Get your head around copyright basics

Get your head around copyright basics or pay the price with litigation

In light of some interesting tweeting recently around the hashtag #cooksource I though I'd brush up my knowledge and understanding of copyright law.

Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time, after which the work is said to enter the public domain.

Plagiarism is defined as "the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication, of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the representation of them as one's own original work.”

Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which property rights are recognized and their corresponding fields of law. Tangible assets include musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets in some jurisdictions.

The copyright law of the United Kingdom governs the legally enforceable rights to creative and artistic works under the laws of the United Kingdom. The primary purpose of copyright is to protect authors' rights. Authors have a pre-existing common law copyright over their work which is upheld by statutory law.

Copyright law forbids the use, reproduction and/or reprinting of copy without the express consent of the author/originator or holder of the copyright. “Copy” includes images, sound, any printed materials (books, recipes, poems, stories, articles etc) and similar online material including blog posts. Material posted online is NOT in the public domain and is NOT free for reproduction without consent, it is still covered by copyright law unless otherwise stated by the author.

Thankfully, with today’s technology it is incredibly easy for authors to Google their own work and discover copyright infringements. Unfortunately, because of today’s technology and social channels it is also incredibly easy for breaches of copyright to become public knowledge – potentially creating a negative social media storm and legal minefield.

Refer to the case of Gaudio vs Griggs/Cooks Source ( see K E Gill's timeline for a variety of links relating to this case). This is a case of copyright infringement of Monica Gaudio’s article on the history of the humble apple pie. The article is Ms Gaudio’s intellectual property and as author, Ms Gaudio has copyright over its reproduction and distribution (clearly stated on her blog with the use of a copyright statement). By lifting Ms Gaudio’s article from the internet and reproducing it in print, Cooks Source is in breach of copyright. Although Cooks Source attribute the article to Ms Gaudio with a by-line and as a result do not technically commit plagiarism it is evident that at no point did Ms Gaudio provide consent for the reproduction of her work and the publication infringes upon her copyright. The social media backlash in response to Ms Gaudio’s treatment by Cooks Source has resulted in the magazine loosing advertisers, pulling their website and essentially going underground until things “quieten down”.

(Please do correct any errors by posting your comments - its better to be right than wrong!)

Definition sources: Wikipedia