Digital Copyright

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Digital Copyright", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 2, pp. 151-153. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710730358

Digital rights management in general, and digital copyright in particular, are attracting more and more interest. Law is starting to deal with digital matters in an increasingly distinctive way, as can be seen from work in areas like databases, technological protection, licensing, monitoring downloading and infringement, protecting websites, and new business models. This is being reflected in the professional and practitioner literature. Facet Publishing have published several works in this general field – like Norman and Cornish, Armstrong and Durrant, as well as three works by Paul Pedley.

His Essentials came out in 2003 and a second edition appeared in 2006 (electronic copyright and signatures are discussed briefly there), while Managing Digital Rights (2005) highlighted the trend towards licensing and business models, offered an international perspective, discussed e‐reserves and implications for VLEs (virtual learning environments). Pedley's third book from Facet is Digital Copyright, an e‐book (no traditional format is planned) in a series supplied in Adobe PDF format requiring only the freely available Acrobat Reader to read them. This is the first in the series. Details about licences may be found on the Facet website. Pedley is Head of Research at The Economist Intelligence Unit and well‐known in the UK for his training courses. For anyone considering buying this book, they cannot do better than read Pedley's article “Is digital content treated differently in law?” published in CILIP Update 4(10) for October 2005 (pp. 21‐4).

Two criteria will apply to any such work – first what about the content, and second what about the format. Turning to content, the focus is current UK (and mainly English) law (statutory and case), taking account of relevant EU law, with regular sidelong glances to international issues. The argument is that the balance between rights and access has got harder to achieve in a digital/electronic world, that law and technology work together (with varying degrees of success) to protect rights, that websites and databases and file‐sharing are focal points for conflict, that licences and contracts (including creative commons and Open Access options) are taking centre‐stage, that re‐use and privacy issues politicize the legal agenda, and that the law, while complex, plays catch‐up with practice.

Pedley's narrative is informative and succinct, helped by an index that connects up the dots, a sound survey of current issues (with some neat linkages like that between copyright and contract, legal deposit and websites), putting digital first and gathering up the legal bits‐and‐pieces later (some inevitable drift at that stage), and interspersed with relevant case law (like William Hill, Google, and Lexmark). The other criterion is format: being an e‐book in PDF, the reader can shift and scroll easily, follow up links to websites (like HERON, ERA, the Office for Public Sector Information, formerly HMSO, IPR‐helpdesk, Mondaq), view cases, and interpolate comments.

Traditional works on digital/electronic issues date visibly and so the move to e‐book makes as much sense as the move reference works made some years ago. The terms and conditions of the licences make it clear what the user has to do under the law, and the licences make interesting reading in their own right. The multiple‐user option will help those who want access for staff dealing with intellectual property in different parts of the organization or who want students to refer to it often in teaching and learning. It is the first of a series of self‐styled “briefings” and therefore concise. Users who already hold a good stock of works about copyright should look hard at its contents before buying because anyone wanting, say, really deep analysis of educational or music, software or Open Access rights will almost certainly see it as a milestone on a journey to more specialist works.