Media Law Lecture-Copyright

Chris introduced this subject of law by calling it "the most boring of the whole module". Yet after the lecture I'd have to disagree. I was quite interested by the facts we were taught, and in my opinion was the best law lecture we've had so far. Indeed many of you may be questioning this, but isn't every person entitled to an opinion?

Copyright is the branch of law that entitles journalism to exist as a business. Development of effective copyright law is the key to the entire industry. Without copyright law there could be no profit, since giving up the rights to copyrights is the way in which we are able to charge money for our work. Any work you do belongs to you until you sell the result of that work to somebody else, and this includes physical work (for example, Chris' garden shed), the provision of a service and to intellectual work such as Journalism.

We then learnt that journalists are more likely to license their work in return for payment (while retaining the ownership of that work). This would work in 3 ways:

1. If on the staff, fully employed with legal employment protetcion of a newspaper or broadcaster, where almost always your contract of employment will state that you surrender the rights for your work to be exploited. However, the 1988 Copyright Act does reveal that you have 'moral rights' in which you must be identified as the author of the work in question.
2. As a journalist, you can negotiate a different contract of employment which gives you some rights to money if your work is re-sold. Normally of course the employer will pay less wages if you retain the rights (more likely if you can be a freelance journalist). What this means is that you retain the rights to your work, and license the use to publishers either: exclusively (in return for a lot of money); or non-exclusively (for which they will pay less money)
3. The 'rip-off'' idea. This phase originated in the 1960s music industry when music publishers would have a pad of buy-out contracts in recording studio groups like The Who. They signed these contracts and recorded their songs for wages.

One thing that was explained to us, was that all commercial rights to any work that we produce on our university course belongs to the university. Any intellectual property in seminar papers or essays belongs to the university, and the university can specify how such work is used. This brought up the question of our blogs. Are they ours? Or is this material we partake in the rights of the university? I'd like to hear the opinions of the group. Who do you think our blogs belong to, and who should they belong to?

Copyright only applies to work that has been done, and doesn't apply to ideas. There is no copyright in facts or information, or in particular numbers or words. In order to be protected by copyright, a piece of work must be original and it must be a substantial piece of work, although sometimes there will be an implicit license to reproduce Crown Copyright material (for example, a press release)

"Lifting" or fair dealing is when:

• There is no copyright in the facts of a news story, though the actual words are protected by copyright. The reason is that the actual way in which the news story is written is the work of the journalist, as are the actual words in the quotes and as is the interview which may have been taken.
  
• An example is a football match. The result is not copyright, but an interview with a footballer IS copyright and that belongs to the person who did the interview.
• You have to have heard the actual quote yourself. You should not give the impression that you have because that equals MALICE

To finalise tonight's delayed post on Tuesday's lecture of copyright. There is no copyright in ideas. In practical terms you are very safe in re-doing old stories.

G.M