A 90 year old German woman on an organised visit for senior citizens to the Neues Museum in Nuremberg was misled by the instructions on a work of art in the form of a crossword puzzle. She followed the instructions to “insert words” using her biro. Unfortunately the Museum regarded this as vandalism and felt obliged to pursue criminal charges (for insurance related reasons). The artwork by Arthur Kopcke from the 1970s has been valued at around £68,000.

Hannelore K’s lawyer has rebutted the claims of the museum and has gone so far as to claim that by filling in the crossword Hannelore has created a separate work of art in which she can legitimately claim copyright. On that basis they are taking issue with the Museum for having Hannelore’s contribution to the work (the writing in biro)  removed and thereby destroying her own copyright-protected work.

The lawyer also claims that Hannelore K’s contribution has had the affect of increasing the value of the artwork by attracting media attention to an artist who is not very well known.

The story is reported fully in the Arstechnica Blog.

US copyright legislation in the form of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) offers a degree of protection against legal liability if their services are misused by customers for illegal file sharing or other activities which infringe copyright.  However the 1709 Copyright blog reports a recent case in which an internet service provider (ISP), Cox Communications lost an appeal against an award of US$ 25 million to a music rights management company, BMG. In this case the ISP had failed to do enough to try to stop the online infringement in music and films. The eastern Virginia District Court found that in the circumstances Cox Communications could not claim the “safe harbor” protection afforded to ISPs in the US legislation. This is an interesting example of the large sums which can be involved in cases of copyright infringement on a commercial scale.

In a previous post I mentioned UCL’s CLA licence for digitising course readings. UCL holds several other licences useful for teaching: take advantage of them to deliver imaginative teaching to your students. They can also simplify complex copyright issues.

The ERA (Educational Recording Agency) licence is for recording broadcast TV and radio for educational purposes. There is a helpful ERA licence booklet; however it is even easier to avoid the paperwork and head straight to Box of Broadcasts (BoB).

BoB makes the best use of our ERA licence, with no administrative fuss: no record-keeping, recording from the TV or labelling of DVDs. It is similar to on-demand streaming services like the BBC iPlayer or 4oD, but across 65 channels, you can request programmes, and it is for educational purposes only.  You can provide students with a link to a full programme, a clip you can create yourself, or to whole playlists you have created. We encourage adding the links into your online reading list for the best experience for students.

If you already use BoB in your teaching you will have had an email notifying you of the summer upgrade, which will be complete by September. Watch a short promotional video to see the improvements outlined in 60 seconds. These include:

• Improved video quality
• A platform which works across all devices
• Better searching capabilities
• Better programme coverage and automatic requesting with a permanent archive of all programme content from 9 channels (BBC1 London/BBC2 London/BBC4/ITV London/Channel 4/More 4/ Channel 5/BBC Radio 4/BBC Radio 4 Extra)
• Better thumbnail previews on search results
• Email alerts when a requested programme is ready to view
• More detailed citation data

Please note that during the upgrade the full archive may not be available, however everything will back as usual by September.

BoB is powered by Learning on Screen, the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council (formerly BUFVC) which has interesting resources relating to teaching with moving image. UCL also holds a membership to this body.

Follow BoB on Twitter: @OnDemandBoB

Teaching & Learning Services: for ReadingLists@UCL, digitised course readings and copyright support.