Intellectual Property Rights and copyright> Copyright in different mediums

While general copyright principles apply to all types of work whatever the medium, there may be some slightly different rules depending on the type of work involved. These include who owns copyright, the period of time copyright applies to the work, and what may be done without asking permission.

Electronic materials and copyright

Copyright and its limitations and exceptions applies to electronic as well as printed work. There is an increasing number of electronic materials available, both born digital and digitised later on. All these materials, except from simple facts, are covered by copyright. It is now easy to make good quality copies of works and to disseminate work widely on the Internet. These activities are hard to police, especially as different countries have different copyright regulations.

Academic institutions increasingly want to make electronic materials available on their websites and in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). This again requires the copyright holder's permission. Many further and higher education institutions have subscribed to HERON, a service which provides copyright clearance, digitisation and delivery of electronic book extracts and journal articles. Academic institutions may also obtain a Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) HE Trial Scanning Licence.

Digital repositories and copyright

With digital repositories becoming more widespread it is essential for repository administrators, in most cases information professionals, to find out the copyright status of the works they want to put in. This is especially the case for journal articles to be deposited into institutional repositories. There are varying positions taken with regards to self-archiving.

• More and more publishers are now allowing authors to deposit their work in repositories, even when copyright has to be transferred to the publisher.
• Some publishers only require the author to give them a non-exclusive licence, i.e., the right to publish their work without the need to transfer copyright.
• There is also an increasing number of open access journal publishers, and publishers who provide an open access option.
• It is also possible for individual authors to negotiate with publishers to allow their work to be deposited in repositories.

With all these options available, finding out the copyright status of articles can be very difficult. One resource which aims to help information professionals and authors alike with identifying publishers' self-archiving polices is the SHERPA/RoMEO database. This acts as an excellent starting point when faced with identifying the copyright status of articles from a particular journal.

Resources on electronic materials and copyright

Music copyright

Music copyright in particular has different issues to consider. Here it is important to remember that the lyrics to a song are covered by a separate copyright to the actual music of the same song, i.e., they have different copyright lives and owners. In fact, lyrics are treated the same as literary works. Particular recordings of the song are covered by a different copyright again. If copyright clearance is needed for a composition, i.e. lyrics and/or music, or performances/recordings then you would need to contact the MCPS-PRS Alliance.

Music copyright resources