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Terms of reference and governance

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Mission

Education and research are the fundamental building block of the knowledge economy, and are based upon the broad availability and dissemination of knowledge goods across borders. Creative outputs from education and research, and subsequently their reuse, sharing, reworking and preservation are fundamental to the advancement of knowledge and the further development of learning.

To this end we believe it important that Copyright for Knowledge works together with government at a UK and European level, as well as with other education and research focussed groups to maximise access to, and reuse of knowledge in the digitally networked information society we all live in.

Terms of Reference

Copyright for Knowledge will:

  • Work towards common policy positions on copyright law (and related rights).
  • Work collaboratively on engaging with government on legislative issues at a UK and European level.
  • Share intelligence on copyright issues.
  • Promote to our own stakeholders issues relating to information law and the development of legislation.

Membership

Membership shall be open to organisations who have academic researchers as their main stakeholder and / or user base.

The current membership is:

  • Paul Ayris (UCL) (Chair)
  • Toby Bainton (Part-time Advocate, Copyright for Knowledge)
  • Lisa Bungerroth (UK HE International Unit)
  • Geraldine Clement-Stoneham (Medical Research Council)
  • William Greenacre (Wellcome Trust)
  • Chris Holland (UCL) (Commitee Secretary)
  • Robert Kiley (Wellcome Trust)
  • Naomi Korn (LACA)
  • David Prosser (Research Libraries UK)
  • Ann Rossiter (SCONUL)

In attendance as observer

  • Howard Davies (The National Archives)
  • Malcolm Todd (The National Archives)
  • Louise Pakseresht (The Royal Society)
  • Ben White (British Library)

Responsibilities of Network members

  1. Notes will be taken of the Network's discussions and circulated after each meeting.
  2. Attendance at, or nomination of a proxy at the face-to-face meetings.
  3. Reading of papers submitted in advance of meetings.
  4. As appropriate, promote the activities of the network to your own organisation's stakeholders.
  5. Supply organisational resource as appropriate for engaging with government within UK and EU.
  6. Note the EU Transparency Register Code of Conduct when interacting with EU institutions, their members, officials and other staff

Communications and DisseminationQuarterly face-to-face meetings.

  1. Establish a web presence to support dissemination activities.
  2. Information sharing by e-mail / list servs.
  3. Engaging with political process by face-to-face meetings with politicians and civil servants by the group, and where appropriate the use of education sector lobbyists.
  4. In relation to copyright, arranging and / or participating in speaking events external to, as well as within the sector, to highlight the importance of access to, and the unhindered reuse of knowledge in the education sector.
  5. Engaging with similar networks across Europe. e.g. ENCES and Copyright for Creativity

UCL Copyright

Contact

FAQs

"Why can't I use it? I found it on the internet"

Lobbying for Copyright reform

Copyright blog

Library copyright exceptions: New SCONUL briefing paper

SCONUL have published a new briefing paper on the library exceptions to copyright with a very clear explanation of the exceptions which permit libraries to supply copies upon request to members of the public and to other not-for-profit libraries (broadly Sections 41 to 43 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988).

Letters and copyright in the news

One of the issues faced regularly by archives which hold the correspondence of a prominent person is that the letters will have multiple copyright owners. Copyright in a letter belongs to the author and typically there will be many authors. This becomes an issue when you need permission to digitise or publish letters from the archive.

Kraftwerk sampling in the Court of Justice of the European Union

Members of the veteran electronic music group, Kraftwerk (Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben) have an answer from the CJEU to their claim that copying extracts from their recordings to be used in other musical recordings in the form of “sampling” should only be carried out with their permission. The case which concerns the sampling of a brief extract from their song “Metall auf Metall” which was then played as a continuous loop in a 1999 song produced by Moses Pelham and Martin Haas and performed by Sabrina Setlur called “Nur mir”. The CJEU case number is C-476/17.

Author power

An interesting  blog post by Shaun Khoo on the Scholarly Kitchen website takes a sceptical look at whether academic authors are likely to gain more leverage in an open access publishing environment.  With current publishing models, the publisher is generally in a more powerful position and the author at a disadvantage in any negotiation. Is that likely to change?

Translations and copyright

A recent enquirer asked about producing a digital version of a book which included two contributions in English by well know Czech political figures. Both the authors had died before 1949. Given that the usual copyright term of the author’s lifetime plus 70 years would apply, it follows that the published works of both authors  are out of copyright in the UK (and the EU generally), so both contributions may be digitised and made available without permission.

The Education exception and past PhD theses

A recent enquiry concerned the use of a past thesis in a writing workshop where students of a specific course would have the opportunity to examine and also to critique the writing style of that thesis, which would be studied as a relevant example. The question was whether it would be acceptable to copy the thesis in its entirety for the purpose of the workshop.

EU Directive: Copyright in the Digital Single Market

The new copyright directive, the DSM Directive is nearing the completion of its long journey through the EU legislative  procedure. The latest version, has been approved by the European Parliament and now goes back to the Council. Previously there were very few mandatory exceptions to copyright in EU legislation.

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