Sharing graphics
March 3rd, 2008 by Naomi KornWe are gearing up for the launch of our interactive graphics to help navigate around the world of identification of rights, and then the management of them/dealing with permissions. This innovative funcationality will overlay the IP tools that we have been merrily creating over the last few months that are sitting on our website, and provide a much needed platform for navigation. We hope to have these ready for soft launch at our next Web2.0 and IP Focus Group on 7th April. With the thought in mind of “we’ll show you ours if you show us yours”, we wanted to request process charts/graphics that U&I Phase II projects have put together themselves illustrating what your projects are doing so that we can start picking out where ever possible critical points where IPR/licensing needs to be dealt with and making sure that 1) We can help projects wherever possible 2) We haven;t missed creating something critical that you may need. We saw many beautiful charts forming the posters at the York meeting, a well as those created as one slide powerpoint - we would love to lay our hands on them. You can send them straight over to me. With many thanks
Web2.0 and IP Focus Group
February 19th, 2008 by Naomi KornWe are extremely pleased to let you know that the next Web2.0 and IP focus group will be taking place on Monday 7th April in Leeds (at the Old School Board). The meeting will run from 11:00 - 15:00 and is open primarly to JISC funded projects under the U&I Programme. Thanks to Janey Finlay form Leeds Met for helping us to set this up and hosting…its great to be running this closer to the cluster of projects (and closer to Lawrie!)
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
Web2Rights content update
February 8th, 2008 by Naomi KornIts last thing on a Friday afternoon and…you can’t settle because you really want to know about the relationship between contracts and copyright. This is actually pretty important stuff because contract law can be used to over-ride copyright law. What this means is that if a third party gives you permission to use their ”stuff”, by means of a licence, they can insert clauses in this contract which could undermine your ability to benefit from the copyright exceptions (Fair Dealing provisions) to which users can legitimately benefit. These are a hard won defence in the UK copyright law by which users can copy other people’s stuff which is in copyright for specific purposes, without having to get permission. The problem is that at the moment, the copyright legislation does not preclude contracts from being used to over ride the copyright exceptions in this way and in real terms, it may be that 90 out of evey 100 contracts issued by third party rights holders, such as publishers, film companies etc may include these clauses.
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
To BB Scholar or NOT BB Scholar
January 31st, 2008 by Naomi KornI’ve been looking recently at the terms of use Blackboard Scholar to see whether it really is a good thing or not. Its all a bit worrying really because its all a bit restrictive and to put it mildly, the use of BB Scholar means that projects are restricted in:
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…
Web2Rights at the EMERGE and U&I project Start Up Meeting in York
January 26th, 2008 by neilWe just come back from the EMERGE and U&I project Start Up Meeting in York. We’ve been amazed by the variety of projects funded - a massive range of the great and good.
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
