
A group of leading international academics has published an open letter concerning the right of revocation. This new right, regulating…
This is part of a series of summary posts rounding-up new entries to the Copyright Evidence Wiki (organised thematically). As part…
If you have a free Spotify account in the UK, you cannot use it in France for more than 14 days. If you have a premium account from UK, you can listen only to that music which has been licensed in the UK, even if you are physically in France. This results from the way music rights are licensed or sold as per territories. In an attempt to shake up the copyright regime in Europe and to allow Europeans to access their online services wherever they go, the EU is now reforming the system by which music rights are licensed. It is doing so by bringing competition to the business of collective rights management through the EU’s Directive on CMOs (Collective Management Organizations) due to be implemented in April 2016. It requires CMOs to compete with each other for members (the right holders they represent) and to become transparent in the way they operate.
Ronan Deazley of Queen’s University Belfast and Bartolomeo Meletti, CREATe researcher and Lead Producer of CopyrightUser.org introduce their CREATe Working Paper entitled ‘Copying, Creativity and Copyright‘.
Copying and creativity are often presented in antithetical terms: if you are copying you are not being creative, and vice versa. And within the context of copyright law, copying is often conflated with concepts like theft, piracy and immorality: to copy is to attack creators trying to make a living from their work. But in truth, copying can be and often is creative. The creative process thrives upon practices of adaptation, imitation and borrowing, and copyright should and does accommodate those creative practices. The short animated film The Adventure of the Girl with the Light Blue Hair – which on 12 November 2015 won the AHRC Research in Film Award for Innovation in Film – provides a practical example of how copyright enables and encourages many forms of lawful, creative copying. In less than four minutes, the film includes over 80 instances of the lawful reuse of and reference to well-known copyright and public domain works, as well as factual information and recent copyright litigation.
CREATe has appointed its first three Industry Fellows in a scheme established to further develop and deepen connections between CREATe and its industrial partners and stakeholders. Emma Barraclough, Richard Paterson and Jeremy Silver will each work in collaboration with CREATe over a period of several months. CREATE will disseminate their outputs. The call for participation required applicants to submit a short project proposal that involved a reflection on and analysis of a topic of pressing importance or of future significance for the creative economy.
Associated project
CREATe, the RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (www.create.ac.uk – based at the University of Glasgow), is funding an overview project of business models in film, music and e-fiction publishing, in order to enable a comparative perspective between developments in China and the UK.
Project description
Convergence or differentiation in IP protection? A case study of new models for digital film, music and e-fiction production and distribution in China
This project examines the emergence of new models for digital film, music and e-fiction production and distribution in China focusing on the role of internet businesses and platforms in film, music and e-fiction production and distribution. The research started in December 2015 for one year, and is led by Dr Xiaobai Shen (Edinburgh), with Co-Is Prof. Martin Kretschmer (Glasgow) and Prof. Robin Williams (Edinburgh).
Making consumers more aware of the effort that goes into producing creative material such as films and music would result in less unlawful file-sharing, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Newcastle University.
The study, funded and published today by CREATe, the UK research centre for copyright, found that social and moral factors do make a difference when people are deciding whether to unlawfully download.
A new suite of online learning materials has been launched today to help students and the general public understand how copyright law works.
The resource aims to help A-Level media students in the UK study for their exams while educating the wider public about what can and cannot be done with copyright works.
In October 2014, former Intellectual Property Adviser to the Prime Minister, MP Mike Weatherly issued a report strongly urging government to find innovative ways ‘to prepare pupils […] for the 21st century knowledge economy’.[i]
A team of legal researchers from the University of Glasgow CREATe Centre and the University of Bournemouth Centre for Intellectual Property and Policy Management (CIPPM) and Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP) have united to answer Weatherly’s call, while broadening the meaning of ‘copyright education’ to include uptake and re-use of artistic works. The resource is supported by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
To copy or not to copy, that is the question
When do you know whether copying something is actually theft?
With the way in which TV, movies and music are produced, distributed and consumed changed forever, questions of copyright have never been more relevant.
Copyrightuser.org is a new website that seeks to answer some of these thorny questions. The new website will direct those in the music, film, literature, visual arts and technology industries through the complications of copyright law. The portal was officially launched today in London at the King’s Place conference centre during the AHRC Creative Economy Showcase, a day long event targeting policy-makers, business leaders in the creative industries, knowledge exchange practitioners, and, research directors.