Thursday 11 November 2010

Media Law - More on Copyright

Without copyright protection journalism never would have flourished. Copyright maintains exclusivity which gives our product value. Respect other people's copyright in the hope they respect yours.

Getting it wrong will cost you money, embarrassment and stress and reputation for competence. Newspapers have been 'lifting' each other's storys for years, they are able to do this but only under strict criteria. The concept of fair dealing is used in newspapers for the purpose of reporting current events. This allows newspapers to lift stories from rival newspapers and even quotes; but they would have to attribute the original newspaper and display them in a way similar to "Ian said to The Sun..." Under the concept of fair dealing the story must also be in the public interest, which it probably is anyway if another newspaper has already reported it. The usage obviously must also be 'fair' hence the term 'fair dealing'.

Not only does fair dealing allow wider reporting of stories in public interest, but I mentioned in my previous blog regarding copyright, it allows criticism and review of copyright material and allows the broadcast of news orbits of film stars so you can also use famous movie clips for free.

Photographs are never subject to fair dealing unless they have a creative commons license, see my other blog about that here. The danger area is the internet, for example YouTube. In the past many people used to make videos with copyrighted songs as the soundtrack however record labels soon put a stop by this by claiming breach of copyright and forcing youtube to remove the audio from the video. YouTube has now found it's own way to get round this too by adding links to download the song from the video. See the screen shot below for an example of this.


The key points to remember about copyright are as follows -
  • Recognise copyright issues early
  • Contacting rights holders takes time
  • Tell others if you have copyright cleared
  • Don't lift material without referencing it up

2 comments:

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Anonymous said...

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