Week 7 Flashcards
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
- Copyright is owned by the creator of any piece of work created using skill, labour or judgement
- If that work is stolen or reproduced, the creator can sue for damages
- In freelance the creator owns copyright
- If created in the course of employment the employer owns copyright
- Owner can license or ‘assign’ their work so others can use it or own it
Penalties
- injunction
- damages ££
- claim on profits
- order for possession
Copyright works include
all kinds of text whether handwritten, printed or online, such as books, journalistic and scientific articles, poems, lyrics, plays, scripts, shorthand or longhand records of speeches and interviews,
Musical manuscripts,
photographs,
design documents,
websites,
templates
bureaucratic forms
graphic works,
maps,
plans,
sketches,
paintings,
sculptures,
databases and
computer programmes
When is copyright breached 5
- If all or a substantial part of a work is copied without permission
- It can be prosecuted as a criminal offence
- New events are not subject to copyright but the skill of writing quotes, or a headline, or layout are
- If a quote is taken without attribution
- Pix/vids from the internet without permission
Defence of ‘fair dealing’
Applies for the purpose of reporting ‘news and current news’
It can also be used for criticism or review
‘Fair dealing’ defence includes
- The media organisation must publish sufficient acknowledgement of the work and its author
- Media must not publish more than is ‘necessary’
- Allows unauthorised use of a few seconds of footage or some quotes
- Photos are excluded
Public interest
- Unauthorised publication of copyright material can very rarely be in the public interest
- Courts decide this on a case-by-case basis
- It will decide if copyright was necessary
- May win if it exposes something immoral, damaging to public life, health, safety or the administration of justice or incites immoral behaviour or in some other circumstances
Photo’s taken before July 31 1989
Copyright is owned by the commissioner
Photo’s taken after July 31 1989
Copyright is owned by the photographer
The commissioner has a moral right for any film or photo commissioned for a private or domestic purpose so can also sue for breach of copyright if the pic/film is used without their permission
Defamation Act 1996 amended by the Defamation Act 2013
- Protects people from unjustified attacks on their reputation
- Civil court
To sue someone for defamation you must prove the following:
Defamation
Identification
Publication
Serious harm/Serious financial loss
Libel
The publication of a statement in written or any other permanent form, which affects the reputation of a person, company or organisation
Permanent form includes; a statement ], text, tweet or broadcast
Slander
A defamatory statement in a transient (spoken) form - no permanent record of it
A statement is defamatory if it does any of the following 4
- Causes someone to be shunned or avoided
- Lower them in the estimation of right-thinking members of society
- Exposes them in the estimations of right-thinking members of society generally
- Disparages them in their business, office, trade or profession
Standard of proof
On the balance of probabilities
The Remedy
Damages, paying for both sides
Repetition Rule
If you repeat a defamatory statement you could be sued for defamation too
Case laws
Depp v Newsgroup Newspapers
Vardy v Rooney
Limitation period
You have 12 months from the date of first publication to bring an action for defamation
Inference
A statement with a secondary meaning which can be understood by someone without specialist knowledge, reading between the lines
Innuendo
A hint towards a hidden meaning which is defamatory to someone with specialist knowledge
Identification
Always ensure you’ve identified the right person, a risk of more than one person suing
The test is whether the statement would ‘reasonably lead to those acquainted with the complainant to belive that he or she was the person referred to’
Juxtaposition
Be careful with images and captions, or stories placed next to other images
Publication
The words complained of must be published to a third party
But just because the allegedly libellous words have been published online it doesn’t mean a libel action will succeed
Section 5 of the Defamation Act 2013
Protects website operators against defamation by users if they show they are only hosting content
But if the claimant can’t identify the user or the website operator has failed to act quickly on a notice of complaint then the website operator can be held liable
