Good Copy Bad Copy

I've just watched the video that Matt Roberts recommended i watch and I have to say, its brilliant. Puts the whole thing in a nutshell. In terms of music anyway.

Here's the video. Check it out ant goodcopybadcopy.net also!

Chartered Society of Designers

This is a quick copy/paste of the service the CSD provide to its members.

 

The most valuable commodity to designers is their Intellectual Property (IP). It is therefore extremely important to understand why and how you should protect it.

Members are able to call on the expertise of a legal team to advise on how to protect their IP rights. In addition, a range of services for added protection including legal assistance in the event of IP infringement is available.

Regular training seminars and workshops are publicised in The Designer, which members receive free.

Knowledge of IP matters is not only important in protecting designers but it also allows them to advise their clients professionally on IP matters: protection of the design work commissioned, implementing copyright assignments and licensing agreements with yourself.

Members benefit from a FREE consultation on any IP matters. This will quite often be followed up by a short written report setting out the advice given, which may be used as a basis for discussions with a client prior to commencing work or assist in the event of any problems. CSD members also receive preferential rates for these reports.

Key Benefits & Features

• FREE consultation on IP matters.
• Access to expert IP legal team.
• Preferential rates on IP services.
• Regular updates on IP matters.

Copyright according to the AOI

Copyright & Moral Rights  

Written by Administrator

Thursday, 09 September 2004

COPYRIGHT
Copyright is an area which is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. When you create a collage, painting, drawing, diagram, map, chart, plan, engraving, etching, lithograph, woodcut or similar work, you have created an artistic work and that is protected by copyright, provided that your illustrations fall into any one of these categories. You, as creator of that illustration, own the copyright which subsists in it. There is one exception to this general rule. If you are an employee and your job requires you to create illustrations, then usually your employer will own the copyright in these works. There are no registration requirements. There is no requirement to use the sign © but it will help the public to realise that your illustration is protected by copyright.
If you own copyright, you are the only person who has the right to make copies of your illustrations. If someone else makes a copy without your permission, they are infringing your copyright.
You can give permission to individuals or companies to reproduce your illustration which is known commonly in the illustration trade as granting a licence. Your license should be in writing and should set out the use that can be made of your illustration and any restriction you wish to place on the use. You can grant licences for different uses.
You can effectively sell your copyright, which means that you have no further right of reproduction in your work. This is known as an assignment but will only be effective if you put it in writing.
If your illustration is reproduced without your permission, you are entitled to damages; perhaps an injunction to stop the infringement and on occasion the infringing copies delivered to you.
Your copyright in your illustration is an economic right. It is different from ownership of the illustration itself. You may still grant a licence or give an assignment of copyright in your illustration whilst owning the original piece. Likewise, you may sell the original illustration without giving permission for it to be reproduced.

MORAL RIGHTS

These are rights in addition to your economic right of copyright and your right of owning your illustration.
You have a right to be identified as author of your illustration. This right must be asserted in writing and should be included on any copyright, assignment or licence to reproduce or other written contract.
You have a right to object to derogatory treatment of your illustration. This means you have a right to object if your illustration has been adapted, altered, added to or deleted from. You may be able to rely on this right if you are unhappy about the colour reproduction of your illustration or, if perhaps, it has been cropped in a way which distorts it.
You have a right not to be falsely attributed to another person's art.
It is not possible to pass on your moral rights by way of assignment or licence but they can be waived, ie. given up. Check any written contract carefully to ensure that your client is not asking you to waive your moral rights.
Along with, amongst others, the Association of Photographers, the NUJ, the Musicians Union, and as part of the Creators Rights Alliance, the AOI is campaigning and lobbying parliament on behalf of illustrators to change the attitude of many clients and members of the public towards creator’s rights. In many other EU countries, for example, moral rights cannot be waived. They are considered to be a right, not a commodity, thereby ensuring their protection for the creator.
The issues related to rights grabs by clients and unfair contracts have increasingly become a feature of the ongoing campaigns that the AOI continues to be involved with, on behalf of and thanks to the continued support of the membership.
For further information please see Survive – The illustrators guide to a professional career, Edited by Fig Taylor and available to order directly from the AOI  and Rights – The illustrators guide to professional practice, also available from the AOI.
For more information on the CRA, please visit their website at: www.creatorsrights.org.uk

It Takes a Nation of Lawyers to Hold Us Back

Article on the Design Observer - Click Here

A good insight on how copyright laws are strangling creativity.

Hackney vs Nike

Story on the BBC

A quite interesting article on YouTube

Simon Schama’s vast history of the French Revolution, Citizens, is not the kind of tome from which you would expect to glean much insight for a media column. Yet, back in late 18th century Paris, the mob was a genuine part of the political process and, while there are no guillotines or regicides today, it is not outrageous to suggest that, with the help of the internet, the mob is back.
The digital mob is everywhere: forming opinions, putting pressure on companies, and prefiguring trends. How did the Celebrity Big Brother affair lift off? A petition set up on Digital Spy helped to boost the number of complaints to Ofcom to a colossal 44,500. Want to guess who will win the final of Britain’s Got Talent? The mob will tell you; last week, ahead of the result, Paul Potts had the most clip watches on YouTube (2.4 million roughly). Of course, the singer won.
Sometimes the mob can build a business from scratch, although predictably not in Britain. Facebook, the American social networking site noteworthy for its growing domination of US colleges, has been taken up by the British middle classes with incredible speed. And it doesn’t even have the music that MySpace offers. Already 135,000 people have signed up to a group dedicated to helping to find Madeleine McCann.
The mob also divides up into small groups and Facebook contains all sorts of instant groupings. If you want you can join a group that is campaigning against the impact of Adjustment A (whatever that is) on Lambeth council’s services, which must be fun for some.
The interesting question, though, is how to harness the mob, or at least survive it. Facebook owes part of its success to its viral methodology; it is extremely easy to invite friends to join a group, and so come to a shared view (far easier than turning up for meetings, which can take up far too many weekday evenings). So this is the key. Anybody else hoping to take advantage of the new energy needs to understand the power of sharing and networking.
Take, for example, ITV. As the digital mob moves to endorse Paul Potts, how much money does the commercial broadcaster make from the 4.3 million views of his most popular video on YouTube? Of course, some viewers were encouraged to watch the television programme, but however many came to ITV.com, YouTube is still snatching a big slice of the audience. That is why discussions between BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to create a single web portal make sense by way of a fightback. What the broadcasters must ensure is that it is easy to share and embed their content, including a small amount of advertising before or after a clip, and thus maintain financial control.
The mob, mobilised, demands satisfaction, and quickly – as Channel 4 found this year. Part of Channel 4’s problem then was not realising how big the race row would become; its rapid action in ejecting Emily Parr from the Big Brother house this month shows that the broadcaster had learnt a valuable lesson – swift, decisive action is needed to end controversies quickly (even then, about 800 people rang up the broadcaster to say it had been unfair: there are mobs for every point of view, of course).
The mob can change news agendas, and it should be allowed to; the BBC realised only gradually how big an issue rubbish collection was to people by the sheer volume of listener responses it got to radio items on the subject. Once considered too parish pump, the subject is now, correctly, seen as mainstream – an exercise not in dumbing down but in reflecting what the audience says.
What is required in this new era is quick intervention, a point that Ofcom has to appreciate as it grinds its way slowly through the reviews of various phone-in scandals. By acting slowly, Ofcom, or any media regulator, risks being seen as out of touch. What large, unwieldy media organisations have to realise is that times have moved on since 1789. In 2007 the idea of top down media, or indeed top down anything, is as dead as the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI.
Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, YouTube’s founders, were in Paris this week to launch YouTube International, but for all they have achieved in less than two and a half years, their appearance was disappointing.
They were evasive on copyright – “it affects only a tiny proportion of our content” Chad said – and on censorship, where the mantra “we comply with local laws” is OK in the US, but hardly compelling in China or any other authoritarian regime.
Nor, interestingly, did YouTube – now owned by Google – feel the need to share any statistics with its audience; so those attending were left not much the wiser, save for the fact that YouTube plans to conquer the world.
However, we knew that already; it would be nice to get a firmer sense of YouTube’s ethics and principles. YouTube is already too important.
So, it turns out the Pearson, home of the Financial Times, and General Electric, owner of financial TV channel CNBC, was toying with a joint bid for Dow Jones, to compete with News Corporation, parent company of The Times. Maybe Pearson recognised it has a scale issue in financial information after all. Now it looks hard to see if anybody can stop News Corp getting Dow Jones, although if Pearson and GE had tried harder, at least that might have pushed up the price. Yet, if the Pearson/GE combine isn’t going to work, that does not mean the two should give up. After all, a combination of CNBC promoting the FT in the US, and vice versa in Europe could be interesting. CNBC subscription revenues would support the cyclical ad-driven FT; while some of Pearson’s other businesses, such as the little understood IDC, bring growth to the party.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article1968893.ece

Creative Commons

Just some of the types of copyright options http://creativecommons.org are helping people with

Attribution (by)

Choose by licenseThis license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.

Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd)Choose by-nd licenseThis license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms. Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa)Choose by-nc-sa licenseThis license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.

Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd)

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Digital Copyright

"We live in fluid times, where it’s difficult to keep track of changes to rights in the digital world. Take, for example, a design you’ve created. Store it on the wrong server, and the terms and conditions you may have agreed to without reading properly could assign the service owner the right to do what they like with your design.Previously, I’ve looked at how easy it is to accidentally assign rights to a third party, but here I’ll tell you how to fight back, taking control using Creative Commons.To understand how Creative Commons works, it’s necessary to understand what copyright is. The modern notion of copyright – literally the right to copy – gives a limited set of rights to authors of original works.In 1988, the UK passed the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which declared copyright would be given automatically without the need for application. Among these rights is the ability to display the works publicly, to produce copies of the work, to create derivative works and to assign rights.All too often the copyright for original works is assigned to publishers, who have the most to lose from unauthorised copying and distribution. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a set of digital restrictions that hamstrings many modern distribution formats in an attempt to prevent any form of unauthorised copying.DRM often flies in the face of the notion of Fair Use, or the limited rights for end users to make copies of works for their own, non-commercial use. Publishers don’t like Fair Use, as the implied freedom has the potential for mass duplication, a particular problem for digital formats. On the other side of the fence are creatives who want to see their work widely distributed, advocating Fair Use and the liberalisation of the existing law.Flexible protectionCreative Commons was introduced in 2001 as a non-profit organisation promoting copyright that enables holders to grant some of their rights to the public through contracts and licences. The goal is to sidestep some murky areas of the current law and to counter the trend for restrictive permissions. The beauty is that this offers a scalable approach, rather than the traditional all-or-nothing scheme. It allows content creators to take back control, but it has still faced criticism from publishers who feel it undermines the notion of copyright.Interestingly, the Dutch court upheld Creative Commons licences in the case of an MTV VJ Adam Curry, who published photos on Flickr under a Creative Commons licence. These were used by a gossip magazine, Weekend, which claimed that it wasn’t aware it needed permission.Creative Commons’ CEO, Lawrence Lessig, said: “This decision confirms that the Creative Commons licensing system is an effective way for content creators to manage their copyrights online.” The support of the courts is a victory for those who want both wider distribution for their work and legal protection when their rights are violated.So, for any artist – well down the road to success or otherwise – Creative Commons grants flexibility within the intimidating world of self-promotion. Our advice though, as ever, is to read the small print.

"Creative common sense"

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/in_depth/Opinion/creative_common_sense