A new open letter from EARE (the European Alliance for Research Excellence) to the MEPs sitting on the EU Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI Committee) puts the case for a really effective and workable copyright exception for Text and Data Mining (TDM) in Europe. UCL is one of some 20 organisations which have signed the letter, representing universities, research organisations, libraries and businesses in Europe.  The letter makes a strong case for an exception which permits anyone with lawful access to a body of copyright protected material to use the innovative techniques of TDM to carry out computer-based analyisis of that material without the risk of infringing copyright. The JURI Committeee will be considering amendments to the draft Copyright Directive in the near future, so this initiative is very timely.

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The blog of solicitors Collyer Bristow includes an interesting post about a copyright claim brought by a photographer against the well known model, Gigi Hadid. It is alleged that Ms Hadid circulated the photograph of herself to her millions of Instagram followers without seeking permission from the copyright owner (the photographer, Peter Cepeda). One interesting detail is that it is alleged a watermark carrying information on the ownership of the copyright was also removed from the photograph. In some cases people who recirculated the photograph were apparently misled into attributing the copyright to Ms Hadid and even to Instagram. The case is still to be decided but the scenario is an interesting illustration of how readily photographs can become separated from evidence of copyright ownership and the perils of reusing photographs on social media without permission.

Are the formats of television shows like “The Voice” protected by some kind of intellectual property right? The answer seems to be that in some countries they are protected and in others not. The UK seems to be  one of the latter. UK copyright law has a finite list of the categories which are protected by copyright, listed in Section 1 of the Copyright , Designs and Patents Act 1988. Reality TV and quiz show formats don’t fit into any of them.

TV formats involve big money and often give rise to tussles over ownership, such as the disagreements about “The Voice” which are described by Hollywood Reporter The contrasting treatment of TV formats in Italian law and a recent case before the Italian Supreme Court are discussed by Eleonora Rosati in an interesting post on the IPCAT website.

Celuloid secrets by Kit

Calling film and media students, and teaching staff!  Copyright issues around re-using audiovisual material are complex, particularly in student assessment such as film essays: this free, October workshop could help you in your studies or teaching.

Run by the BFI, Learning on Screen and Kingston School of Art, this half-day workshop will explore the creative use of archive material, for Higher Education studies.

Participants will raise their awareness of copyright considerations in re-using archival moving-image works, and consider creative and pedagogic approaches to using this kind of material.

The workshop also marks the launch of an initiative to open up the BFI archive to student film makers, and a recent pilot scheme using BFI archive material will be presented.

Attendance is free but registration required. 18 October 2017, 11.00 – 14.00 at the BFI Southbank. Full details  are on the Learning on Screen website.