Three students are working together on a project, uploading music and other content to create a computer game. Sounds fun, but it could turn into a nightmare if they haven't checked the copyright on the material they are uploading or decided beforehand how to split the intellectual property rights on the product they are creating.
Web 2.0 has brought all sorts of new possibilities for students to interact with each other, nationally and internationally. With wikis and blogs, any student can become their own publisher. But many have no knowledge of the potential legal issues that might come with such responsibilities.
Charles Oppenheim, an expert in intellectual property rights (IPR) at Loughborough University, says it can be difficult to know who owns the copyright on student-led projects. "The problem is that parties generally go into web 2.0 projects on the basis of goodwill and don't want the bother of a legal contract or don't get round to signing anything that makes the copyright clear."
Clear resources
Another problem, says Naomi Korn, an IPR consultant, is that people see anything to do with intellectual property rights as bogged down in complex, legalistic documents, although she argues that it doesn't have to be that way. Her project, Web2Rights, funded by the Joint Informations Systems Committee (Jisc) aims to make it easier for academics and students to negotiate IPR.
Set up in 2007 to support the Jisc Users and Innovations programme, Web2Rights is not so much about the legal ins and outs of IPR, as about addressing the unwillingness of academics and students to engage with it. One of the project's most talked-about resources is a wall chart, written in layman's language, which guides people step by step through what they need to know or ask before they start a collaborative project. Korn says: "Copyright is a legal issue, but it is like health and safety. You do not have a lawyer dealing with [this area]. It is about practical steps an organisation can take to do the right thing."
Lawrie Phipps, programme manager of the Jisc Users and Innovation programme, says: "Students can be more aware than others about things like the terms and conditions around online banking, but they are less aware of IPR." He says that this might be due to a lack of experience - being at the beginning of their careers, students simply don't realise the value of intellectual property.
Oppenheim says greater awareness is essential for students to protect their own copyright for the future and to protect their university. Senior managers at universities, who are traditionally risk-averse, need to work out how to balance encouraging innovation against potential legal problems and to be pragmatic about how they can manage risk. He suggests implementing a robust risk-management procedure, based on taking down anything reported as infringing copyright, investigating it, and putting aside a pot of money to cover costs should an aggrieved person argue that the take-down policy is not good enough.
However, he said the number of times universities had been sued for copyright issues was "so rare it was almost non-existent" and that most people will be content with an apology and a token payment.
Relevant information
Neil Witt, principal lecturer in navigation systems and marine communications at the University of Plymouth, knows about the problems from an innovator's perspective. What he wants is something that tells him quickly what level of IPR risk is involved in a particular project. He came to Web2Rights for advice and has since been brought on board to articulate users' concerns. "University IPR experts can err on the side of caution, but you want to innovate. You need relevant information so you know you are doing the right thing," he says.
Meanwhile, Korn says universities need to be able to show that they have considered copyright issues. "Ownership ceases to be a problem if you have some kind of mechanism so that a person can freely use what they have contributed," she says. "It needs to be clear, transparent and fair. It is not about acknowledging that people have done something original and can benefit from copyright protection, but it establishes fair terms, for example, that by joining up to the university network the person accepts that their material can be freely used and shared."
She cites the example of Second Life. Its terms and conditions of service allow people to retain the copyright on their creations but gives permission to other users to engage with the creations for the purposes of taking part in Second Life.
One of the other problems with copyright is that collaborative projects are increasingly international, and copyright law hasn't kept pace with global developments in digital technology. The European Commission has just released a green paper on copyright in the knowledge economy. It seeks to review copyright laws across Europe and ensure they are harmonised. "First Europe, then the world," says Korn.
Then there is the issue of how to get messages about copyright over to students. Web2Rights has just developed an animation project aimed specifically at signposting students as well as academics to the Web2Rights material. "The point is to make it very accessible," says Alice Gugan, communications coordinator at Jisc. "IPR is not all negative. It has great benefits in protecting people's work."
Weblinks
Jisc: jisc.ac.uk
Web2Rights: web2rights.org.uk
