Firstly, I feel that I should explain that as part of my Journalism course at the University of Winchester, we are required to take two modules in media law. The first, in our first year of university, to give us a grasp of what not to do as beginner journalists. The second module starts in our third (and current) year, and is designed to bring us up to speed on any recent changes in the law, or any cases relevant to our interests. Most noticeably at the moment is the Leveson inquiry, which will almost certainly have a major impact on our working careers.
To bring you up to speed, last week we had a lecture on copyright by Peter Hodges essentially a dos and don'ts for journalists. Mr Hodges gave a similar lecture during my first year which I wrote about here, so I wont go into too much detail on the basics on this post. Instead I'm going to talk about fair dealing which is a very important thing to get around, and very useful if you know how to use it.
Fair dealing as described by McNae's essential law for journalists can be used 'for the purpose of reporting current events. essentially meaning that it is OK to use a small amount of copyrighted material if a news story needs it to help explain something. It should always bring something to the story, however, and does not count as fair dealing if it is simple there to bulk out a piece. Fair dealing can always be used for the purposes of criticism and review. This means that if you were reviewing a movie, a video game, or a piece of music; you are allowed to use a small amount of the copyrighted material. How much you are allowed to use isn't clear in the law, and it's easy to be put off by uncertainty, but this was something I expressed to Mr Hodges, who, as the former head of BBC Copyright should have a very good idea on what is acceptable.
He said that for the purposes of criticism and review, you can use an aggregate of two minutes for each subject. the clips can be long or short, but no more than two minutes.
Below is a short review show written and edited by yours truly. We showed this to Peter Hodges and he said it was absolutely safe in terms of fair dealing. It had no more than two minutes of footage for each game, and the details of the copyright holders are clearly displayed throughout. Essentially, this is what you have to do to be able to use copyrighted footage:
You'll have to excuse the dodgy puns and crappy audio mixing. It was my first attempt at something like this and if it makes you fell better, I cringe everytime I watch it. Think of it this way: visually and aurally, this is a bit of a train wreck; But as far as the letter of the law goes, this is excellent.
Some other quick points that were covered in the lecture: When filming live events, you are not at fault if copyrighted music is audible as this is accidental inclusion; if however you then recorded the copyrighted material in a package, you could be in trouble. this can prove tricky when filming live events such as sports games and will definitely have to be thought about when editing.
Also, everything said about fair dealing above, does not ring true for photographs. You must always have the copyright holder's permission to use any photo. for example, do you see any pictures in this blog post?
No, you don't.
Showing posts with label Copyright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Copyright. Show all posts
Saturday, 13 October 2012
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Copyright 2.0
Since my last blog on copyright, which focused on the lecture given by Peter Hodges. I have been fortunate enough to also be treated to the Chris Horrie copyright experience. My findings are as follows.
Copyright is a branch of law that protects intellectual property, intellectual property is what we use to make money, therefore, it is very important. The most important thing to remember, is that ideas are not copyrighted (as I have previously mentioned), therefore you have to find some way to publish it and gain copyright protection. I will explain using an analogy that Chris gave us. You are a shed builder. You have built a shed, and that shed belongs to you. Once you sell it, it becomes the property of the buyer, as if he made it himself. The same applies if you build sheds for a wage. As soon as you are paid for your work, it ceases to be yours. This is why you don't see assembly line workers running after cars (or whatever) shouting that they've had their hubcaps stolen.
Obviously this is a broad definition, and there are exceptions. If you wrote a book, for example, you have put in your time and effort, and (we assume) you have not been paid to do so. The story belongs to you and once published, every time a copy is bought, you receive payment in the form of royalties. This is similar to freelance reporters. As opposed to reporters that work for a paper/network etc. For whom, once they write a report, it becomes the property of said paper/network. Freelancers on the other hand, are paid for the use of their work. They effectively lease out their work, and can do this as many times as they like and still retain ownership of their 'shed' (like renting out a house, rather than selling it).
Returning to the book-writing scenario I just mentioned. You receive your royalties initially as an advance sum, the amount of which depends on how well they think your book will sell. If your book does better than anticipated, you will be given extra royalties. If it does worse, then you keep your advance but get nothing extra and in future will receive lower offers for any other books you may write, as they will not be expected to do very well.
Lifting, or fair dealing, allows you to use certain copyrighted material to report current events, only if you sufficiently acknowledge the author, and if it has been made available to the public. Fair dealing is what allows criticism or review, though you have to be careful not to 'lift' too much. There is no set cap on how much you may use, but it is advisable to keep it to a minimum. You would not be allowed to used dishonestly obtained material, McNae's gives an example of this involving the Sun using stills from a security video showing Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed at the Villa Windsor. The judge found this to be an infringement of copyright which could not be defended. It is also worth noting that photographs are never protected by fair dealing.
The Huffington Post, a citizen journalism site that I have mentioned in a previous blog, has been criticised as being too friendly with using links to other news sites as a way of padding out their own stories. I am not sure whether links count as lifting as they are used to direct readers to a separate site that owns the content. I would personally prefer to use links rather than quote large amounts of text from other news media, though the length would be a factor, however I try not to use them unless I want to bring an entire story to attention, rather than just certain parts. As links are a fairly recent tool for reporting, I am not sure whether they are covered in copyright law. If anyone can point me in a direction to find out, I would be much obliged, as I've pretty much talked myself out of wanting to use them!
Copyright is a branch of law that protects intellectual property, intellectual property is what we use to make money, therefore, it is very important. The most important thing to remember, is that ideas are not copyrighted (as I have previously mentioned), therefore you have to find some way to publish it and gain copyright protection. I will explain using an analogy that Chris gave us. You are a shed builder. You have built a shed, and that shed belongs to you. Once you sell it, it becomes the property of the buyer, as if he made it himself. The same applies if you build sheds for a wage. As soon as you are paid for your work, it ceases to be yours. This is why you don't see assembly line workers running after cars (or whatever) shouting that they've had their hubcaps stolen.
Obviously this is a broad definition, and there are exceptions. If you wrote a book, for example, you have put in your time and effort, and (we assume) you have not been paid to do so. The story belongs to you and once published, every time a copy is bought, you receive payment in the form of royalties. This is similar to freelance reporters. As opposed to reporters that work for a paper/network etc. For whom, once they write a report, it becomes the property of said paper/network. Freelancers on the other hand, are paid for the use of their work. They effectively lease out their work, and can do this as many times as they like and still retain ownership of their 'shed' (like renting out a house, rather than selling it).
Returning to the book-writing scenario I just mentioned. You receive your royalties initially as an advance sum, the amount of which depends on how well they think your book will sell. If your book does better than anticipated, you will be given extra royalties. If it does worse, then you keep your advance but get nothing extra and in future will receive lower offers for any other books you may write, as they will not be expected to do very well.
Lifting, or fair dealing, allows you to use certain copyrighted material to report current events, only if you sufficiently acknowledge the author, and if it has been made available to the public. Fair dealing is what allows criticism or review, though you have to be careful not to 'lift' too much. There is no set cap on how much you may use, but it is advisable to keep it to a minimum. You would not be allowed to used dishonestly obtained material, McNae's gives an example of this involving the Sun using stills from a security video showing Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed at the Villa Windsor. The judge found this to be an infringement of copyright which could not be defended. It is also worth noting that photographs are never protected by fair dealing.
The Huffington Post, a citizen journalism site that I have mentioned in a previous blog, has been criticised as being too friendly with using links to other news sites as a way of padding out their own stories. I am not sure whether links count as lifting as they are used to direct readers to a separate site that owns the content. I would personally prefer to use links rather than quote large amounts of text from other news media, though the length would be a factor, however I try not to use them unless I want to bring an entire story to attention, rather than just certain parts. As links are a fairly recent tool for reporting, I am not sure whether they are covered in copyright law. If anyone can point me in a direction to find out, I would be much obliged, as I've pretty much talked myself out of wanting to use them!
Friday, 22 October 2010
Strictly Come Copyright
The Copyright lecture started… well it didn’t start when it was supposed to, so me and the rest of the intrepid investigative explorers decided to try and find out what was going on. An hour later following a trip to the faculty office, the Thomas Atkinson Building and generally a lot of wandering around. We decided to have a quick look into the stripe just to check. Lo and behold it was just about to start, apparently there had been a mix up with the drama lot so it had been moved back. Thrilled to hear it was still on, we enthusiastically bounded into the lecture theatre and took our seats (I wouldn’t normally advertise my mistakes but, in the previous line, instead of enthusiastically, for some reason I’d written atheistically. The picture in my head made me laugh so I thought I‘d share).
Mr Hodges opened the Lecture by telling us that a mistake with copyright could cost us our money, our job, or our house. Luckily at the moment I have none of these things to lose, but I have a feeling that this will stick with me for a while. He proceeded to give us several example of things that are copyrighted. I have never put much thought to this before, but I imagined that it would involve music and movies as well as logos. Turns out that basically everything you’ve ever seen is protected by copyright law. On a CD jacket there is the type face, the photo/drawing, the logo, the sound recording not to mention the songs and performance of the artists. Another good example is the television program ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. when you watch this program the copyrighted material starts at the songs and choreography, down to the clothing and the set itself.
Copyright can cost productions a lot of money as the majority of the time they will have to pay the creator/author/designer to use their material. There are, however, some exceptions when copyright will not have to be paid. In the case of songs, a recording’s copyright will last for 50 years before it is no longer mandatory to pay royalties to the artist. This has caused some unhappy murmurings recently as, with the advent of ever more powerful drugs, artists are starting to live longer, and have started to put up a fuss when they stop getting royalties. most notably at the moment is Cliff Richard (poor old Cliff’s run out of money I guess).
Halfway through the lecture we were treated to a short film of an opera. Afterwards we were asked to list as many copyrighted things as possible to the best of my memory, during the credits at the start there were: the author of the opera, the produce, the conductor, the orchestra, the director, the main actors, and various designers. During the actual opera, there were: paintings, costumes, clocks, wigs, and many, many others. This was more to show how many copyrights have to be checked, approved and paid for, during the making of any kind of production.
Perhaps one of the more important things to take away from the lecture was that an idea cannot be copyrighted. If you were to come up with a brilliant new game show that doesn’t at all resemble X-Factor or Family Fortunes, or any successful current show. For the love of God, don’t share your idea with any shady exec-types. They will steal it! And you won’t see so much as a shiny penny of it. However, once an idea is published, it becomes copyright protected. This is what you have to do to make a million. Publish your idea, then sell it.
The best part of the lecture for me was when, after about an hour and a half of this excitement, Mr Hodges asked if their were any journalists in the room. The 5 or 6 of us who had made it there raised our hands. “Well” he said, “you don’t have to worry about this as anything you write about will be covered by fair comment… Great.
Mr Hodges opened the Lecture by telling us that a mistake with copyright could cost us our money, our job, or our house. Luckily at the moment I have none of these things to lose, but I have a feeling that this will stick with me for a while. He proceeded to give us several example of things that are copyrighted. I have never put much thought to this before, but I imagined that it would involve music and movies as well as logos. Turns out that basically everything you’ve ever seen is protected by copyright law. On a CD jacket there is the type face, the photo/drawing, the logo, the sound recording not to mention the songs and performance of the artists. Another good example is the television program ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. when you watch this program the copyrighted material starts at the songs and choreography, down to the clothing and the set itself.
Copyright can cost productions a lot of money as the majority of the time they will have to pay the creator/author/designer to use their material. There are, however, some exceptions when copyright will not have to be paid. In the case of songs, a recording’s copyright will last for 50 years before it is no longer mandatory to pay royalties to the artist. This has caused some unhappy murmurings recently as, with the advent of ever more powerful drugs, artists are starting to live longer, and have started to put up a fuss when they stop getting royalties. most notably at the moment is Cliff Richard (poor old Cliff’s run out of money I guess).
Halfway through the lecture we were treated to a short film of an opera. Afterwards we were asked to list as many copyrighted things as possible to the best of my memory, during the credits at the start there were: the author of the opera, the produce, the conductor, the orchestra, the director, the main actors, and various designers. During the actual opera, there were: paintings, costumes, clocks, wigs, and many, many others. This was more to show how many copyrights have to be checked, approved and paid for, during the making of any kind of production.
Perhaps one of the more important things to take away from the lecture was that an idea cannot be copyrighted. If you were to come up with a brilliant new game show that doesn’t at all resemble X-Factor or Family Fortunes, or any successful current show. For the love of God, don’t share your idea with any shady exec-types. They will steal it! And you won’t see so much as a shiny penny of it. However, once an idea is published, it becomes copyright protected. This is what you have to do to make a million. Publish your idea, then sell it.
The best part of the lecture for me was when, after about an hour and a half of this excitement, Mr Hodges asked if their were any journalists in the room. The 5 or 6 of us who had made it there raised our hands. “Well” he said, “you don’t have to worry about this as anything you write about will be covered by fair comment… Great.
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