Tag: 24. Dezember 2008

As agreed at the RIHA General Assembly, Rome, 8 November 2008

1. Statement

“Copyright seeks to protect the rights of authorship while securing the dissemination of knowledge. It protects the form of expression of ideas, but not the ideas, information or concepts expressed (…) A regime which is unduly protective of the interest of existing rights holders may therefore inhibit, or even stifle, the development of original material.”
British Academy, Copyright and Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2006

RIHA, the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art, is concerned that recent developments in technology, legislation and practice have meant that the various copyright exemptions that exist to promote the advance of creative and scholarly work are not being applied to achieve their intended effect. RIHA strongly believes that neither copyright nor licensing rules should inhibit the development and diffusion of original scholarly research, regardless of the way in which it is published or otherwise disseminated.

RIHA calls upon copyright holders and other stakeholders including publishers, galleries, museums, and collecting societies, when dealing with scholarly research, to:

Subscribe to the definition of scholarly research as stated in section 2 of this document

Apply the existing copyright exemptions in keeping with their intended purpose

Refrain from demanding or refusing unnecessary permissions, or granting these permissions on unreasonable terms.

RIHA further calls upon collecting societies and monopoly copyright holders, when charging for the use and reproduction of images in scholarly publications, to charge solely the marginal cost to the institution of making the specific reproduction for delivery to the researcher, rather than the costs of creating and maintaining a collection of images or of making provision for a profit margin on transactions.

2. Definitions of research

For the purpose of clarity, RIHA proposes the following definitions of research:*

Scholarly research

A type of non-commercial research whose principal objective is public benefit rather than private profit and/or the recovery of the costs of the research. Scholarly research may include the initial stages of collecting material as well as subsequent stages which involve the analysis and publication of the results. The presentation of the results will be without charge to the recipients or will be at a charge which can only be expected to cover the reasonable costs of production and distribution, including the reasonable profits of a commercial publisher.

Commercial research

Research whose principal objective is profit rather than public benefit. Commercial research normally includes a charge to the user that covers the cost of the research as well as its dissemination, and includes a profit margin.

3. Recommendations

RIHA urges copyright holders and other stakeholders to respect of the following British Academy recommendations (paraphrased):

Recommendation 1

Copyright must provide reasonably broad and practically effective exemptions for research and private study, and for criticism or review.

Recommendation 2

With regard to the exception for research and private study under the 1988 Copyright Act:

a) ‘Research’ should be treated as distinct from ‘private study’ and should not only encompass the intial stages of an academic project but also subsequent analysis and publication

b) Research should be treated as non-commercial where the taking of copyright material is fair, and where any charge to the user would only cover production and distribution of a publication (including reasonable profit of a commercial publisher)

c) Research funded by a research council or charity is by definition non-commercial

d) In the case of commercial research, charges should be reasonable and abuse should be restrained.

From Susan Bielstein’s Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property quoted at

http://www.ischools.org/oc/conference08/pc/PA2-3_iconf08.doc

See a preview of Bielstein’s book:

The next day I presented with Seb Chan, about our take on “Search & Find.” That evening we all went to a lovely dinner at one of the best Taiwanese joints in Taipei. (Thanks to Tien Sing, Shadiral, Christina and Aleksandra for being such entertaining dinner conversation.) Then off for a wander in one of the massive night markets. I decided to jump in a cab back to the hotel with Jackie from NZ Live and Jock from Te Ara. It took a slightly long way home, we suspected.

When I got up to my room, I saw a text message from my manager, asking if he could call me on Friday at 9am. I wrote back to say I was going to be on a bus full of people at that time, and that I was awake now if he wanted to call. The phone rang.

“I’ll just get straight to the point. You’ve been affected by the layoffs.”

He told me he was reading from a script he was required to follow, and that he needed an address to send some sort of “Agreement” to me in Australia, and needed it sent back by December 19. Before I’d even finished the call, I twittered (to my private account):

“Wow. I just got fired.” I was immediately distressed.