Learning on ScreenJISC Legal
How important are Intellectual Property rights in education and how relevant is the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) to staff and students in the UK?
About the author: Jason Miles-Campbell is Service Manager at JISC Legal
E-mail: jason.miles-campbell@strath.ac.uk
Web page: www.jisclegal.ac.uk/
Anarchy in the CDPA
You wish to use someone else’s scribbling. This can cause a copyright headache. The chase begins with the hunt for the author and/or the publisher, then finding out between them (if they know) whether there was an assignment, whether the copyright belongs to the author’s employer, whether the typography needs to be cleared in reuse, whether there is any third party material, whether there have been any further assignments of rights. When it comes to rights clearance in relation to using video, with its multiple layers of rights, it is easy for the headache to descend into meltdown.
When it comes to rights clearance in relation to using video … it is easy for the headache to descend into meltdown
In relation to the world of education, there is another approach: all intellectual property is theft, and as such, is to be generally disregarded. Copyright, as a bureaucratic barrier to creativity, is denied – how dare the legal world prevent a mash-up of BAMBI (1942) and HAMBURGER HILL (1987) in the name of art? There are some very good reasons why a mash-up of these two feature films shouldn’t be made, but the hard and fast truth is that law, both now and for the foreseeable future, allows the owners of original creativity to control how the fruits are to be used.
Although anarchy seems like a good academic trait to some, a slight extrapolation from freedom, there are some good reasons too for respect of creativity.
- First, academia should be a creative industry in its own right – so riding roughshod over other’s rights might be a tad hypocritical if one believes in the value of academic creativity.
Original image by Brendan Adkins, adapted by J. Miles-Campbell under Creative Commons licence
- Second, and more practically, the rights rug being pulled from underneath the use of a recording atan inopportune moment in the academic calendar is something we’d probably want to avoid.
- Third, too often at JISC Legal we encounter examples such as ‘I’ve created something wonderful. Isit okay rights-wise if I keep it under wraps?’ Sorting out rights clearance means reuse with certainty and confidence.
- Fourth, general disrespect for copyright is not going to endear yourselves to those creating original material. At the moment, we have some blanket licences and model licences which are, at best, very useful – UK further and higher education could probably do with more of them. Being the copyright classroom pet might be the way to persuade producers to move in the right direction.
- Fifth, academia should consider leading by example. A group of e-marketing graduates were recently unleashed on employers, only for the employers to cringe when they found those new recruits happily right-clicking anything that moved on the Internet – not the best idea in the commercial world. Yet, it appears, that is the habit they had learned at college.
- Sixth, you might get sued.
