IPR case studies
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Contents |
OVERVIEW
Background
This report is an analysis of seven case studies of publicly funded digital content initiatives which demonstrates the flow of content, value and rights across the respective seven representatives of the Strategic Content Alliance (SCA) sponsors. It is addressed to senior decision makers across public sector bodies and aims at providing a coherent account of best practices of managing publically funded e-content. The case studies included:
- Southampton University: MyExperiment and Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII)
- Portsmouth University: Great Britain Historical GIS
- Birmingham Museum and City Galleries: BMAGIC project
- National Library of Health:Learning Object Repository project
- British Broadcasting Corporation and Strategic Content Alliance: BBC UK Centuryshare - project
- British Library: Archive of Sound Recordings
- National Educational Network/ BECTA: Gallery and Repurpose Create and Share Project
A finding from analysis of the case studies has revealed that all of them, but particularly the digitization projects face problems with respect to the clearance procedures. The current copyright regime is not friendly to this kind of activity that involves high volumes of works with low commercial but high cultural value that do not have easily identifiable authors. The clearance problems have a direct impact upon the permissions associated with the content that is further disseminated. The institutions performing the digitization often face severe budgetary limitations or have project management concerns that set limits to what may and what may not be cleared. As a result, some works remain inaccessible to the public. This is particularly true for works in which multiple layers and types of rights exist, and where the value objectives of such projects are mainly cultural and relate to the preservation of the material as well as in its making available to the research community.
Using the case studies as reference points, the report also identifies and outlines three models of content and permissions flows. Each model is named after the key characteristic of the way in which the flows are structured:
- The “Star Shaped” Model
- The “Snow-Flake” Model
- The “Clean Hands” Model.
Such models are illustrative of the ways in which IPR management may enable or hinder the flow of e-content. They also constitute a basic typology of the ways in which different models of IPR management could facilitate different types of value production. This is a vital finding and is substantiated by the indication that each model may be associated with different organisational objectives. Therefore, such models could inform the way in which IPR policy and strategy is formed for organisations across the public sector to assist in planning as well as recognition of the pros and cons, costs and benefits of each approach.
This report also illustrates how identifying and building upon these different modes of copyright management, can also contribute to the accomplishment of institutional goals, such as:
- Enabling more efficient and effective sharing of e-content between publically funded projects and organisations.
- Increasing the visibility of publically funded e-content
- Allowing the audience to share and re-use e-content
- Minimising costs of content aggregation and copyright clearance
- Developing risk management procedures
- Improving the quality of e-content while allowing its open flow and sharing.
Finally, the findings and recommendations contained in this report are beneficial to public sector bodies by providing information on how to:
- Effectively and efficiently plan and implement publically funded e-content projects.
- Understand the needs of the end user.
- Create suitable copyright licensing frameworks to support project or organisational objectives.
- Design realistic and sustainable Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policies.
- Reform aspects of the current IPR regulatory regime.
Key findings
- All projects analysed are primarily interested in the production of non monetary value, as expressed in their cultural, educational, scientific, preservation and public service objectives.
Clearing rights costs more than the rights themselves
- In most digitisation projects, the costs of identifying and negotiating with rights owners exceed the costs of acquiring the actual licences.
Publicly funded e-content is different from commercial content
- The current UK copyright legislative framework is designed for high-commercial value, easily identifiable content. However, the majority of the e-content managed by public sector organisations comprises of low-commercial high-cultural, high volume content authored by individuals who are very difficult to trace.
Education and Training is necessary
- The increasing inclusion of User Generated Content (UGC) in collections managed by public sector organisations makes the education of the general public on issues of copyright as important as that of their personnel. While cultural collection have always engaged with audiences, the advent of the Internet has rendered the same collections accessible to a far wider, diverse and anonymous audience. In addition, web 2.0 applications provided the end-user with the ability to actively interact with cultural content. This interaction often involves reproduction or transformation of the original content and consequently requires a basic understanding of the way in which the IPR regulatory framework operates. Hence, the constant education of these new audiences becomes crucial for the success of the cultural objectives of the collection holders and the mitigation of legal risk. Intellectual Property Rights and risk management toolkits, like the ones that SCA has already produced, are really important for organisations managing e-content collections.
Free content costs
- Open access, sharing and re-use of e-content are activities that require dedicated curation and continuous update of the collection, as well as conscious community building. UGC acquires value only through active curation that makes its relevance apparent and fully contextualises the contributions of individual users. Because end users constantly upload and update their content, the curation process needs to be continuous and more intense compared to the curation of a more traditional collection that has longer change cycles. As a result, UGC e-content management may entail greater value creation but also have high maintenance costs.
More freedom means more responsibility
- The closer we get to a model of unrestricted sharing and repurposing of content the greater the need for attribution, quality assurance, source tracing and provenance.
There is no “one size fits all” licence
- Different types of content require different types of licences. There is a trend to differentiate between user generated and professionally created content: the former is usually made freely available for re-use, whereas the latter is treated as premium content that may be used only privately and for non-commercial or educational purposes.
Key recommendations
Recommendations to funding bodies
- Take into consideration the costs of rights clearance procedures, when drafting the funding contracts, as suggested within resource 2.2 Blue Print for Funding Bodies and Funding Recipients contained within the SCA IPR and Licensing Toolkit.
- Provide specific funding for the production of IPR and risk management toolkits (or adaptation of existing toolkits, such as those that the SCA has developed as well as targeted IPR clearance training.
- Create specific funding programmes for increasing the IPR management capacity of public sector organisations.
Recommendations to organisations managing digital content
- Develop your own risk mitigation and rights management procedures and tools. These might be based around tools created as part of the SCA IPR Toolkit.
- Develop your own IPR training material or customise the existing ones.
- Train your personnel on IPR related issues.
- Educate your user base on the “Do’s” and “Don’ts” with respect to the content you make available.
- Have an explicit and clear IPR policy and appropriately communicate it to your personnel and users. This might be based upon the template statements produced within the SCA IPR Toolkit (resource 2.1)
- Make sure that the End User Licence Agreements’ terms and conditions are understood by your users. The SCA IPR Toolkit contains a “Terminology Toolkit” which defines many of the terms that may be encountered with regards to rights and licences (resource 3.3).
- Think of uses of your e-content beyond the boundaries of your own organisation or project.
- Create value added services for Web 2.0 and open content.
Recommendations to policy makers
- Establish a uniform licensing framework publicly funded sector, to avoid licence pollution arising from a lack of licence compatibility.
- Amend the Copyright Legislation to accommodate orphan works and memory institutions (museums, libraries, archives) exceptions.
- Develop a single voluntary rights clearance and registration service for e-content produced by public sector organisations.
Links to IPR case studies
BBC UK Centuryshare - IPR (Case study)
Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries (Case study)
British Library Archive of Sound Recordings (Case study)
Great Britain Historical GIS (Case study)
National Centre for eResearch - MyExperiment (Case study)
National Centre for eResearch - Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute OMII (Case study)
National Education Network (Case study)
Learning Object Repository project
Links to IPR Toolkit resources as PDFs
Background papers
Reports
Practical tools
3.4 Top Tips for Issuing Licences
3.5 Top Tips for Requesting Licences
3.8 Template Email Permissions Form
3.9 IPR Template Permission Letter
3.10 Rights Management Template
3.12 Model Contractual Clauses for Requesting Permission from Staff
3.13 Example Consortium Agreement
3.14 Model Contractual Clauses for Requesting Permission from Students/Volunteers
3.15 Model contractual clauses for requesting permission from freelancers/subcontractors
3.16 Template Terms and Conditions of Service
Template policy statements
2.1 Draft Institutional IPR Policy Statements
2.2 IPR and Licensing Blue Print for Funding Bodies and Recipients of Funding
Related Digipedia links
IPR case studies
IPR policy statement for the public sector
Orphan works and risk management
Web 2.0 and legal issues factsheet
Further information
General resources
Intellectual Property Office: Overview of the legislative framework and policy issues/developments regarding Intellectual Property Rights
Office for Public Sector Information: Information about Crown Copyright material, click use licence for reusing Crown Copyright material and access to the consolidated copyright legislation.
British Library Business and IP Centre: Provision of resources, support and advice relating to the creation and exploitation of IP within a business context
Licensing schemes and open content licensing initiatives
Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA)
Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS)
Resources for health professionals
Resources for schools, colleges and universities
JISC Digital Media Online Image Finding Tutorial: Interactive tool providing information about how to find images online which can be used with the least amount of restrictions
Web2Rights Project: JISC funded project providing interactive copyright and other legal issues tools, resources and charts for use by JISC funded projects
JISC Casper: Interactive tools and associated resources for dealing with copyright issues in schools and projects who are reusing content
JISC IPR and Web2.0 Animation: IPR and Web2.0 animation commissioned by JISC and built around the Web2Rights project deliverables
Becta: Information about IPR for schools
JISC IPR Consultancy: Briefing documents about IPR and monthly IPR Newsletter
JISC Open Content Licences Overview Paper: Overview paper providing guidance about the use of open content licences for JISC funded projects
JISC Model Licence Interactive: Interactive tool which provides an overview of the benefits of the JISC Model Licence
TrustDR Project: JISC funded project providing supporting documentation relating to the establishment of a digital rights management system for repositories
JISC Legal: Support for HEIs and FEIs on legal issues
OSS Watch: Support for HEIs and FEIs on open source licences
Resources for the cultural heritage sector
Collections Link: Comprehensive resources relating to IP and licensing for cultural heritage bodies
Harvested links
- Copyright Essentials
- A Collections Trust factsheet providing an introduction to copyright law for the non-specialist collections manager. [?]
- Training Course: Copyright Essentials
- This training course provided by Museums Galleries Scotland offers an introduction to the principles of copyright within the context of caring for collections. It offers basic and practical training, [?]
- New guide to copyright for cultural heritage organisations
- The Collections Trust is delighted to announce the publication of a new guide to copyright for cultural heritage organisations. [?]
- Collections Management Network website
- Collections Management Network (CMNetwork) is a consortium of consultants, advisers and trainers with expertise in collections management. We work together to provide practical, authoritative, cost ef [?] <span id="fck_dom_range_temp_1287584946184_396" />
[[Role::newcomer]] [[Role::strategy manager]] [[Role::policy maker]] [[Role::project manager]] [[Role::content manager]] [[Role::acquisitions manager]] [[Goal::managing]] [[Goal::copyright]] [[Goal::IPR]] [[Goal::legal]] [[Level::basic]] [[Level::medium]] [[Level::deep]]
