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| Erin Finlay, manager of legal services at Access Copyright |
AMPA had the pleasure of hosting Erin Finlay,
manager of legal services at Access Copyright, for the seminar “Copyright
Issues in a Digital Era” in Calgary and Edmonton. Participants
included magazine writers, editors, publishers and marketing consultants, and
there was something for everyone to sink their teeth into.
Erin started with a crash
course on the basics of copyright law, and managed to make some pretty heavy
legalese come to life. One participant described the seminar as “very thorough
without being pedantic.” It was appreciated that, wherever possible, Erin
offered definitions related to magazine publishing. For example:
- Moral rights – an author could claim violation of their moral rights if they don’t want to be associated with an advertisement featured on the same page as their article.
We
also looked at digital copyright conflicts in journalism, and specifically the Heather
Robertson case:
- Class action against the newspaper industry for using her articles in digital archives without her consent
- The verdict – newspaper publishers have the right to include articles in a full reproduction of the newspaper, but not when the paper is disaggregated into individual articles
- This begs a key question about copyright issues – “are we trying to squeeze old world copyright models into new technology?”
Also
of particular relevance to the magazine industry was the Digital Copyright
Trail—creator to publisher to distributor to user:
- Publishing is no longer a model of creators and publishers pushing information out to users via distributors, but rather the reverse.
- Digital media distributors (ie: internet service providers and search engines) and users are now pulling that information from publishers and creators.
There
was plenty more that we covered in this short seminar, and Erin certainly taught
us a lot, but there’s also always more to learn. One participant
requested a discussion of contractual rights, and how publishers can create
contracts with their freelancers that are fair to all. We’ll have to bring Erin
back in the future to tackle that one!
--- Rebecca Lesser
AMPA Communications & Programs Coordinator
