A few days ago I went to the annual Book and Library Exhibition in Gothenburg. I wanted to check out new (or for me unknown) authors/books, but I also wanted to see what new was offered within the ICT field.

One of my ideas (traditional - but still something I would like to develop) is to construct some pages for my classes where I can use

- the white board with interaction (I know still traditional stuff...)
- short articles with read text (the audio material could be followed by a colour indication of the parts being read...)
- pictures / audio / video in certain marked parts of the text
- in-depth articles (with a possibility of having an audio file plus maybe the colour indication...)

Since I haven't done this yet I would like to ask you much more experienced members for advice about putting this together. What about copyright to audio / video material like speeches from famous politicians / film/video clips from WWI / WWII etc...? Programs? etc... The idea is to develop some of my pages this way where the development of a forum would follow along...

An interesting observation at this Exhibition was the fact that very little was presented within the ICT field. "Electronic books" which in this case meant books on pdf-files with a sophisticated system of controlling access and one program for audiofiles with colour indications (for people with reading disabilities) was the only things I could find...

Just a few quick reactions to the message from Anders:

1. Interactive whiteboards: See the REvIEW Project: Research and Evaluation of Interactive Electronic Whiteboards, University of Hull in collaboration with Promethean: http://www.thereviewproject.org

2. Using audio and video materials: We do a lot of this in my subject area, Modern Foreign Languages. See Module 2.2 (Introduction to multimedia CALL) at the ICT4LT website: http://www.ict4lt.org. Module 2.5 and Module 3.2 on authoring one's own materials might be relevant too.

3. Copyright: A can of worms! I have addressed this issue elsewhere in the Forum - I'm not sure where it ended up now. See my guidelines on copyright at http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm - which refers mainly to the situation in the UK. In the UK, copyright on audio and video materials lasts for 50 years from the end of the year in which the recording was made. Copyright on printed materials last for 70 years after the death of the author. Basically, if you are putting any kind of material up at a publicly accessible website, you should seek the creator's permission. Material that you gather from other websites is not copyright-free, unless it is specifically stated to be so, so you can't just assemble it and distribute it further via the Web. There is usually a copyright message on websites indicating who owns the materials and what you are allowed to do with them.

Thank you for your fast response Graham.
I agree with you about copyright - It's very hard (or impossible) to really figure out what's the correct procedure. All these problems makes one hesitate using audio and video material of a modern date. There must be a way though to use the material when you create a website that's not a commercial site, or...

If you want a quick guide for Sweden, Nätuniversitet has produced a copyright guide for web-based materials. It'll be fine for Anders, but not so useful for everyone else, since it's only in Swedish!

You can access it via http://www.netuniversity.se and then go forward to Legala handboken, or you can go there directly via:

http://www.legalahandboken.netuniversity.se/

I think it is important to think about why we have copyright law. The main intention is to make sure the artist receives the maximum revenue for their work. Artists therefore mainly object to those actions that attempt to reduce their financial rewards. They usually do not complain if you use a small section of their work in order to promote it. This is what happens when writers quote extracts of the book in newspaper or magazine reviews. The writer or publisher would be silly to complain as the quotation should increase sales.

If you want to quote from a published work I would suggest you provide a link that enables your visitor to buy a copy of the book. I would adopt the same procedure when quoting from material on another website.

Books, articles, etc... I think I have an idea about what to do and what to not do but what about video/film-sequences and audiomaterial. If I want to put a JFK speech into my website - what are the general rules / law?

Anders asks:


I wouldn't DARE make such materials public without consulting the owner of the rights to the recording. Under UK law, making public any copyright audio or video material that has been produced in the last 50 years could be in breach of copyright. Copyright clearance MUST be obtained - unless there is a clear indication in the information about ownership that it it copyright-free. It makes no difference whether the materials are sold or offered for free, e.g. on an educational website.

Texts and images are also subject to copyright law. I wouldn't reproduce someone else's text on a public website, unless it's just a properly referenced short quotation from a complete work. A work can be a novel, a speech, a poem, a short story, etc. I would be particularly careful about reproducing images as legislation with regard to reproducing images (in the UK, at least) is particularly stringent. My daughter is a professional graphic designer and her advice is: "If you haven't created the image yourself or haven't bought rights to use it then don't use it!" Note, however, that certain clipart images and photographs are copyright-free for educational purposes, but only within a physical classroom and not for use in a "virtual classroom", e.g. on the Web.

I just want to say that the sites you posted up, Graham, have been EXTREMELY useful to me. Thanks a lot.

I must admit that in common with many people who don't make their living from selling their work (I have always given mine away to my LEA), I am less - robust, shall we say? - about copyright. But the sharing websites you mention are excellent and I have signed up to them, and perhaps I will even come round in part, to your way of thinking about copyright!

To some extent. I am still in a quandary about it.

Perhaps this deserves an extra discussion thread of its own, or this may be the thread to have it? That is, the thorny issue of WWW copyright and the right of the individual who posts on it to own their 'intellectual property'?

I am sure that you have done this before, but I am asking for it to be done in short word-bites for the non-ICT expert - and here rather than through the reading of information on links that are posted up by experts who already know about it all. It is not the way the rest of us think, I suspect. As much as we would want to be people who read extensive background materials, I suspect that most of us don't think like that. So an on-line, instant discussion may be useful (as opposed to those useful links!?).

As a teacher I have been dismayed at the lack of rights I have to own my material - and thus control it's distribution. I was, for instance, dismayed to see a worksheet I had designed and produced, published in a national QCA publication that they claimed as their own....

I don't want to sue, of course - anyone who knows me the through the Language List would know that I am a great believer in teachers sharing what we produce with each other...

Nonetheless, one wonders.

Graham, who makes his living from selling his intellectual ideas, may have one viewpoint, but what of the rest of us? It is one thing when WE send each other material - but it is another when a national or commercial body makes money out of our material?

How does anyone else feel about this issue and just where would YOU draw the line (as a layman/women, so-to-speak)?

Just another quickie mainly for Anders. The University of Gothenburg hosts an on-line 5p course called VIND, which I think stands for something like Video in Distance Education, aimed at people who want to include video sequences on on-line courses. I'm fairly sure that they must have taken this question up in a Swedish context.

I'm sure you know about the BONUS-agreement for the educational use of printed materials in Sweden. It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't a similar agreement for pictures and video clips.

One area which I use is campaigns - whether anti-smoking, OXFAM, refugee council, campaigns against the arms trade (and dare I mention Democracy Now and Indymedia...even the CWI).....campaigning organisations are more concerned with getting their message across than in preserving their copyright.

I'll check it out David. Thank you very much for the tip.

I think it would be a great shame if someone like Anders who is just starting out on creating what looks like will become a great web site got bogged down worrying about copyright issues.

I follow the practice identified by John - if I use someone's stuff I create a link back to their web site thereby promoting their site and mine. It works rather well and I am yet to be sued

Chris raises several important issues.

I derive about half my annual income from selling software that I have written. It’s not a great sum of money - roughly half the annual income of an average teacher. Naturally, I feel very strongly about copyright. I have only had to take serious action to protect my rights on one occasion – when an LEA ICT centre adapted a piece of software that I had written and began to sell the adaptation. When I approached the LEA about this they closed ranks and called in their big-gun lawyers to defend what they had done. Legal action against the LEA was out of the question for me. The legal advice from our family lawyer was not to go to court, as it it could prove expensive, but to contact every possible organisation through which the LEA might publicise the adapted package, i.e. to blacken their name. This I did, and it was very effective. Within a matter of months the LEA was ostracised from conferences at which they might present the adapted package, and government agencies refused to publicise it. The adaptation swiftly disappeared into oblivion.

I have also written lots of materials that are available free of charge, e.g. the materials at the ICT4LT site (http://www.ict4lt.org) and at my own website (http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk). I don’t object to teachers making multiple copies of these materials and using them for non-commercial educational purposes, subject to due acknowledgement of the source. I do object – and I have done so on two occasions, when I found my materials appearing without an acknowledgement on someone else’s website. On each occasion I admonished the offender and asked them to remove the materials from their website – which they did.

Chris writes:

You have considerable rights and you can exercise them with the full backing of the law. I would be furious if someone published my work without asking me and I would challenge the publisher immediately. You automatically have copyright on any original work that you create. If a work has been created as part of your employment duties then, unless a contract specifically states otherwise, the copyright resides with yourself. You have a good case for complaint - and may even be able to demand a retrospective fee. I know of one teacher who succeeded in obtaining a fee in a similar situation. He found a photograph of a street scene that he had taken in Berlin appearing on the cover of a published pamphlet. He recognised the photograph from the passers-by who appeared in it.

Chris writes:

As I have indicated above, you automatically have copyright on anything original that you create. Your message to this Forum and my reply, for example, are subject to copyright. Materials posted on the Web are subject to the same law as any other published materials. If I write a text, take a photograph, make an audio or video recording and publish it on the Web I still have intellectual property rights with regard to such materials. Just because they appear on the Web they do not automatically become freely available for all and sundry to do what they like with them.

There are several relevant documents at BECTA's ICT Advice site: http://www.ictadvice.org.uk
Search the site under "copyright" to find them. Here are some important points that have been extracted from the documents at the ICT Advice site:
* Copyright information often appears on a Web page, usually at the bottom of the page. This tells you what you are allowed or not allowed to do with the Web page. If the conditions of use of the Web page are not clearly defined or are severely restricted, contact the site owner or webmaster to request permission to use the page, stating clearly what you intend to do with it, e.g. make multiple copies for classroom use. Permission is only granted at the discretion of the copyright holder, who may wish to charge a fee for such use.
* Fair dealing permits certain acts without requiring the permission of the copyright owner. These include what is reasonable for private study and research. Making multiple copies for classroom use has been established as being outside the definition of fair dealing. You are normally allowed to:
i. make a temporary copy of a Web page, otherwise known as caching, as it is integral to accessing the Internet;
ii. print a single copy of a Web page, although not the whole website, for private study or research;
iii. make a single copy of a Web page, although not the whole website, to a hard drive or floppy disk, as long as it is not for the purpose of producing multiple copies;
iv. quote from a Web page as long as the source is acknowledged and it is for the purpose of criticism or review;
v. make a temporary copy of a Web page for the purpose of electronic transmission such as email, to an individual for their private study or research. The copy should be deleted as soon as the transmission is complete.
* Fair dealing ceases if:
i. a single electronic copy is made with the intention of producing multiple copies or redistributing it either in paper form or electronically;
ii. it is known that a licence is available to permit copying, but has not been sought;
iii. the copies are used commercially, sold or hired, whether it was the original intention or not when the copying took place;
iv. the copy is made publicly available, such as on a website, without the permission of the copyright holder.

I really appreciate this extensive answer Graham. I have basic knowledge on how to deal with written material - books, articles, webpages... but as I said in the beginning I'm a bit less sure what rules apply to video/films/audio material. From what you written and through some of the suggested links I start to get an idea. From what I understand it's difficult (if not impossible) to get the material that I desire to use and it's obvious to me that most websites break some of the rules that apply to this kind of material...

I really find it difficult to understand why teachers get so confused about copyright and the Web. If you place materials on a publicly accessible website you are a publisher and thereby subject to the same copyright constraints as any other publisher.

I am currently writing an article for an encyclopaedia to be published by Elsevier, a major international publishing company. The article includes eight screenshots taken from other published materials, namely CD-ROMs and websites. I have had to write to the copyright owner of each CD-ROM and website to seek permission to publish these screenshots, and I have to present a signed form to Elsevier from each publisher confirming that they have given permission for the screenshots to be published. This is standard procedure. It is common courtesy to ask for permission and, as I have indicated many times before, you may be breaking copyright law if you fail to obtain permission.

Regarding audio and video materials, the same rules apply. The next time that you watch a feature film or a documentary on TV, look at the credits and acknowledgments at the end. You will find that the source of every piece of music that has been played and every video clip that has been shown in the film is documented. The film production company has sought permission for these recordings to be played and video clips to be shown, and has probably paid a fee to the copyright owners. You have to do the same if you are making materials public. As I indicated before, there are no special concessions for education, and it does not matter whether you are publishing in order to share resources free of charge or for commercial gain. Publishing on the Web is quite different from using materials in the classroom, where there are substantial concessions for education, e.g. as embodied in the terms of the Copyright Licensing Agency and the Educational Recording Agency in the UK.

You may find material that is stated to be copyright-free or in the public domain, and the terms of using it are much more liberal - look for a clear statement saying "This video recording is in the public domain" or something similar.

A good example of a Web page containing archive video clips is the BBC site on WWII: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and look at the terms. These include, for example the following statement:

"You may not copy, reproduce, republish, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use bbc.co.uk content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You also agree not to adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any bbc.co.uk content except for your own personal, non-commercial use. Any other use of bbc.co.uk content requires the prior written permission of the BBC."

The key phrase here is personal use, i.e. not public use. Posting something on the Web constitutes public use.

A useful Web page is Brad Templeton’s “10 Big Myths about copyright explained”:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
It’s mainly about copyright legislation in the USA, but international copyright legislation is tending to converge these days, and a good deal of what he says applies to most European countries.

The following publication is probably what we have needed for a long time. It has only just come to my attention. It answers most of the questions surrounding copyright in the context of the development of e-learning materials. The publication appears at the Legal Information website of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which is funded by the UK further and higher education funding councils:

Casey J. (2004) Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in networked e-learning: a beginners guide for content developers: http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/johncasey_1.htm

The publication is described as follows at the above website:

"This guide aims to provide a user-friendly introduction to IPR issues for e-learning content developers and managers. It is intended to act as a point of entry to the field of IPR in e-learning that will provide a good foundation for building expertise in the e-learning developer community. It deals with the basic aspects of IPR, especially copyright, in e-learning content development, with an emphasis on reusing third party materials to create new resources. The guide has been written by an e-learning content developer who has had to deal with these issues in practice. The style of the guide is practical and approachable with many useful tips and observations but it also provides a sketch of the wider issues. It also provides flow diagrams, templates, case studies and further sources of information and guidance."

Another interesting note:

"The right of John Casey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended)."

I am sorry Graham but I think you are in grave danger of scaring people off from writing a single published word on the Internet ... this is surely not your intention??

Andy writes:


No, this is not my intention at all. My intention is simply to raise awareness of copyright issues and to prevent teachers getting into hot water and possibly becoming embroiled in legal actions against them or their employers. A new profession, the copyright bounty hunter, is emerging. Copyright bounty hunters use software packages to trawl the Web looking for breaches of copyright and then "shop" the offenders to the copyright owners in exchange for a substantial fee. Copyright bounty hunters are well established in the USA. There is also the possibility - and there are documented cases - where a disgruntled employee, student or parent might "shop" a teacher simply out of malice. A parent of a child at my local school reported the school (anonymously and behind their back) to the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) for illegally distributing copies to children of a software program that I had written. The parent was stupid, however, and could have checked with me or the school that I had a financial agreement with the school whereby they were allowed to distribute copies of my software to children.

However, it's not all bad news. Copyright legislation works in both directions. Under recent EU legislation, you will find that even as an employee or a free-lancer working under a contract where copyright is assigned to a third party, you still have certain "moral rights" with regard to anything you create, such as the right to be identified as the author of a work ("paternity right"), the right not have a work falsely attributed to you, not to have your work subjected to derogatory treatment ("integrity right"), and the right to ask for your name to be removed from unapproved versions of a work and to request that a notice be attached stating that the work is being issued against your wishes.

This has important implications for authors. I often hear from teachers who complain about their work being incorporated anonymously into other works and amended without their consent. Now you can assert your rights!

John Casey's guide, which I cited in my last message, clarifies the confused situation that has arisen as a result of everyone having the opportunity to become an author or publisher since the advent of the Web. The EU Directive that was incorporated in October 2003 into the amendments to the 1988 Act addresses the changed situation that has arisen as a result of the spread of electronic publishing.

I can understand your concern about software theft when your livelihood is in part dependent on software sales. Incidentally I have a rather nice Windows compatible and highly illegal version of John Simkin's old BBC Battle of the Somme simulation software. I downloaded this in perfect innocence from what appeared to be a legitimate business - I paid around £30 for a licence! John being the lovely old geezer that he is still lets me use it despite its origin.

Such activity is however entirely different from a new webmaster say deriving some content from something published freely on say My Webpage and placing a link back to me on their site.

It would be a real shame if this interesting discussion put newbie webmasters off creating useful free content for their colleagues in other institutions to use. This is what I am afraid you are in danger of doing.

Andy writes:


I don't see the problem and I don't see the danger. As editor of the ATW-approved (and completely free) ICT4LT website(clickable from the top of the Education Forum page), I have overseen the creation of the equivalent of 600+ pages of A4 of informatiion relating to ICT and learning and teaching foreign languages. It's all original stuff and the contributors were (a) paid fees for creating it and ( properly acknowledged as the authors. There is also a rake of original free stuff available at my business website. I practise what I preach.

Piecing together a site containing chunks of other people's work without asking their permission is (a) extremely discourteous and ( probably illegal. It's this attitude that I am trying to discourage. As John Casey puts it in the document that I cited earlier, it's a matter of "getting the right mind-set". Newbie webmasters should read John Casey's document carefully. If you set yourself up as a publisher - and this is what you are doing if you set up a new website - you have to abide by the rules.

Perhaps the point has been reached, Graham, where your viewpoint has been expounded enough for us - your fellow professionals - to have understood it?

In which case you do not need to keep expounding it with quite the vigour that you have done in the recent past.

You say:
My intention is simply to raise awareness of copyright issues and to prevent teachers getting into hot water and possibly becoming embroiled in legal actions against them or their employers.

I think we have understood that through your numerous references to it on many threads.

Unless you are an advocate of the nanny-state and as such do not believe we are capable of making our own decisions, perhaps you could now let us make own own beds to lie upon?

I am sure we are all delighted to see this development in Chris Sweeney's understanding of these issues. We aim to educate after all

On a more serious note, I agree entirely with Graham's comments pasted below

Chris writes:


I'm not too keen on the nanny-state, but I do believe in upholding the law. It is quite clear from numerous emails that I have read in numerous discussion lists that awareness of copyright law in the teaching profession as a whole is at a very low level. I'm therefore delighted that the points I have made are getting through.

In that respect I'm very happy that I could stand out as an ignorant teacher with the need to find out more about copyright on the net.
I must say though (which probably will make you all happy) - my "weblife" got a bit more complicated... I sincerely hope that this discussion will continue when it's necessary. I learned a lot from your postings Graham (and others) and I wish to thank you for that.

Anders writes:


Many thanks, Anders! I am, of course, aware that I do ramble on a bit and I've been admonished three times in this Forum for doing so - but that's water off a duck's back to a curmudgeonly old git of 62 years of age. I therefore promise to shut up, take my greyhound for longer walks and play more golf. In future, I shall just refer people to the Web page on copyright that I have created. It's continually updated, e.g. today: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm

I would like to get this clear - and Andy may feel it relevant to mock me - but at what point does advice stop being advice?

I value - and I add I really DO value - Graham's contributions to this site about copyright. I have told Graham this on another thread where his advice was sufficient to stop me posting someone else's material and to guide me in taking action against someone who took my material without permission.

But at what point does advice - oft repeated - become simply something which shuts a thread down?

Honestly, Graham, I have added the pages to the links you have suggested to my favourites. But beyond that - should we, the posters on this site, just get on with it?

What ultimately concerns me is that this Board is going to be stifled. I belong to an INTERNET site for the teachers of English upon which I am generally respected - or at at well known! Yet, on the whole, having registered on this board, the members of it no longer use this site. Yet I feel it has tremendous potential and I want to see us all use it to its fullest extent.

If copyright is so tricky, how can teachit survive, or Mark Boardman's Language List? English teacher find these sites a REAL practical - key word - PRACTICAL - help. Yet they will not, as a whole, use this board.

After you have warned us, Graham, surely the responsibility is not yours? Surely the Admin of this board will invite you to help them administer if it they wish this? Until then, allow it To expand a little.

Please - and 'Anders' (how boy's own club is that? Graham?) - I appeal to you too - let us have a go at seeing what us English members can come with.

Honestly, lads, I AM on your side!

Chris raises several interesting points.

Firstly, I’ve promised to shut up about IPR and copyright, so I’m not offering anything new from now on. My greyhound got a long walk today!

Secondly, I don’t feel I am competent to offer the administrators of this Forum professional advice or help regarding IPR and copyright. Everything that I have mentioned is publicly available on sites maintained by professionals – and I have posted details of the relevant URLs in this Forum. From what I know of the background of the administrators of this Forum, they know what they are doing, and I am happy just to play a minor role as Moderator of the MFL section of this Forum – which has livened up a little bit lately – and to contribute to other sections that I find interesting. By the way, my second interest after MFL is English, which I taught as a foreign language for a period of around 20 years to students training to become translators and interpreters. ICT has been an interest of mine since 1976, which initially captured my interest as a translator and teacher of theory and critique of translation, after which I got interested in computer assisted language learning. I am now interested in a wide range of language-related topics, which is reflected in my personal annotated list of "Favourite Websites":
http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/websites.htm

Thirdly, Teachit will surely survive. The site looks good, it appears that Siobhain has things well under control, and she had done the right thing in seeking professional legal advice (expensive, as she says!) regarding IPR and copyright issues.

As for the purpose of this Forum, I enjoy it as a general education discussion forum. Subject-specific forums are equally enjoyable, although I find that their contributors tend to focus somewhat too narrowly on their own subject area. I spread myself around a bit, although topics such as the JFK assassination leave me stone-cold, but I can choose to ignore such topics, while appreciating that they fascinate other people. I subscribe to the Linguanet Forum, which consists mainly of MFL teachers in secondary education. It goes seriously white-hot at times, e.g. when the GCSE results came out this summer, but it is also a fun forum, where topics such as (currently) Kennedy’s supposed blunder in referring to himself as a “jam doughnut” in his 1963 speech in Berlin come up for discussion: http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/linguanet-forum. Linguanet does offer practical advice too, but mainly in the form of answers to specific questions and problems that MFL teachers have. There is no reason why the Education Forum should not do the same – in fact it does, and I have learned a lot from this Forum. But posting materials for classroom use in a forum is fraught with problems – for the reasons that I have raised over and over again - and better left to dedicated sites such as Teachit and (for French) Linguascope (http://www.linguascope.com), which has an excellent resource sharing area. Linguascope is managed by Stephane Derône, a teacher of French who probably works all hours under the sun to keep his site going. This kind of service does not come for free – at least not indefinitely, as sooner or later people need to be paid to do the work. Linguascope was free at one time but it now operates a subscription service. I am hanging on by the skin of my teeth keeping the ICT4LT site going free of charge, but I am retired, have time on my hands and don’t need the money

I am very interested in what ever can come up since I just now sense a lot of work (not necessarily limitations - but quite some work) to develope the ideas I had about a part of Modern History after 1945... (that includes photographs, audiomaterial, videomaterial etc...). Since I'm obviously not a native speaker (Swedish is my native tongue) I don't understand Can you explain this expression?

Boy's Own was a comic/magazine that became popular in Britain in the 19th century. See www.philsp.com/data/data041.html

It is normally used as an adjective or adverb phrase either affectionately, or with a mild sense of ridicule, to indicate the values of the magazine - which has tales of adventure in exotic locations, and attitudes to other cultures that might now be seen as imperialist.

The term is often used very loosely by people who do not know the original magazines to indicate values and attitudes that are typical of young men. One of the more popular of the 1990s "boy bands" used it punningly in their name of Boyzone.

I'm not sure what connotations Chris meant to convey with it. It's perhaps not a phrase one would use for an international audience, since it is a peculiarly British (if not English) idiom and rather obscure.

I think that by "English" Chris meant nothing about nationality, but referred to the users of the English (language and literature) area of this Forum...

There is a real and interesting tension in this debate about copyright. We all need to live which usually means that we have, too, to find work. Some of us can do that by receiving payment from the public purse (which, of course, is filled by taxes on private enterprise), and can give things away. Some of us need to be paid directly or indirectly for our activities. That can enable us to work at things full time, and make better products - but means, too, that we need to sell them somehow to keep doing it.

Copyright arose historically to redress an imbalance. In many respects it works well still. But there are contexts where people will use it to frighten us into not doing things that are perfectly legitimate and fair.

"Boys' Own Club"

This implies an understanding of the cultural background of my childhood years of the 1940s and 1950s. Boys and girls all read comic books in those days, one of which was called "Boys' Own Paper". There was also "The Eagle" and "The Rover". There were also comic books for girls such as "Girls' Crystal" and "Bunty". The sexual divide in those days was very marked. Boys were offered adventure stories, war stories and sports stories in their comics. As for the girls' comics, typically I never read them so I don't know what they contained! See:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/British-comics
A "Boys' Own Club" is a club that is exclusively for boys - part of the same culture as the comics to which I refer. I don't think such clubs are so popular now as they were in my youth, and the term now has a strong element of irony, e.g. one might refer to an exclusively male preserve of any sort as a "Boys' Own Club".

Christine Sweeney appears to be saying that this section of the Forum is like a "Boys' Own Club" and she's offering to become a member. No further comment! This article is a good illustration of the use of the term:
http://www.defenestrationmag.net/prose/amcvety.htm

Anders, don't get too anxious about the work involved in seeking permissions. You will probably find that many people are willing to give you permission to make their materials public, providing it is in a non-commercial context. Leaving copyright aside, it is only courteous to ask someone if you can make their materials public.

I'd say too, Anders, that you need to see copyright in a Swedish context. Now, I know that there are rules and regulations which are applied internationally, but when you look at the trouble other countries have with getting them enforced, you can see that the national context is still very important.

One of the problems Anna Lindh had to deal with as Foreign Minister was the great statistics scandal at Karolinska (Sweden's foremost centre for medical research - and the body which awards the Nobel prize in medicine, for the uninitiated). A researcher at Karolinska published a paper in an international journal with a table in statistics which had been produced in the market leader in statistics programmes. A doctor in the USA read the article and mentioned to his brother over dinner what a nice programme his brother was responsible for producing and marketing! The brother idly checked whether Karolinska had bought any licences for the programme … and the Business Software Alliance promptly raided Karolinska.

There were red faces all round - not only had Karolinska pirated this programme - they'd pirated loads of others too. It should have been an open-and-shut court case, with Sweden's premier research establishment paying millions of dollars in fines … except that good old nationalism got in the way. It took a threat of trade sanctions against Sweden by the USA to even get Karolinska to cough up a modest amount of compensation and promise not to do it again. In the meantime, the Swedish authorities and courts had done everything they could to slow things down and basically to forget about the whole thing.

Now in the end, Karolinska did change its practices and start buying legal software only … but it took years, and, of course, no-one's head ended up on the block.

… another little aside about Karolinska (who still appear to be a bit ICT-ly challenged!).

They recently formed a consortium and started an organisation called something like Karolinska University Systems, with e-mail addresses containing 'kus.se'. Only problem is that 'kus' is an obscene term in the other Scandinavian languages (part of the female anatomy), so the e-mail filters promptly deleted all the e-mail messages originating at Karolinska! It took quite a while before the major research establishments in Denmark, Norway and Finland managed to re-establish contact with their Swedish counterparts …

Interesting story about obscene website names, David!

PowerGen Italy blundered with this name:
http://www.powergenitalia.com
It appears to be dead, as you'll only find an "under construction" message here now.

Other obscene names that were spotted in time include:
The South Hampshire Institute of Technology
The City University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
(This was at a time of mergers and status changes several years ago.)

On a more serious note, David is right about the problems of enforcing copyright internationally. The two main messages that I would convey are:

1. Be courteous and ask people nicely for permission to make public their materials, explaining clearly how you intend them to be used.

2. Check out your national legislation carefully. Most of what I have posted is only relevant to the UK, which accepts only those bits of EU law that it happens to like!

Andy and Graham - thank you for the explanation. I think I have a better clue now (but I'm still not really sure...). I don't remember the scandal at Karolinska David, but I now that there has been some copyright issues on software in Sweden. I'm not planning to give up on my pages, but I will go your way Graham and we shall see how long it will take...

Anders, don't even THINK about giving up! It's not as hard as you expect. I maintain a very large website, as well as my business website. You'll find that people are more cooperative than you think. It does take a bit of time, but I sleep well at night.

It wasn't really reported in the Swedish papers - but the US papers had a lot to say about it!