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speaking, if you’re not the copyright owner and you do any of these things, then you have breached copyright. As a publisher, it is your responsibility to ensure that you have not published anything you do not have a right to publish or you could find yourself in trouble.
How to Avoid Breaching Publishing Laws Journalist Fiona Clark looks at some of the myths and misconceptions in publishing and how to avoid breaching legislation You've built your website and posted your blogs. Your social media accounts are building a steady following and the bookings are rolling in. Congratulations, you now have a second career – publishing. But before you crack open the champagne to celebrate, the world of publishing comes with a plethora of rules and responsibilities that you need to consider. Copyright infringement and defamation laws are just a couple when it comes to the rules. Breaches of copyright can be costly in terms of fines, with courts able to award fines of up to £5,000.1 And, if you think this doesn’t apply to you, then think again. If you haven’t taken the pictures or written the words that you’re posting, then somebody else has, and it’s your responsibility to ensure you have the right to publish them. ‘I didn’t know’ is not a defence, according to Simon Ewing, copyright and intellectual property lawyer for Russell Cooke solicitors, who I interviewed on this subject. He explains, “Copying and other infringing acts under the legislation are ‘strict liability’ offences. In other words, it does not matter if you had no knowledge or intention to copy someone else’s work – you can still be liable.”
What is copyright?
Copyright, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is, “The exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.” Ewing adds copyright also gives the owner, “Certain moral rights including the right to object to derogatory treatment of the work. And those rights belong to the owner alone unless and until they give permission to a third party.” There are some defences and exceptions2 which we’ll get to later but, generally
Myth 1: I can do what I like with an article I’m quoted in You’re interviewed for an article, maybe along with a few others, and the article is published. The publisher says you can put it on your website. Great; linking content from your site to others and vice versa with a hyperlink, also known as back-linking, is good for search engine optimising (SEO), so it’s a win-win. Then you decide you don’t like other practitioners being quoted in an article on your site, so you cut the other practitioners out. This would be considered adaptation, and unless you have written permission to do it, it is unadvisable. “Even if the publisher has given permission, that licence is likely to be restricted to making it available in its original form. By editing it without consent, you’ve probably breached the terms of the licence and again treated the work in a manner contrary to the author’s moral rights,” Ewing warns.3 Then you decide that since it’s your words that have been used to create this masterpiece, surely you have the right to take the reporter’s name off it, put your name on it and pass it on to a third party as your own work? This is a big ‘no-no’. Someone else took the time to write your words down and link them nicely with words of their own. The journalist may own the copyright themselves but, in most cases, the copyright will lie with the original publisher or employer who paid that person to string your pearls of wisdom together.4 That copyright will remain with them for around 70 years,5 so it’ll will be quite some time before you can make any changes.6 So, how can you make people aware that
As a publisher, it is your responsibility to ensure that you have not published anything you do not have a right to
Reproduced from Aesthetics | Volume 5/Issue 5 - April 2018