Copyright consultation

The United Kingdom government is currently consulting on copyright law and have requested comments by 6 February 2009. The purpose of this meta page is to bring together thoughts and considerations to inform a response by Wikimedia UK or individuals within the community (or both).

Consultation page

The website for the consultation is here. This includes an "Issues Paper" with a deadline of 6 February, which will be followed by a "Discussion Paper" which will have a deadline of Summer 2009. There will also be "A series of meetings and events ... to enable interested parties to debate the key issues and possible solutions"

Useful links

• Response to a similar consultation from the Netherlands chapter
• Response to a similar consultation from the Hungarian chapter

Draft

About us

TODO: Waffle about who we are.

The impact of copyright of photographs of public domain works upon access to works

The "Access to works" section of the IPO Consultation Document begins with the following objective:

"The copyright system should maximise the availability of creative works to the public, ensuring that creative endeavour is rewarded while users can enjoy what has been created, on fair and reasonable terms."

We at Wikimedia UK are similarly committed to enabling public access to creative works, especially those in the public domain. However, at the moment we are hampered in our efforts to enhance the accessibility of public domain art in the UK by the ambiguous copyright status in UK law of photographs of public domain works. We seek in this submission to prevent the case for a clarifying legislative amendment stating that photographs or other copies of 2d works in the public domain do not meet the originality standard required for copyrights to accrue.

The status of photographs of public domain works outside of the United Kingdom

In 1999, the New York District Court held in the case of The Bridgeman Art Library Ltd v Corel Corp, (36 F. Supp. 2d 191, 1999) that "a photograph which is no more than a copy of a work of another as exact as science and technology permits lacks originality. That is not to say that such a feat is trivial, simply not original". Chiefly with ref to US. Note Canada, Germany similar.

Contact details

We would welcome further involvement in the consultation process. Please contact our board on: board email address.

Questions

The questions asked in the Issues Papers:

Rights of creators

Q. Does the current system provide the right balance between commercial certainty and the rights of creators and creative artist? Are creative artists sufficiently rewarded/protected through their existing rights?

?Looking to extend the current 50 year limit on recordings? (see)

looking at the intro to the question it's about preventing more absolute contracts. In effect limiting the rights the author can sign away.

• Don't answer?

Licensing system

Q. Is our current system too complex, in particular in relation to the licensing of rights, rights clearance and copyright exceptions? Does the legal enforcement framework work in the digital age?

?Enforecement of copyright with file sharing?

Seems to be fair dealing/fair use issues and stronger enforcement (probably something like 3 strikes and you are out IP stuff).

• Don't answer? (see below...)

Supporting creativity

Q. Does the current copyright system provide the right incentives to sustain investment and support creativity? Is this true for both creative artists and commercial rights holders? Is this true for physical and online exploitation? Are those who gain value from content paying for it (on fair and reasonable terms)?

• Don't answer?

Authentication

Q. What action, if any, is needed to address issues related to authentication? In considering the rights of creative artists and other rights holders is there a case for differentiation? If so, how might we avoid introducing a further complication in an already complicated world?

• Don't answer?

Other issues

We would welcome comments from interested parties on the above questions and on other questions that are considered relevant to this work

• making more governmental sources PD? Cite US example. Possible starting points:
  • Statute book (i.e. the laws of the land?)
  • Hansard (proceedings in the Houses of Commons and Lords; see [1])
  • Ordinance Survey issue (protected by crown copyright; old maps not available freely; might be worth pursuing separately with OS directly)

I agree that this is important and relevant to us, but the Guardian are running a massive "free our data" campaign, so I'd expect many organisations (not least them) to be lobbying on this one already. Our efforts are hence perhaps best focussed elsewhere. --Cfp 22:04, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

• making "faithful reproductions of 2d public domain works of art" PD as per the US

Comes under the first question. See the pdf. [2] --Cfp 22:04, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

• publication rights which cause issues for even long since PD works. (Clarify? Is this regarding the UK's database right?)

(These points are related to the "Licensing system" question)

Both rights seem just about reasonable to me. See this doc for details [3]. The publication right only applies to things which have not been previously published in any way, and is clearly intended to incentivising people to publish e.g. writers letters/diaries, which take considerable effort to edit etc. The database right gives some level of protection to the maker of a database over the particular aggregation of data it embodies, incentivising people to invest effort in performing the aggregation in the first place. In any case, they come from EC law according to that doc, so it's highly unlikely they're going to be substantially changed in any case. --Cfp 22:04, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Geni's draft response

Q. Does the current system provide the right balance between commercial certainty and the rights of creators and creative artist? Are creative artists sufficiently rewarded/protected through their existing rights?

It is up to the creator to decide if they are sufficiently rewarded. If they feel they are not they are free not to create or not to enter into contracts that will not provide them with their desired level of reward.

Interfering with this creates significant risks in the area of free software and free content. Much of the infrastructure of the internet runs on free software such as linux and Apache HTTP Server. In order for the UK to continue to be involved in the development of these technologies it is important the UK creators to be able license their works, until the copyright expires, under any terms including not accepting any financial reward and allowing any form of reuse of their work.

Wikipedia is one of the top ten sites on the web and is only part of the free content community. If UK creators are going to be able (if they chose) to be involved in the free content community the ability to license their works, until the copyright expires, under any terms including not accepting any financial reward and allowing any form of reuse of their work needs to be preserved.

Q. Is our current system too complex, in particular in relation to the licensing of rights, rights clearance and copyright exceptions? Does the legal enforcement framework work in the digital age?

Copyright exceptions under UK law tend to suffer from being highly limited compared to their US equivalents. This difference creates significant cross boarder issues on a web where much of the content is hosted in the US.

The issue of rights clearance is mostly a side effect of overlong copyright terms and any attempt to deal with it without dealing with that core problem is unlikely to be very successful or risks causing significant collateral damage.

Q. Does the current copyright system provide the right incentives to sustain investment and support creativity? Is this true for both creative artists and commercial rights holders? Is this true for physical and online exploitation? Are those who gain value from content paying for it (on fair and reasonable terms)?

The free content and free software movements show that monetary payment isn’t the only incentive and it is important to allows those who chose to create for other incentives to continue to do so.

Q. What action, if any, is needed to address issues related to authentication? In considering the rights of creative artists and other rights holders is there a case for differentiation? If so, how might we avoid introducing a further complication in an already complicated world?

It is possible to confirm authenticity through Checksum comparison of files against known authentic copies. Author identity can be confirmed by imbedding digital signatures in the file. These are mature technologies and there is no need for legislation in this area.