Copyright Education Symposium

 

The Copyright Education Symposium took place on 24th May 2016 at the offices of the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) in London, bringing together an unprecedented gathering of policymakers, academics, creative industry representatives, independent consultants and information professionals. The aim of the Symposium was to explore the role that evidence and data can play in the copyright education and awareness arena, as well as to examine how evaluation of data collection, research and education initiatives might take shape in the future. The event – conceived by Scott Walker and Prof. Ruth Soetendorp – was sponsored by CREATe, ALCS, CLA, ERA, PRS for Music, the Industry Trust for IP Awareness and supported by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

Two papers were originally produced to inform the day:

Left to right: Pippa Hall, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, Robert Ashcroft

Left to right: Pippa Hall, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, Robert Ashcroft

The event was opened by the IP Minister, Baroness Neville-Rolfe (now Minister of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), the PRS for Music CEO, Robert Ashcroft, and the IPO Chief Economist, Pippa Hall.

The opening was followed by the screening of a short video featuring students from University of Hertfordshire expressing their views on copyright education (below), and a series of presentations of current research and resources, including Copyright Infringement Survey (James Burke, Kantar Media), Copyright User (Bartolomeo Meletti, CREATe and BFI), BBC Copyright Aware (Matt Day, BBC), and Creative Content UK (Marianne Grant, MPAA).

 

The core of the Symposium consisted of a series of parallel workshop sessions addressing important questions such as How do we measure the effectiveness of copyright education and awareness programmes? and What do our future research needs look like?

The workshop sessions generated lively discussions among experts from different sectors and suggested a range of possible actions for stakeholders to consider. Notes from each session can be accessed here.

 

 

Martin Kretschmer, Thomas Dillan, Baroness Estelle Morris

Martin Kretschmer, Thomas Dillan, Baroness Estelle Morris

The afternoon sessions were introduced by a plenary panel on Assessing the landscape: where to from here? chaired by Baroness Estelle Morris and featuring Liz Bales (CEO, Industry Trust for IP Awareness / BASE), Thomas Dillan (Legal Counsellor, WIPO), Will Gardner (CEO, ChildNet International), Martin Kretschmer (Director, CREATe), and Chris Morrison (Copyright & Licensing Compliance Officer, University of Kent, and UUK/GuildHE Copyright Working Group).

The Symposium ended with the workshops’ rapporteurs informing the whole group about key themes of the discussions and suggested next steps, followed by closing remarks by Rosa Wilkinson (IPO Director of Innovation).

Agreed Statement

The main outcome of the Copyright Education Symposium was the agreement among the participants to a statement on how evidence and best practice might enhance copyright education: evidence should be clear, verifiable and able to be peer reviewed.

Best practice should ensure:-

  • real-world outcomes in a world of acknowledged financial constraints;
  • opportunities for dialogue between Government, academia and industry to improve transparency of why, when and how research is to take place;
  • a balanced representation of copyright interested parties, including creators, producers, investors in rights, consumers and institutional users, at all stages of research and dissemination;
  • a map of campaigns should be publicly available to avoid overlapping or contradictory work when considering the development of policy and tools for effective copyright education;
  • transparency of how and why research was funded should be ensured;
  • feedback on effectiveness of campaigns should be provided for analysis in clear and verifiable forms to help justify further or new research.

To enhance copyright education research partnerships and greater collaboration between stakeholders should be encouraged and developed.

Survey

Whether you attended the Copyright Education Symposium 2016 or just visited this resource page, we would like to hear your views. Please complete the survey at the following URL and help us plan the next Copyright Education Symposium: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/copyrighteducationsymposium

Copyright Education and Awareness – A Discussion Paper

In 2014 former IP adviser to the Prime Minister, Mike Weatherley’s MP published a discussion paper ‘Copyright Education and Awareness’, which stated that, “measuring the success (or lack thereof) of different copyright education and awareness programmes is critically important otherwise the value of any given initiative will only be limited. Whilst measurement mechanisms exist for assessing the impact of projects, these have not always been fully utilised.” Accordingly, Weatherly made two specific recommendations:

  1. CREATe to work with industry to devise measurement mechanisms for assessing impact of education and awareness projects through good evaluation metrics.
  2. Government, Ofcom, industry and academia should work together to deliver comprehensive research to assess current IP perceptions and behaviours both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Reviews of the Copyright Education Symposium

Copyright Education Symposium Review by Victoria Stobo: https://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2016/06/01/copyright-education-symposium-review/

Copyright and education: can they live happily ever after? by Chris Morrison: https://copyrightliteracy.org/2016/06/03/copyright-and-education-can-they-live-happily-ever-after/

The Copyright Education Symposium was sponsored by:

and supported by: