I found today’s presentation on copyright to be extremely interesting and valuable – the rules of copyright seem so vague and constantly changing that it was great to hear from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. The most surprising thing I learned from the presentation was that there’s actually a lot more infringement going on than I would have guessed, but most instances of infringement go unchallenged in court. It’s something that we, as media makers, need to be constantly vigilant about.

The example of GIFs in Facebook and on Tumblr got brought up, which is especially interesting because people would use such GIFs on social networking platforms billions of times a day, every single day, and yet Facebook isn’t constantly being served with takedown notices about peoples’ Parks and Recreation GIFs. But since every single rights holder would need to individually challenge Facebook’s legal right to publish those GIFs, at the same time, for any real action to be taken, it will probably never end up in court. I’m glad I’ll be able to post the Tom Haverford “baller time” GIF with impunity into the future.

I don’t usually do this, but since I think the copyright lecture will be relevant to me and my work well into the future, I’m going to basically just copy my notes from today’s class into this blog post, for future reference:

• Copyright is automatic
• No requirement to add (c) symbol
• No registration requirement
• Ideas are NOT protected by copyright
• Facts are NOT protected by copyright

Copyright protects material form or expression of an idea (degree of skill and labour required to create), not the idea itself.

Ideas can, however, be confidential. To mark your ownership of an idea, express it in some physical form and then mark your work with a statement: “The information in this document is confidential and must not be used to without first obtaining written consent.”

Potential exceptions to copyright being automatically owned by the work’s creator:

• Employer ownership
• Contract or license (can be non-exclusive)
• Assignment of rights

Moral rights apply to all copyright works, but can be waived:

1. Right of attribution
2. Right of false attribution
3. Right of integrity (deals with honour and reputation – e.g. if someone remixes your work in a way that harms your reputation)

In Australia, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, but different countries have different terms. Factors influencing duration:

• published/unpublished or made public (even unpublished works are copyright)
• published anonymously / pseudonymously
• film made before 1st May 1969

Copyright cannot be renewed in Australia, because there has never been the requirement to register a work for copyright.

Exceptions (when a license is not needed):

• Fair dealing
  • student research and study (only applies while studying)
  • research or study
  • criticism or review
  • reporting the news
  • parody and satire
  • (public use is not OK)
• Education
• Libraries / archives
• Cultural institutions and museums

For infringement to be considered the following could have been breached:

• Rights of ownership
• Substantial part of work (quality not necessarily quantity)
• Moral rights