4pm, Friday, the Copyright Officer’s office.
Right, what’s left? Ah, this learning object created by social sciences that they want to release as an open educational resource. Good on them, I suppose – it’s certainly gone down well with our own students.
So, let’s unzip it and have a look. Ah, okay, an html file and a flash file. They should be alright. ‘Video.wmv’ looks a bit more suspicious. I’d better open it up and see what it is, to be safe.
Mmm. It’s a video of The Clash playing a gig – a 90 second clip from one, anyway. Great. No immediate indication of where they got it from, no credits at the start, and, a quick fast forward to the end, none there either.
So, let me think. I suppose I’ll have to clear copyright in the song itself. Hopefully it’ll still be some of the band that own the rights to that song, as I’ll have to get in touch with them anyway to sort out the performers’ rights. Then it’ll be the rights in the recording to clear – probably best to start with the record company there, I imagine. Performers’ rights? Might be the band that own those, but I’ll check with the record company first. This is going to be a bit of a nightmare. Anything I’ve missed? Mmm. There are going to be rights in the film production too, I suppose. That’s going to be pretty difficult without knowing where this video even came from. Right, Monday morning, I’ll need to get back to the lecturer and find out, and explain this is going to be a long, arduous process, and they’d probably better get a budget ready for this. I’ve had enough for now, I’m going home.
Monday, 2pm, the Copyright Officer’s office
Ah, there’s an email back from Jayne in social sciences about her OER learning materials, and that damned music video. A morning’s research has got me the name of the original record company, but it seems they’ve assigned the rights to successor companies, and I’ve got the names and some details for the band members, though they might not be up-to-date. So, yes, the email. Oh, the video is included to set the scene for some materials on social culture in the 1970s. I think it’s time to go back and ask whether she’d like to consider some already licensed materials instead for this, rather than me spending half my life for the next three months and a chunk of their departmental budget on clearing this.
In the world of intellectual property, there is no getting away from the fact that clearing rights in audio-visual resources is rarely straightforward. Often, those resources have multiple rights holders, and a commercial value. Attempting to clear all the rights for release under an open licence may be possible in some cases, but it is likely to mean a large investment of time, and possible cash as well. By way of example, a Glasgow solicitors’ firm wished to use a short clip from The Clash’s I Fought the Law at the start and finish of their podcasts. After substantial investigations to track down rights holders, they decided that the total fees required, some £8000, was well beyond what they were willing to pay. I wonder how may billable hours went unbilled whilst the lawyers sought permissions.
So, what might have been the alternatives?
First, given that the video was included to meet a very general purpose, the lecturer might be persuaded to ditch this troublesome clip for something already licensed. It’s fairly unlikely that any of the collections to which the institution subscribes will allow CC licensing of a clip, but it might be worth checking. More fruitful is likely to be a search for clips which are already CC licensed. You’re unlikely to find The Clash in concert under a CC licence (not a valid one, anyway), but there might be an alternative that meets the purpose. Failing that, you might suggest that a trawl of CC-licensed still images and music clip be made into a slideshow.
Second, it might meet the purpose simply to give the learner a link to an appropriate clip (or clips – give them a choice!). For example, YouTube through licensing deals and collaborations with music publishers have legitimately hosted content. Taking this a step further, it might be worthwhile to get learners to find their own examples, and to describe what’s different in those examples from today’s world.
Overall, there’s a lot of good stuff out there that can be incorporated into OER, without the trials and frustrations of content clearance. Leave it to someone else to clear The Beatles back catalogue!
Jason Miles-Campbell
26 November 2010
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