Copyrights and wrongs
I haven’t had time to do some proper blogging recently due to preparations for my emmigration on Monday.
However, if you anoraks really need something to read, you can head to my new copyright page!
It may seem a little over the top for a lowly (but growing in popularity) blog by a student, but after only 3 months, I’ve been involved in literally some copyright battles:
The local newspaper, Bath Chronicle, thought it would be okay to use my YouTube videos in one of their articles online and decided not to credit me. On the one hand, I was flattered that my work was appreciated in a professional journalistic environment, but on the other, it was a clear breach of copyright. However, the people at the Bath Chronicle are very pleasant and once I contacted them, they corrected the infraction.
Again related to YouTube, (it may be a YouTube issue really) I had a video that was actually stolen by user “nobnp4uk” as in my video was downloaded then re-uploaded without any notification or attribution. The copyright department were spectacularly useless, and after I submitted a formal complaint, they deleted my video! After writing to them again, they replaced my video once again, but to this day they are yet still to delete the illegal video, though they will happily remove other videos because it uses 10 seconds of professional music. What a joke.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I'm a shameless copyright nerd, so here's some constructive crticisms:
*Typo in the subheading "Contend Usage Limit". (If your OCDness extends as far as mine, there's also an unnecessary doublespace
after your name).
*Though your CC license is very good and absolutely the right way forward, be aware that most of the images on your site are afoul of UK copyright laws. In brief, you cannot reproduce any images without express permission. A CC license is express permission; news sources without one will typically expect you to pay.
Of course the chance of litigation is low, but if you ever wanted to take action on infringement of your works then it would wise to clean all the non-kosher images from this blog.
The full law text is at: http://www.jenkins.eu/statutes/copyright.asp
If you have spare time and don't mind being depressed, it's worth checking out how draconian UK copyright laws are compared to other countries'. The law desperately needs reform if it wants to be respected, but so far all change has been in the wrong direction.
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June 26th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I had heard about how strict UK copyright law is; though I'm in France for a good long time now, so I'd better brush up on French law! They just dropped the Hadopi Law on film downloading as impossible.
(And that's for the typo correcting, I'm so bad at proofreading my own stuff.)
As for images, I normally try to check for copyright bits a pieces on images I borrow, if it's definitely owned, I'll oblige with a proper link etc. Though again, it comes back to UK law…
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June 27th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Yeah, the basic point of the law is that everything created is automatically copyrighted and unusable. People can choose to waive their rights, but by default the answer is no. To use an image you have to contact them and ask permission. The UK's papers will charge a fee to reproduce any of their content (which is ironic given how often they pinch from the Internet, but that's another story…).
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