Copyright laws protect people's intellectual property. This is important in two different ways in journalism. The first is that it means our work is protected from what essentially amounts to theft. Secondly, it means we have to be careful about how and when we use other people's work within our own.
Fair Dealing
The second point sounds problematic, however 'Fair Dealing' exemptions allow us to use other people's work under certain circumstances:
- To report current events - you can lift important parts/major themes, etc of stories & quotes from rivals but it must be attributed, in the public interest and follow fair dealing rules.
- For the purpose of review
- To parody* a piece of work
In the features section of WINOL, fair dealing is an important part of our work. In one of our recent articles "Top 5 Greatest Love Songs" by Joe Rutterford we used the 'review' exemption within fair dealing to use clips from songs. This meant we had to be careful with the length of the clips and the way they were used; as we are using it for the purpose of review, we must add relevant description and comment over the top of the clips and ensure that each is no longer than about 25 seconds. Some of the clips run a little longer than this and there are some gaps in the commentary in which the music swells which could be potentially risky. Another issue found was finding images to go in the video. The original images used were not all under a creative commons licence and none were credited properly which meant it was in breech of copyright law. By searching creative commons websites and attributing over the top of the pictures, we removed this issue.
Another example of copyright concerns is "My Valentine's Lipstick" by Maria Almeida. When Maria pitched her idea, she expressed concerns that by doing something similar to someone else's work we were breaking copyright law. However, copyright protects people's work, not their ideas meaning we could do something very similar but not just take their work. We then had to find a song that was either under the creative commons or that we could get written consent to use. Maria contacted a band and was told she could use the song so long as some credit was given, which was done in the opening credits of the video.
Parody Problems
Currently, parody is not an included exemption for copyright, although a Government Consultation
following the Hargreaves Review (2011) has proposed a parody exemption [1] which could take affect as soon as 6th April this year [2][3]. According to the intellectual Property Office, the aim of the new exception is to "give people in the UK's creative industries greater freedom to you others' works for parody purposes"[4] but how the definition of fair dealing will affect peoples ability to use copyrighted materials for parody is still unclear [5].
At the moment, if copyright on a parody is called into question, it is settled in court on a case by case basis.
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Resources:
[1] http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipresearch-parody-report2-150313.pdf
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipresearch-parody-report3-150313.pdf
[4] http://www.ipo.gov.uk/techreview-parody.pdf
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipresearch-parody-report1-150313.pdf
[5] http://www.lawcareers.net/Information/BurningQuestion/Taylor-Wessing-New-parody-exception-is-imitation-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery
[2] http://www.marketinglaw.co.uk/media-and-ip/new-parody-copyright-exception-by-easter-2014?cat_id=4
[3] http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2013/december/uk-copyright-reforms-to-take-effect-in-april-2014/
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