Category Archives: Copyright

World Book and Copyright Day 23rd April

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On the 23rd of April each year, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) celebrates World Book and Copyright Day.

Image of a world, books and the copyright symbol. Text says World Book and Copyright Day

The death anniversary of William Shakespeare, Miguel Cervantes and Inca Garciloso de la Vega as well as the birth or death of several prominent authors, was chosen in 1995 by UNESCO to become the World Book and Copyright Day. That date is 23rd April.

The day in itself is a celebration of everything relating to books but also to highlight the importance copyright has in the dissemination of some of our favourite reads.

Thanks to copyright, thousands of authors and publishers around the world can publish works that enrich society, through creativity, diversity and access to knowledge.

Copyright is an Intellectual Property (IP) right which allows the creator of an original work, certain economic rights as well as the right to modify, adapt, and disseminate the work. Copyright is automatic and in the UK it lasts for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years.

Copyright protects different categories of work, from literary, dramatic, artistic and musical works, films and sound recordings as well as broadcasts and typographical arrangement.

Books fall into the literary works spectrum. However, sometimes a book can have multiple types of works included.

Image showing different copyright components of text and duration of copyright protection

Using certain material from a book can sometimes become problematic. Multiple rights holders, means multiple people to request permission from. At times, a publisher might own the copyright and using the material in any way would mean that permission must be requested from publishers which also could mean paying a fee.

While copyright was created to protect creators and their original work, it has become a way for publishers to keep the power over the creations. Alexander Pope described it this way:

What Authors lose, their Booksellers have won,

So Pimps grow rich, while Gallants are undone.

While during Pope’s time, publishers indeed had a lot more power over authors, nowadays, with Open Access for publications, the authors can keep the copyright to their creations and share them widely for the enjoyment and use of the public.

Have a look below at the multiple resources available at Loughborough as well as the multitude of free resources, either because they have been published Open Access or because copyright expired, and they are now part of the public domain.

Loughborough University Catalogue

Authors, copyright, and publishing in the digital era / by Francina Cantatore, 2014

China’s creative industries copyright, social network markets and the business of culture in a digital age / Lucy Montgomery, 2010

Copyright versus open access on the organisation and international political economy of access to scientific knowledge / Marc Scheufen, 2015

E-publishing and digital libraries legal and organizational issues / edited by Ioannis Iglezakis, Tatiana-Eleni Synodinou, and Sarantos Kapidakis, 2010

Judiciary-friendly forensics of software copyright infringement / Vinod Polpaya Bhattathiripad, 2014

Piracy the intellectual property wars from Gutenberg to Gates / Adrian Johns, 2010

Publishing law Hugh Jones and Christopher Benson, 2014

Rethinking copyright history, theory, language / Ronan Deazley, 2006

The copyright wars three centuries of trans-Atlantic battle / Peter Baldwin, 2014

The digital rights movement the role of technology in subverting digital copyright / Hector Postigo, 2012

The EU Artificial Intelligence Act regulating subliminal AI systems / Rostam J. Neuwirth, 2022

The rhetoric of intellectual property copyright law and the regulation of digital culture / by Jessica Reyman, 2009

Wired shut copyright and the shape of digital culture / Tarleton Gillespie, 2007

Directory of Open Access Books

Copyright’s Broken Promise  – Willinsky, John (2022)

Copyright and Cartography  – Alexander, Isabella (2023)

Copyright, the Freedom of Expression and the Right to Information  – Mendis, Sunimal (2011)

The Copyright Pentalogy : How the Supreme Court of Canada Shook the Foundations of Canadian Copyright Law  – Michael Geist (2020)

The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture  – Dulong de Rosnay, Melanie; De Martin, Juan Carlos (2012)

The Greatest Films Never Seen: The Film Archive and the Copyright Smokescreen – Op den Kamp, Claudy (2017)

What if we could reimagine copyright?  – Giblin, Rebecca; Weatherall, Kimberlee (2017)

Whose Book Is it Anyway?: A View from Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity  – Jefferies, Janis (Editor); Kember, Sarah (Editor) (2019)

Project Gutenberg

Open Library

UCL Press

For more books on copyright, visit our World Book and Copyright Day stand in the University Library, level 3.

Image of two people sitting and reading with text in the middle saying World Book and Copyright Day 23rd April

Navigating copyright in the Digital Age

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Have you ever found a nice image on the great, wide web and decided to download and use it? Have you ever come across an array of Creative Commons licenses and their meaning was daunting or confusing? Hopefully the next few paragraphs will help you navigate copyright in the digital age.

So, what exactly is copyright? Copyright is defined as an exclusive economic right granted to the creator of original work to permit or prevent other people from using it. In plain language, copyright is a right given to a creator (human creator) to use the work created in any way shape or form they wish. They can sell it, bequeath it, or decide to give their copyright up and make it available for anyone to use without restriction. You might come across items that are licensed as Creative Commons Zero, those are free to be re-used without issues.

You can also find items that are in the public domain, not to be confused with publicly available. Public domain items are works, where copyright has come to an end, and they can now be used by the public without fear of copyright infringement. However, do be careful. Certain items can have trademarks attached to them, so they work differently.

How do you navigate this mishmash of reusable, free and all rights reserved works that you can find on the web? Well, there are some handy questions to ask yourself:

Be aware that anything that says “fair use” does not apply in the UK. In the UK we use the term “fair dealing”.

The ‘fair dealing’ principle in the UK, is much more restrictive than the US ‘fair use’ principle. In simple terms, the question to ask yourself when applying the ‘fair dealing’ principle is how would a fair-minded person use this material? The below infographic should help with ‘fair dealing’ use.

More information on ‘fair dealing’ can be found in the Fair Dealing: A quick guide on our repository.

Licenses are very useful when it comes to knowing what can or cannot be done with copyright materials. So here is a quick overview of the different licenses:

  • All Rights Reserved (ARR): The most restrictive license, granting the copyright holder exclusive control over all aspects of the work’s use.
  • Creative Commons (CC) Licenses: A family of open-content licenses that provide a flexible approach to copyright management. CC licenses offer different levels of permission, from non-commercial use to commercial exploitation with attribution.
  • Software licenses: Legal instruments governing the use and redistribution of software.

You can find more information on licenses in our Licenses section on the Copyright webpages.

Important to remember is the fact that materials found online have the same protection as physical materials, like books or paintings. Before you save and re-use, make sure you know what you can or cannot do with the material and most importantly of all, make sure to credit the author. If you still struggle with licensing and re-use of digital material, get in touch with Loughborough University’s Copyright and Licensing Manager.

AI and copyright

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Post by Cristina Rusu, Copyright manager, Loughborough University

A humanoid robot pondering mathematical calculations on a blackboard
By Mike MacKenzie, CC-BY, via Flickr

As AI develops, an increasing number of news items are released regarding court cases of copyright infringement by ChatGPT, Stability AI and many, many more. Why is it that there are such issues regarding AI and copyright?

Copyright is an Intellectual Property (IP) right which grants the creator of a work the right to allow or prevent copying of said work. Although works are protected regardless of their artistic merit, the work does need to be created by a “natural person”. For example, software code is protected by copyright; what the code does is not.

Generative AI works, ChatGPT for example, because these algorithms have been fed an extensive amount of data. The outputs these AIs create are a combination of that data and the user’s input.  

AI is not limited to just written outputs; some AIs have been trained in creating the following media:

  • Image
  • Speech
  • Video
  • Music
  • Code.

So, what is the problem? In the beginning, companies have been open about where the data came from, and now they have become more and more secretive about it. While scrapping the internet and text and data mining (TDM) can be done for research purposes, under copyright exceptions, the access needs to be legal and the use non-commercial. Generative AI software is now mainly behind paywalls. It is also telling that something is not rosy, considering the number of court cases happening in the UK, EU and US. You can read more about some of the lawsuits below:

Artists Are Suing Artificial Intelligence Companies and the Lawsuit Could Upend Legal Precedents Around Art by Shanti Escalante-De Mattei

3 Lawsuits in 10 Days: Who Is Suing OpenAI, and Why? By Allison Burt

AI learned from their work. Now they want compensation. By Gerrit De Vynch

Authors file a lawsuit against OpenAI for unlawfully ‘ingesting’ their books by Ella Creamer

Let’s consider that the inputs (the data that the Generative AIs have been fed) are under copyright, and the use has potentially been unlawful. It also means that the outputs are plagiarized at the least and copyright infringement at worst.

However, there are other issues to be considered when using Generative AI. According to UNESCO’s quick start guide on ChatGPT, has highlighted the following issues:

Issues 
Academic integrityPlagiarism and cheating
Lack of regulationSecurity issues
Privacy concernsNo age-regulation
Cognitive biasBiased ideas and perpetuates bias
Gender and diversityStereotyping and discrimination
AccessibilityLack of access in certain countries
CommercializationExtracting data for commercial purposes
Table 1 Issues with using ChatGPT, UNESCO, 2023, p.11  

Alex Fenlon, Head of Copyright and Licensing in Library Services at the University of Birmingham, has also highlighted other risks associated with using Generative AIs.

Aleksandr Tiulkanov, AI and Data Policy Lawyer, created a useful flowchart to help assess when ChatGPT is safe. You could ask yourself: Does it matter if the outputs are true? Do you have the knowledge to verify the accuracy of the output? Are you willing and able to take full responsibility (legal, moral, etc.) for missed inaccuracies? If you answered yes to some or all of these questions, then you are free to use ChatGPT; if you answered no, you may want to re-think your use of the GenAI.

According to UNESCO’s ChatGPT quick guide, there are possible uses of ChatGPT in the research process:

It could be used in:

  1. Research Design: generate ideas for research questions or projects; suggest data sources.
  2. Data collection: search archives and datasets; translate sources into other languages.
  3. Data analysis: code data; suggest themes or topics for analysis.
  4. Writing up: improve writing quality; reformat citations and references; translate writing.

One point to make here is that everything that is inputted within these AIs will be used as training data. Make sure you own the data you input and are happy for it to be re-used to train the AIs. Always read the terms and conditions. If in doubt, get in touch with your copyright officer or library.

Disclaimer: The information presented here does not reflect the views of Loughborough University.

Further reading

Guadamuz, Andres, A Scanner Darkly: Copyright Liability and Exceptions in Artificial Intelligence Inputs and Outputs (February 26, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4371204 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4371204

Lee, Jyh-An, Computer-generated Works under the CDPA 1988 (November 5, 2021). Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property (Jyh-An Lee, Reto Hilty & Kung-Chung Liu eds, Oxford University Press, 2021) , The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 2021-65, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3956911

Guadamuz, Andres, Do Androids Dream of Electric Copyright? Comparative Analysis of Originality in Artificial Intelligence Generated Works (June 5, 2020). Intellectual Property Quarterly, 2017 (2), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2981304