Copyright: 2nd edition: Interpreting the Law for Libraries, Archives and Information Services

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (1998), "Copyright: 2nd edition: Interpreting the Law for Libraries, Archives and Information Services", Library Review, Vol. 47 No. 3, pp. 187-188. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1998.47.3.187.1

The author is Copyright Officer at the British Library. This work is the second edition of work which first appeared in 1990. It sets out “the basics of UK copyright law” and concentrates on those areas “which may affect librarians and archivists in their daily work”. It uses a question‐and‐answer structure, with topics organised under themes, supported by a useful concise index. There is a strong practitioner emphasis ‐ questions raised are matter‐of‐fact and really useful, answers are clear and precise without being legalistic. This is a working tool which should be at hand to every serious working library and information professional involved in intellectual property issues: photocopying, fair dealing and substantial part, recording off‐air, interlibrary supply, library and archive copying, and the use of multimedia and electronic materials. Involved, in other words, on our own behalf and that of library and information users.

There are principles and definitions we might find anywhere ‐ copyright itself, its duration, purpose, scope, restrictions, permissions, exceptions. Reviews of fair dealing and licensing arrangements are clear and topical, with a useful section on licensing schemes (Copyright Licensing Agency and others like NLA, ERA, DACS covering respectively newspapers, educational materials, and design and artwork like that represented in slide collections, as well as organisations involved in performing rights and audio and video rights collection). Clear guidance is given, too, on restrictions (for example copying and payment and “research”), copying unpublished works, issuing to the public, lending and rental, photographs and films, and sound recordings.

It is a fast moving field and Cornish provides information and advice on databases and electronic materials: copyright is easy to ignore or abuse here, and librarians are as much bound by the law as by contracts they sign for use like networking CD‐ROMs. The legal identity of an electronic document is changing, with no printed versions, “new versions” collaboratively and interactively created, instantly downloadable and disseminable around the entire world. His guidance is timely although even that has to be updated: the EU database directive 96/9, requiring all member states to protect databases by copyright, has led to the DTI draft regulations, The Copyright and Rights in Database Regulations 1997, setting out a new right of 15 years to run concurrently with protection for the life of the author plus 70 years, and the sui generis debate continues internationally.

Another theme likely to be of particular interest to libraries will be copying of copyright materials: not just photocopying and the like, complicated enough, but copying for preservation and replacement, getting special permissions (such as HMSO and Ordnance Survey materials), handling sound recordings (say, in oral history collections, where there may be performing rights issues too), whom to ask for permission on copying a video, and how long to keep a film copied off‐air. Downloading and the distribution of electronic text and images, an increasingly important area of activity in libraries, and the legal and ethical implications for information professionals, are more issues of concern.

Cornish provides an up‐to‐date, readable, and above all usable reference tool here. There are issues where practitioners will probably need more information about the changing legal and legislative landscape, and guidance on what to do, and these will take us beyond the book ‐ to bulletin boards like lis‐copyseek, perhaps, to Sandy Norman the copyright adviser at the Library Association and her counterparts elsewhere, to the copyright directorate at The Patent Office, to Internet home pages for organisations like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the various reproduction rights organisations, to the author himself at the British Library. Cornish on copyright is useful now and will probably keep up with developments through later editions. It represents a baseline for working knowledge at the sharp end ‐ and is one of many steps a library can take to protect itself against liability for inadvertently not doing the right thing!