It’s been a busy week for publicity, the Guardian published a full page article about the Web2Rights project in it’s Digital Student supplement. JISC also released the Web2Rights video, this has really made an impact at Online Educa and every time I go to the JISC stand I see someone watching it on the kiosk displays

We had two sessions at Online Educa today.

I was doing a demonstration of the toolkit at the JISC stand, and this was followed by Derek Stephens running an hour long session of a presentation of the project and a Q&A session.

Web2Rights on the JISC stand

Posters going like hotcakes

Derek showing the toolkit

Neil and Derek face the audience of 50 IPR participants

The theme that came from both sessions was that a Web2rights approach would be applicable to a number of European countries and that there are plenty of people wanting to take the toolkit further. We has offers of support for this from Norway, the Netherlands and Germany.

The enthusiasm the particpants had for IPR and the great feedback we had on the toolkit was great (and somewhat unexpected), we gave out 100 IPR posters and it looks like the discussions will be continuing for sometime.

In order to help us to scope out some of the broader legal issues that projects have/or may be encountering we would be most grateful if projects could spend just a few minutes to complete our questionnaire, which can be found at

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2brGpOOpqfdrG98Oae2k6wQ_3d_3d

The questionnaire should not take more than about 5 minutes or so to complete and will help us enormously to develop tools to respond to any needs and requirements that projects may have, as well as provide information about how best we should shape our forth coming Web2.0 and Legal Issues workshop.

 Whilst our primary audience will continue to be the projects funded under JISC’s U&I strand, like the IPR work, we anticipate that our project outputs will also have a much broader audience. To this extent, we are delighted to be working with JISC Legal to ensure the long term sustainability of our outputs.

 We have scheduled in a legal issues workshop for U&I projects on 13th October in London. Please contact me if you are interested in attending.

BTW  - you can also find us presenting at the Educa Conference in Berlin 3-5 December 2008!

Naomi

There are several ways of working with the IP resources that we have created including:

 1) Downloading each resource as required

2) Downloading zipped packages

3) Using our IP flowchart to find out what is needed and when

4) Using our IP Diagnostic Tool to work out the problem and suggest possible solutions.

We are delighted that our project has been extended for another 9 months so that we can develop our resources further (including the interactive elements) and also build up resources that deal with other legal issues encountered within a Web2.0 environment.

Catch us at the JISC Joint Programme Meeting at Keele on 15th and 16th July when we will be handing out some free A2 sized laminated wall charts of our IP Flowchart.

Naomi 

The intentions of the meeting are to enable project representatives to:

• Become familiar with the broad copyright and other related IP
  issues that might affect your project
• Engage with possible solutions and develop strategies to deal
  with the issues that may arise
• Encounter the resources available through the JISC funded
  Web2Rights project to support Werb2.0 and IP engagement
• Flag up to the Web2Rights team the need for the development of other resources that your
  project may need
• Test run the new Web2Rights website functionality
• Raise issues and questions that you may have surrounding IP
  issues and copyright
• Network with other projects who may be encountering similar
  issues

  Programme:
  11:00  - 11:15 Arrival, Tea and Coffee
  11:15 - 11:30 Welcome and Introductions
  11:30 - 12:00 Web2.0 and IP Overview for U& I projects - arising issues,
  developing strategies and risk management (NK)
  12:00 - 12:10 Discussion
  12:10  - 12:20 Demo of Web2Rights site (NW)
  12:20 - 12.40 Group discussion about resources available and additional
  needs
  12:30 - 1:00 General Discussion
  1:00 - 1:45 Lunch
  1:45 - 2.45 IP Surgery: Questions and Answers
  2.45 - 3.00 Concluding remarks and next steps
   

Places are filling up fast, so please drop me an email to reserve a place

Thanks

Naomi

The aim of the focus group is:

• Assess the IP tools that we have created and let us know if there are any gaps - in particular the graphics that we are developing at the moment to help users navigate around the issues and the resources that we have built
• Provide a forum for questions and time for raising issues that you may have about IP and licences regarding your projects (we will capture these as FAQ’s to add to our growing bank of FAQ’s on our website)

Please email directly at: naomi@naomikorn.com if you or any of your colleagues would like to attend.

In the meantime, watch this space for news about some top tips for granting permissions and top tips for using other people’s licences which we will be posting shortly

Naomi

In response to this, the Web2Rights team has put together a briefing document outlining these issues, the types of clauses which you may encounter (that effectively over-ride the copyright exceptions)  and an example of the type of clause that you might wish to include in your agreements with third party rights holders to ensure that your fair dealing provisions etc are not over-ridden. This briefing paper can be found on our IP ToolKit page, together with some further FAQs resulting from our Web20 and IP workshops in York. Over the next few weks, we’ll be adding a top tips page on dealing with licences, as well as sign posting to a range of different tyeps of licences which you may wish to use to provide access to your project deliverables, as well as those that you might encounter that are offered by third parties (such as a range of open content licences). Watch this space as well for news about our brand new graphics which we are currently developing.

Naomi

1) Their ability to change, adapt or alter the software in any way. This is because the source code is closed and access is by a proprietary licence rather than an open source licence. This is not surprising in light of BB’s recent attempts to patent its software

2)  Projects are contractually obliged to get pretty comprehensive permissions for uploading content containing third party rights on to BB Scholar. This is because the BB Scholar’s terms of use includes the statement relating to uploaded content: “ you automatically grant and/or warrant that the owner has granted Blackboard, the perpetual royalty-free, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, perform, display, and transmit the User Content to Scholar. You also permit any other user of Blackboard with access to that Services, subject to your restrictions, to access, view, store, and reproduce the User Content to the same extent permitted herein.    http://www.scholar.com/termsofuse.html 

3) If by chance projects were to upload any content for which they had not got all the permissions, then crucially, you would “… agree to indemnify and hold Blackboard, and its affiliates, officers, agents, partners, and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorney’s fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of User Content you submit, post to, email, or otherwise transmit through the Services, your use of the Services, your connection to the Services, or your breach of the TOU.”

 The question is whether BB would enforce any of this? At any rate, these terms of use underpin the Service provided by BB and should not be taken lightly….so to “BB Scholar or not BB Scholar”, maybe but with eyes open about the ramifications of NOT complying with the terms of use…

So what did we get up to?

• We launched phase one of our project website www.web2rights.org.uk
• Charlotte and Naomi ran a couple of back to back copyright workshops and answered lots of questions and spoke about RISK Management loads
• We realised that the 3rd April for our focus group clashes with another event – so we’ve started rescheduling
• We had lunch with all of Leeds Metropolitan University projects and chatted with lots more
• We ate lots and drank too much (but this seems typical for an EMERGE event, and we blame Lawrie Phipps)
• Neil and Naomi spent some time brain storming and have come up with a prototype process chart for engaging with rights issues…here’s the first draft  - we’ll start work on turning into an interactive version soon.
  

• We came away with clear ideas to refine our content more and make it more pragmatic, practical, user-focussed and flexible
• We decided to ask you to help us too,  by sending us any IP lessons learnt and IP resources/template licences etc that we can share with other projects

Everyone that we’ve spoken to or listened to has had some kind of copyright issue running through their project, whether it is because they are deploying/adapting existing technology; developing new technologies; using pre-existing content or developing their own. In all these cases, they have been thinking about their need to make sure they have the permissions to do what they want to do in terms of creating their project deliverables, as well as ensuring that the rights are sorted out so that there is compatibility between those permissions that they have got from third parties “rights in” and the permissions that they want to grant users to use their stuff “rigths out”. We are building and adapting the content all the time.

Let us know what you need from us…speak soon, Naomi and Neil