Copyright in the Digital Age

Still the bedrock of creativity and the creative industries

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●     Funding given to kick-start Copyright Hub

●     Intellectual Property: Facts and Fictions in the Digital Agent

●     IPO thoughts on copyright and the economic effects of parody

●     Modernising copyright – February 2013

●     Stationers and UCL in joint copyright research initiative for communications and content industries

●     Government publishes proposals for changes to UK copyright

●     Stationers offer bursary to copyright research student

●     Hooper recommends UK Copyright Hub

●     Copyright adds extra £3 billion to national accounts

●     Hargreaves warned on damaging UK creative industries

●     PPA pushes for simplified IP rights exchange

●     NLA v Meltwater: a victory for content owners

●     How US publishers pirated Dickens’ works

●     Consultation on legal deposit

●     Minister says search engines must help stop pirates

●     EU votes through the Copyright Term Directive

●     Government backs Hargreaves Review

●     Hargreaves Report: Government implementation plan awaited

●     Publishing industry responses to Hargreaves explain why copyright remains at the base of our creative industries

●     A book of the individual contributions to the website has been published by Wildy, Simmonds and Hill Publishing

●     The answer to the Machine is in the Machine”: A Big Idea from the European Publishers Council

●     The Encouragement of Learning: Dr Sarah Thomas

●     The Stationers’ Company and Copyright: a brief introduction by Noel Osborne

●     Copyright and the Information Explosion: an Overview by Clive Bradley

●     Tomorrow’s Humanities: James Murdoch, News Corporation

●     Do Libraries Dream of Electric Sheep? Lisbet Rausing

●     Why copyright remains important: A perspective from a data publisher Trevor Fenwick Euromonitor

●     Other Men’s Flowers: David R Worlock

●     An act for the encouragement of … enforcement: Rod Kirwan, partner Denton Wilde Sapte

●     The role of the creative industries in rebuilding the UK economy: Helen Alexander CBE, President CBI

●     THE EUROPEAN UNION: In 2010 is Copyright still able to protect and reward the creative heart of Europe? Angela Mills Wade

●     Happy Birthday to Copyright: Simon Juden

●     The answer to the machine: Mark Bide and Dr. Alicia Wise

●     Collective Licensing: Responding to the challenges of the digital age: Kevin Fitzgerald

●     Accentuate the positive aspects of copyright for the sake of future posterity: Andrew Yeates

●     Copyright’s balancing act and the role of the library: Michael Heaney, Bodleian Libraries

●     Copyright through the Looking-glass: Tom Rivers

●     The Changing Role of Copyright: Roger Parry

●     Does the Database Directive have a future? Laurence Kaye

●     Enlightenment Now: Dominic McGonigal, PPL

●     Copyright in the digital environment: a broadcaster’s perspective: Najma Rajah, BBC

●     Copyright in Practice: A Publisher Perspective by Kevin Taylor, CUP

●     Why Copyright is still important after 300 years: Professor Iain Stevenson

●     Is Queen Anne’s Statute relevant to Twitter? By John Howkins, author of The Creative Economy

●     How can government balance effective copyright protection and users’ needs? Judith Sullivan

●     An Invitation

●     About this website

NLA v Meltwater: a victory for content owners

In a two year battle the Newspaper Licensing Authority (NLA) has been fighting to maintain the proportion of  its £20m revenues raised  from charging news aggregators  for using publishers’ content.  The battle appears to have resulted in a vindication for the The NLA’s policies and confirmation content does indeed belong to publishers.

In his excellent copyrightblog.co.uk (click http://copyrightblog.co.uk/2012/02/15/disruptors-disrupted-part-two/ for full version) Dominic Young, former chairman of NLA writes:

The NLA and Meltwater multi-pronged litigation passed a new milestone today. To remind yourself of the last one, and to get a bit more background on the case, have a look at a post I did previously.

This time the it was the copyright tribunal’s turn to issue a decision.

Meltwater were quick to claim victory. They called it “…a major decision in favour of Meltwater in the UK”. Elsewhere they said that they had been successful in reducing fees which would otherwise have been over 120.11€million over the next three years.

It’s a funny interpretation of victory. It’s hard not to think of the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, gamely fighting on with no limbs left. Meltwater’s position has at various times been to deny that they need a licence, deny that their clients need licences, deny that what they do infringes copyright, state that what they do benefits newspapers because of all the traffic they get and variously claim that this case criminalises web browsing.

They forced this issue to litigation in the first place, by refusing to take an NLA licence and making a referral to the copyright tribunal. That litigation has now taken them to the high court, the appeal court, the copyright tribunal and is still lumbering towards the supreme court. Costs run to millions of pounds.

So far no court or tribunal has agreed that they don’t need a licence, no court or tribunal has accepted that their clients don’t need licences, no court or tribunal has backed their view that their business exploiting other peoples property doesn’t require the agreement of those whose property they exploit

 
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