Digital Copyright

Stuart Hannabuss (Aberdeen Business School, Aberdeen, UK)

Journal of Documentation

ISSN: 0022-0418

Article publication date: 1 November 2006

452

Keywords

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2006), "Digital Copyright", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 62 No. 6, pp. 762-765. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410610714967

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Facet Publishing has built up an impressive stable of books on the legal challenges faced by today's information and library practitioners. Some of these are noted in the references. Paul Pedley has contributed three books to this list, one of which: “Essential Law for Information Professionals” (first edition 2003, second edition 2006), moved straight into reading lists on courses where library and information studies are taught both pre‐practice and for continuing professional development. Another: “Managing Digital Rights: A Practitioner's Guide” (2005), introduced the scene, spread out internationally, described HERON (the copyright‐cleared text collection) and the virtual learning environment, and considered licensing. Paul Pedley himself is Head of Research at The Economist Intelligence Unit and a well‐known trainer in the copyright field.

Being digital and electronic means keeping up with the law (and law keeping up with practice). Current issues include how and if law and technology protect intellectual property rights, how to get a balance between rights and access, protecting website and database and other digital content on the global stage, music downloads and digital signatures, increasing emphasis on licensing and contracts, changing arrangements like creative commons and Open Access, accommodating human rights and privacy – what we've come to expect, in other words, from digital rights management, records management, and information management now. Implicit in all this are the numerous familiar aspects of copyright and patent law, like permitted acts and remedies, prescribed libraries, and software decompilation. Internet behaviour often drives the agenda, as “The Commercialized Web”, “Digital Phoenix”, and “The Access Principle” show.

The law in the UK (this is Pedley's focus in “Digital Copyright”) hovers around digital and electronic issues. For instance, 2003 regulations on copyright and related rights are embodied in an EU 2001 directive on harmonizing copyright, case law like Easyinternetcafe and William Hill reveal how infringement and database protection law appears to be moving, website designers and users are more aware than ever of deep linking and framing and disclaimers, the music download debate rumbles on worldwide, and an emphasis on licensing has increased both the variety of contractual models (including creative commons) and business models (like Open Access). Everyone, professional and lay, knows about Google's publishing deals with libraries, and electronic reserves (or inter‐library loan in the digital age) have come on to the front burner in academic libraries. With all this going on, readers would expect Digital Copyright to take notice of these – or such – issues at the very least, and it does.

In a series christened “executive briefings”, with an “i” for interactive because they come (Digital Copyright is the first, with others to follow), we would expect the narrative to be concise and focused. A sign of growing maturity in the information law field is the way in which he gets his teeth right into digital law and practice, reserving more conventional legal bric‐à‐brac (like reproduction rights agencies, author's economic and moral rights, exemptions for visually impaired readers, implications for employment) to the end. The historical pattern is to plod through copyright and tease out, almost apologetically, the implications for library and information professionals.

So Pedley tilts straight at the balance between rights and access in digital rights management, the transient status of tangible copyright content on websites, the conjoined reliance on law and technology for copyright protection, and the universal practice of down loads. His discussion is clear and succinct, interspersed with cases (neatly presented in boxes, well‐known like Shetland Times and Ticketmaster and Tasini, less‐known like Haymarket v Burmah and Kelly v Ariba). The focus of the book is UK law and practice, though such cases help to make it more international (Kelly for instance in a US case), although to call it a thorough‐goingly international text is to oversell it. He moves, understandably and inexorably, towards licensing and contracts (in chapter 3), and his discussion of model (and Copyright Licensing Agency and Newspaper Licensing Agency) licences is useful, and brief advice on of creative commons and Open Access helpful.

The associated fields of law and ethics in the library and information fields are much in need of case law – not just the legal cases (and interpretations of statutory law) that shed light on information practice and decision‐making, but “case‐studies” as such, for practitioners to read and say “yes, I recognize that dilemma!” or “I wonder if I should have done it that way!”. This is not a flaw or shortcoming in Digital Copyright so much as what, I believe, readers of such professional books increasingly have a right to expect from their authors. Conference and workshop material, probably, that needs translating more formally into the literature, and shifting out of where it does appear (when it does), the journal literature (Howarth, though uneven, are to be commended for their work here).

Anyone fresh, too, from reading Pedley's second edition of Essential Law may also spot the need nowadays to think coherently across distinct legal topics, like copyright and contract, or websites and databases and the harvesting likely under new legal deposit arrangements in the UK. He is right to pick up on changes to Crown copyright and HMSO (now OPSI or the Office of Public Sector Information) information re‐use (in Digital Copyright, chapter 7, where new 2005 regulations exist that take subtle interpretation). For the practitioner working constantly in the field, more on cutting‐edge issues and less on familiar issues like authors' rights and educational establishments would have been welcome, though ostensibly familiar topics have a habit of biting the unwary practitioner on the ankle – hence topical discussion on legal and technical implications when providing material for visually impaired readers.

The other dimension of Digital Copyright that is obvious from the start is that it is an e‐book. Facet Publishing tells us that a traditional format will not be published. Extensive information is provided on their web site about terms and conditions of the two main licences anticipated (single‐users at one site and multiple‐users at one site) (for other arrangements contact the publishers), licences that, in fact, merit examination from a legal viewpoint in their own right (above all for user obligations on permitted and prohibited uses). Digital Copyright, like others to appear later in the series, are supplied in Adobe PDF format requiring only the freely available Acrobat Reader to read them. Being an e‐book it can be shifted and scrolled on‐screen, links can be followed up to contacts like HERON, ERA, and IPR‐helpdesk), and some material in “doc” format are supplied.

Like Durrant on negotiating contracts, Pedley here is one of those very useful works to be read at a sitting, re‐read (or re‐accessed) regularly for a while after that, used to feed personal and group needs and interests (say about linking and framing on websites, or for a teacher providing a spread of topical cases for student discussion, or for an organization where IPR involvement takes place in different places), and then, appetite being what it is, and the availability of attractive rivals being what it is, put to one side. Its finite life, like that of most in its field, is probably two years, though this reviewer is confident, having read the new Essential Law, that this author will keep things fresh. A topical and attractive “tour d'horizon” with all that entails.

Further Reading

Abramson, B. (2005), Digital Phoenix: Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How It Will Rise Again, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA and London.

Armstrong, C. and Bebbington, L.W. (2004), Staying Legal: A Guide to Issues and Practice Affecting Library, Information and Publishing Sectors, 2nd ed., Facet Publishing, London.

Cornish, G. (2004), Copyright: Interpreting the Law for Libraries, Archives and Information Services, 4th ed., Facet Publishing, London.

Durrant, F. (2006), Negotiating Licences for Digital Resources, Facet Publishing, London.

Fabos, B. (2005), “The commercialized web: challenges for libraries and democracy”, Library Trends, Vol. 53 No. 4, pp. 519698.

Marcum, D.B. and George, G. (2006), Digital Library Development: The View from Kanazawa, Libraries Unlimited, Westport, CO and London.

Norman, S. (2004), Practical Copyright for Information Professionals: The CILIP Handbook, Facet Publishing, London.

Russell, C. (2004), Complete Copyright: An Everyday Guide for Librarians, American Library Association, Chicago, IL.

Rupp‐Serrano, K. (2005), Licensing in Libraries: Practical and Ethical Aspects, The Haworth Information Press, Binghamton, NY.

Spinello, R.A. and Tavani, H.T. (2005), Intellectual Property Rights in a Networked World: Theory and Practice, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA and London.

Stokes, S. (2002), Digital Copyright: Law and Practice, Butterworths/LexisNexis and Tarlo Lyons, London.

Willinsky, J. (2006), The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and London.

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