copyright

Copyright, the future and Brexit – what does it mean for education?

The following post is based on a post published on the UK Copyright Literacy blog by LSE’s Copyright and Digital Literacy Advisor, Jane Secker and Chris Morrison, Copyright and Licensing Compliance Officer at the University of Kent. An edited and abridged version appears below.

I’ve now been to two recent events on the future of copyright in the UK following our exit from the European Union. Whatever your views on Brexit, we can’t deny it will happen but there is much uncertainty about what it means for education and what copyright implications there might be. This is because in recent years much UK copyright legislation has been amended following directives from the European Union. And there are important new changes going through the European Parliament currently on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. On 12 January 2017, the Commission’s proposal was debated by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI). This week EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) issued a statement on the need for copyright reform across Europe, supporting the statement issued by five key organisations (including LIBER, and the European Universities Association) on ‘Future-proofing European Research Excellence‘. LIBER are also calling for more change to copyright to give Europe a real opportunity to become a global leader in data-driven innovation and research.

So what does the future hold for copyright in the UK? In October last year I was interested to read t his LSE blog post from Professor Alison Harcourt of Exeter University. However, I thought I would share a few thoughts from recent events. Firstly in October last year I attended a meeting at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to discuss the copyright implications of Brexit on the higher education sector. Then earlier this week a conference organised by the Journal of Intellectual Property, Law and Practice (JIPLP). Both events were an opportunity to understand more about how important copyright and IP are particularly in the context of international trade but also the increasingly global education offered by the UK. In both meetings all agreed that following Brexit the UK would not have the same relationship with the Court of Justice of the EU, but no one was clear if decisions of this court might be taken into account by English judges. There were references here to important recent cases on issues such as whether hyperlinking is copyright infringement.

However what is clear is that not only does Brexit mean Brexit (and of course we all know exactly what that means) it also means we are unlikely to get a new copyright act in the UK any time soon. This is despite the view of Sir Richard Arnold, British High Court of Justice judge, that we are much in need of one. On Monday he gave us eight reasons why the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended and revised) was long overdue a major overhaul, technology being his first reason and Brexit being the last. This last reason was a recent addition – for the original list of seven reasons see his Herchel Smith IP lecture from 2014. However he concluded by saying that copyright is unlikely to be a priority for parliament over the next few years.

So in these dark, rather depressing January days is there any light on the horizon? The IPO suggested Brexit might be an opportunity to rethink copyright and make it fit for the UK. The lobbying work of organisations such as EIFL and Communia are hoping to convince Brussels that reforming copyright to support education and research is vital. We would like to think that those within the research and education world might be able to play a significant role in shaping the future of copyright in the UK. But it remains to be seen….

January 24th, 2017|Conferences, copyright, Ed-Tech news and issues, Open Education, Reports & Papers, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off|

I’ve been familiar with the work of Etienne Wenger on communities of practice for some time and first came across his ideas when I was working at UCL in 2001. At UCL the community of practice concept was used in the context of engaging staff across an institution with learning technologies. I also once had the pleasure of attending a conference where Etienne Wenger gave a keynote and I was struck by the idea of a how apprentices learn a craft or profession through the support of their peers and more experienced staff.

Therefore over the summer when Chris Morrison, Copyright and Licensing Compliance Officer at the University of Kent told me he was setting up a community of practice at his institution for those interested in copyright matters, the idea immediately grabbed my interest. It was occurring to me, partly through the research we have done about librarians’ knowledge and experience of copyright, that there must be a better, more sustainable way of supporting my colleagues at LSE. I was acutely aware that as one person, providing them with support was becoming increasingly difficult, and often my responses to copyright queries were over email, or face to face with one specific individual. It meant the opportunity for others to learn from copyright queries was limited. But also I was limited in how I could learn from others experience and knowledge too.

The first LSE copyright community of practice took place in September 2016, and so far we have held three meetings. The next is coming up on the 9th December and it’s going to be a chance to play some copyright games! The sessions are open to all staff and I’ve tried to keep them informal, so people feel they can bring queries and topics for discussion along on the day. However, I also tend to put a couple of things on the agenda where I think there might be a wider interest in the topic. We’ve discussed topics such as Creative Commons licences, issues related to readings in Moodle, the new CLA Licence, a new library digitisation project of EU referendum leaflets that has involved significant copyright issues and the new UK copyright exception permitting text and data mining. Most importantly we serve tea, biscuits and occasionally some copyright cakes!

The audience has included a variety of staff from across LSE, with quite a number of library colleagues attending fairly regularly. Librarians often get asked a lot of copyright issues in their day to day work, so it is great they can come along and share their experiences. They also are usually very keen to stay up to date and discuss topical issues such as digitisation of orphan works, or scanning readings under the CLA Licence. LSE blog editors have also been another group who’ve attended the meetings regularly, and this has led me to do a separate session on copyright at their blog editors forum. I’m also drafting some guidance on copyright advice for blog editors with Chris Gilson, editor of the LSE American Politics and Policy Blog and Chris Morrison from Kent.

If you fancy finding out more about the Copyright Community of Practice then why not book a place at the next event on the 9th December! If the idea of copyright games doesn’t appeal to you then come along for the biscuits!

Copyright briefing: report from event

I attended the CILIP Executive Briefing on copyright this week to get a heads up on the proposed changes to copyright exceptions that we hope will come into force on 1st June 2014. If you would like to read the longer report on my blog, you can find out more about the day. CLT will ensure that staff are made aware of the changes and how they might affect copying they do for private study and research, for teaching and other purposes. However the Statutory Instruments and guidance is available on the Intellectual Property Office’s website.