YouTube increasingly using cease and desist through to Flickr setting up a channel for Creative Commons use material.  The Flickr discussion was interesting as I’ve been meaning to have a proper look at Creative Commons.  Usually Creative Commons licences exclude use for commercial purposes so as a law firm librarian that’s pretty much it. Unless it can be argued the precise use is non-commercial, but that’s difficult.  However I’ve been meaning to have a bit of a looksee at Creative Commons just from a ‘useful to know about’ generally viewpoint.  One for the New Year I think!

Digitising for VLEs

This part was back to can’t reformat unless you have some form of explicit agreed licence, permission or legal defence. Need to take care when sharing resources.