Tech Biz Writing

Until recently, British copyright lasted for fifty years beyond the author’s death. Now, this has been extended by the EU to seventy years. There is support too for efforts to secure a decent return from those who would readily exploit an author’s work without paying for it. Photocopying used to be a licence to save money. Hardly anyone thought twice before reproducing articles, chapters from books or even a whole book without reference to the copyright holder.

There are now agreements with education and commerce on a licensing scheme for reprographic rights. Whether or not a similar scheme can be applied to electronic rights depends largely on developing an effective policing policy. Reports are already filtering through the technological grapevine of new metering systems which will allow publishers to monitor and record the use of their information on the Internet and other networks. In early 1997, the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the UN’s agency responsible for administering copyright conventions, required member states to outlaw devices aimed at bypassing technical measures to prevent unauthorised copying.

Meanwhile, there is much that the individual writer can do to guard against the free use of what is, or what might turn out to be, a valuable property. The starting point is the small print of the contract.

One unnecessary fuss over copyright, centred on a scheme launched by Simon & Schuster, followed by Macmillan and Wiley, “to keep works of academic value in print on a permanent basis” by printing on demand. (Modern digital printing techniques allow works to be stored on disk, updated frequently, and printed off “just in time” to the customer’s order). The drawback, from an author’s point of view, is that while under current rules if a book goes out of print for more than eight weeks the copyright in the text reverts to the author, this print-on-demand initiative could be used by a publisher to hold onto these rights. The issue will doubtless be decided eventually by combat between expensive lawyers. Meanwhile, we can only wonder at the further confusion over who owns what created by the new technology. In the Far East it is reckoned that over 90% of all videocassettes sold are pirated. Unauthorized printing of books in China, Russia and a motley of smaller nations is said to be depriving British publishers and their authors of £200m a year. As for the photocopier, it’s now responsible for some 300 billion pages of illegally reproduced material.In most books a copyright notice appears on one of the front pages. In its simplest form this is the symbol © followed by the name of the copyright owner and the year of first publication. The assertion of copyright may be emphasised by the phrase “All rights reserved”, and in the case there are any lingering doubts the reader may be warned that “No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission”.

But this is to overstate the case. In principle, a quotation of a “substantial” extract from a copyright work or for any quotation of copyright material, however short, for an anthology must be approved by the publishers of the original work. But there is no fixed rule on what constitutes a substantial extract. In any case, even a lengthy quotation from a copyright work may not be an infringement if it is “fair dealing”…for purposes of criticism or review”.

Difficulties can arise when the identity of a copyright holder is unclear. The publisher of the relevant book may have gone out of business or been absorbed into a conglomerate, leaving no records of the original imprint. Detective work can be yet more convoluted when it comes to unpublished works. When copyright holders are hard to trace, the likeliest source of help is the Writers and their Copyright Holders project, otherwise known as WATCH. A joint enterprise of the universities of Texas and Reading, WATCH has created a database of English-language authors whose papers are housed in archives and manuscript repositories. The database is available free of charge on the Internet. If, despite best efforts, a copyright holder cannot be found, there are two options: either to cut the extract or to press ahead with publication in the hope that if the copyright holder does find out he will not object or will not demand an outrageous fee. The risk can be minimized by an open acknowledgement that every effort to satisfy the law has been made.

With the 1988 Copyright Designs and Patents Act, the European concept of “moral rights” was introduced into British law. The most basic is the right of “paternity” which entitles authors to be credited as the creators of their work. However, paternity must be asserted in writing and is not retrospective. No right of paternity attaches to authors of computer programs, or to writers who create works as part of their employment, or journalists, or as contributors to a “collective work”, such as an encyclopaedia, dictionary, or year book.

A second moral right is that of integrity. In theory, this opens ways to forceful objections to any “derogatory statement” if derogatory amounts to “distortion or mutilation … or is otherwise prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author”.

Moral rights may “be waived by written agreement or with the consent of the author”.

Writers trying to sell ideas should start on the assumption that it is almost impossible to stake an exclusive claim. So much unsolicited material comes the way of publishers and script departments, that the duplication of ideas is inevitable. A writer who is nervous of the attention of rivals is best advised to maintain a certain reticence in dealings with the media.

Next: 49. Contracts.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 12th, 2006 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Technical Writing, Publishing, TechBiz Writing, Documentation, Research, Copyright. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.