Over the past couple of weeks Susan and I have been tracking down the participants of various programmes held in our repository in order to gain adequate permission from these individuals to continue using their materials for educational use. We have been mostly using the Internet Movie Database to help us find contact details for anyone from Richard Dreyfuss to Robbie Williams. We have had numerous replies so far from key figures in the public eye including Stephen Fry and the first chef to bring three Michelin stars to London, Michel Roux. Not only is the Spoken Word ensuring that we are clearing rights legally but we are also in the process of collecting quite a selection of celebrity autographs!

This is somewhat old news but extremely interesting to us:

Copyright deal clears way for European Digital Library

EUOBERVER / BRUSSELS – An EU expert group on digital libraries has agreed to a basic model for handling copyrights for digitalised cultural publications in libraries.

The break-through deal is part of the European Digital Library initiative, launched in June 2005, to preserve European cultural and scientific heritage and make it available online in closed networks.

The deal takes the form of a flat-rate license, payable to publishers of orphaned or out of print works, and the resulting digitised copies may be made available to libraries across Europe. The licensee library would also be responsible for collecting revenue for use from other libraries.

The International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO) welcomed the deal. “I am pleased with this break-through, in particular it is positive that the deal is based on a license model”, said Tarja Koskinen-Olsson, honorary president of the IFRRO.

The exact level for remuneration of rights-holders is not part of the deal, but €1 is considered as a likely payment each time a piece of work is used, according to sources close to the expert group.

Insiders estimate this to be a fairly good payment of rights-holders. In comparison, online downloads of commercial music typically cost one dollar. The exact payment would depend on negotiations of the individual licenses.

The bill would end up with the cultural institutions, which are in many cases funded by public funds.

It is hoped that the libraries could also save some money if they co-operate on digitalising publications and avoiding duplication.

Read more

A conference attendee has set up this del.icio.us page with tags linking to content discussed and presented at the Open Repositories Conference in Texas. There is a particularly interesting tag leading to an article by Paul Miller, ‘The Technology Evangelist’, on library 2.0. The del.icio.us page can be found by clicking here.

The Guardian have published a very good article looking at the issues surrounding today’s copyright announcement that declares copyright for recorded music shall remain at 50 years.

This article is interesting as it looks at how the British Library would like the law to favour the archivst and their institution because a large number of recordings they have are crumbling before their eyes. They have ideas for a digital future whereby such recording can be digitised and made public before they get in such a condition whereby they are lost forever.

Karen Coyle, a California expert on digital libraries, “you can’t wait until it starts to deteriorate. You have to begin to preserve it immediately. None of the laws account for that.”

Read the full article here.

The UK will not extend the copyright period on sound recordings following an independent review by the Treasury.

Record labels and acts, including Sir Cliff Richard and Jethro Tull, had been lobbying for the copyright period for recorded music to be extended to last for 95 years, rather than the 50-year-limit of today.

Music label trade group the BPI had argued that extending the term would benefit musicians and the industry. However, the review found that the benefits were not sufficiently significant to justify such a change.

The review was conducted by Andrew Gowers. The decision means that the earliest official recordings from The Beatles will be out of copyright in 2013.

The BBC has an interesting article about the threat to the National Librarys music archive from time & copyright. The main issue being that the library’s Sound Archive cannot copy audio from fragile or obsolete formats for posterity until copyright runs out.

The library said a “significant” part of the collection could “decay and be unavailable for future generations”. The Sound Archive holds more than a million discs, 185,000 tapes and many other sound and video recordings.

Without the right to make copies, the UK is losing a large part of its recorded culture. It currently collects about 75% of all music released commercially in the UK and also includes plays, poetry, speeches, interviews, and wildlife sounds. Launching its intellectual property “manifesto” on Monday, the British Library called on the government to ensure recordings are not left to rot.

“Currently the law does not permit copying of sound and film items for preservation,” the manifesto said. “Without the right to make copies, the UK is losing a large part of its recorded culture. “Many original audio and film formats we hold are becoming increasingly more fragile,” the library said, and “face irretrievable decay” if not preserved.

Read the full article here.
You can also download the National Library’s Intelectual Property Manifesto here.

Get your freely-downloadable versions of public domain books here. Some interesting titles available - and all in PDF files made from scans of the original volumes. Unfortunately, the PDFs appear not to include texual information - they seem to be only graphical representations - leaving the added value of full-text search for the Google Books site.

BoingBoing’s story on the development:

Google Books offers PDFs of public domain books:

Cory Doctorow:
Adam sez, “Google Books has just started offering downloads of their public domain books as PDF files. You can search for ‘free view’ books to find other ones. (disclaimer: I’m the engineer who did this, but I’m nothing to do with PR)” Link

(Via BoingBoing).

(more…)

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Higher | MPs back free access to research results

A committe of MPs have backed free access to scientific research (including self-archiving university repositories) and criticised access policies of academic journals.

screenonline

Take a look at the British Film Institute’s site. Not only is it packed with great film and tv resources, their means of authenticating educational users could prove a useful model for the Spoken Word.

Anne

What does this mean for copyright?