Category: Copyright

The non-implementation of the DSM Directive, and the Cathach of St Columba – updated!

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| Columba, Copyright

Cathach of St Colmba, at RIA; via widipediaThe EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (the DSM Directive) was due to be transposed into national law by the EU’s Member States this week. Article 29(1) of the DSM Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC) provides:

Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive by 7 June 2021. …

That was last Monday. Had it been Tuesday, it would have been an appropriate date for a copyright Directive to be brought into force in Ireland, as that was the anniversary of the death of St Columba (also known as St Colmcille) in 597 (I have marked this anniversary on a previous occasion on this blog). As Charleton J commented in EMI Records v Eircom Ltd [2010] 4 IR 349, [2010] IEHC 108 (16 April 2010) [28]:

There is fundamental right to copyright in Irish Law. This has existed as part of Irish legal tradition since the time of Saint Colmcille. He is often quoted in connection with the aphorism: le gach bó a buinín agus le gach leabhar a chóip (to each cow its calf and to every book its copy).

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Incomplete copyright exceptions for public lectures in libraries, archives, and museums; but not – yet? – in galleries, educational establishments, or online. It’s all an unnecessary mess.

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| COIPLPA, Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13, Fair use

Geek & Poke, Copyright and Academic FreedomIn a recent comment to my post from last year, on Coronavirus and copyright – or, the copyright concerns of the widespread move to online instruction, I was asked about copyright when giving online lectures for local historical societies. The answer became too long and convoluted for a comment reply, so I thought I’d sketch it here in a post. It should have been a short reply, to the effect that there would be no copyright issues in the way of giving such lectures, but the more I thought about it, and the more I looked at the relevant legislation, the more complicated the answer became. This is not a good position for the law – unnecessary complexity is to the law’s eternal discredit. Indeed, I’m not even sure I’ve got to the bottom of the issue here. If anyone can advance the analysis, please feel free to let me know, either in the comments below, or via the site’s contact form. Meanwhile, this is my first stab at the issue, concluding quite a circuitous analysis with a recommendation for a rather more straightforward reform.

The first question is always whether copyright attaches to the images – as the cartoon, above left, suggests, it often feels like copyright is perpetual – but it does eventually time out.…

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Irish copyright law must enable digital deposit (updated and corrected)

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| COIPLPA, Copyright, Digital deposit

Helen Shenton; via tcd.ie (element)In an earlier post, I took Frank McNally’s Irishman’s Diary from the weekend as the starting point to explore the modern constitutional relevance of the leading copyright case of Donaldson v Becket (1774) 2 Bro PC (2d) 129, 1 ER 837, [1774] EngR 47 (22 February 1774) (pdf); (1774) 4 Burr 2408, 98 ER 257 (pdf). It is one of the most famous cases in the history of copyright law; and McNally’s point was that one of the counsel for the successful party hailed originally from Co Roscommon. Before getting to my discussion of the case, I noted that the column had been illustrated with a picture of a young reader in the Long Room of Trinity College Dublin’s Old Library. The column and image also moved my Trinity colleague Helen Shenton (pictured left), our Librarian and College Archivist, to respond, in her case by way of a Letter to the Editor:

Digital black hole in our national memory

Sir, – Frank McNally’s amusing observations about Ireland’s long chequered relationship with copyright history (An Irishman’s Diary, April 25th) was illustrated by a photograph of the gallery of the beautiful Long Room in the Library at Trinity College Dublin.

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On World Intellectual Property Day, the modern Irish constitutional relevance of an Irish angle on Donaldson v Beckett (1774)

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| Columba, Copyright

Today is World Intellectual Property Day. In 2000, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) designated 26 April – the day on which the WIPO Convention came into force in 1970 – as World IP Day to increase general understanding of IP and to celebrate “the role that intellectual property (IP) rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity”. I’ve marked it in the past (here and here) on this blog. To join in this year’s celebrations, Frank McNally’s Irishman’s Diary in yesterday’s Irish Times considered “Ireland’s chequered history of copyright law“. It is illustrated with a picture of a young reader in the Long Room of Trinity College Dublin’s Old Library (sadly, the young reader does not appear in the cropped version of the photograph in the print edition); and the column ends with an account of the dispute over St Columba’s copying of St Finian’s copy of the Vulgate of St Jerome (though not mentioned in the column, these elements of the story are connected, since a highlight of the Old Library is the Book of Kells, written in the scriptoria of Columba’s monasteries in Kells and Iona).

Apart from these obvious tropes, the centrepiece of McNally’s Diary is a genuinely interesting story about Roscommon-born, but London-based, writer and lawyer Arthur Murphy (1727–1805) (pictured above left).…

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Coronavirus and copyright – or, the copyright concerns of the widespread move to online instruction – updated

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| COIPLPA, Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13

Update: this post has been updated to discuss the Irish Copyright Licencing Agency’s applicable licences.


Coronavirus CopyrightI work in Trinity College Dublin, which announced on Tuesday that education would be delivered online from next Monday. The National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education has put together a very useful spreadsheet of links to useful online teaching resources. But, in our race to go online in time to deliver classes to our students, we must not forget that copyright law continues to apply. In that regard, I’m delighted to note that recent reforms to Irish copyright law will make all of our lives easier. The Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Act 2019 (also here) [COIPLPA] amended the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 (also here) [CRRA] in various significant ways, in particular relating to online educational uses of copyright material.

Section 50 CRRA provides for an exception of fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, section 53 provides for an exception for acts done for the purposes of instruction or examination, and section 57 provides for an exception for reprographic copying by educational establishments. Article 5(3)(a) of Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (OJ L 167, 22.6.2001, p.…

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Fair Use in South Africa; and the road not taken in Irish and Australian copyright reforms

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| COIPLPA, Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13, Fair use

Two roads divergedCopyright reform is under consideration in many jurisdictions, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. It has just been completed in the EU. In Ireland, the long-awaited Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Act 2019 (here and here) was signed by the President on 26 June 2019 last; in an unexplained delay, it took until 26 November 2019 for the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphries, to specify 2 December 2019 as the day on which most of the Act – eventually – came into force. In a future post, I will blog about the important changes made by the Act; in this post, I want to mention a road not taken. In May 2011, the Government established a Copyright Review Committee (CRC) to identify any areas of Irish copyright legislation that might create barriers to innovation and to make recommendations to resolve any problems identified.

In particular, one of the terms of reference required the CRC to “examine the US style ‘fair use’ doctrine to see if it would be appropriate in an Irish/EU context”. It was a controversial topic, with powerful views expressed both for and against the exception.…

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Not archiving the .ie domain, and the death of new politics

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| COIPLPA, Copyright, Digital deposit, GDPR, Privacy

Internet Archive Googly Eyes via FlickrAbout this time last year, the Government lost some votes on important issues as the Bill that became the Data Protection Act 2018 (also here) was at Committee Stage in the Dáil. Writing on this blog, I described this as an example of new politics making for interesting times. Rather magnanimously, they did not seek to reverse these defeats; at the last stage of the Bill, the Minister confirmed that it was “not [his] intention to revisit the putting of the amendment in any other form”. In the intervening year, much has changed – for one thing, we are a year closer to a general election, commentators forecast that the next budget in October will be this Government’s last, and there is speculation that the Taoiseach may even call a snap election earlier than that. All of this means that the detente of new politics is breaking down. There can be no surer sign of this than that the Government is no longer magnanimously prepared to accept parliamentary defeats, and will reverse them if it can. There was a shameful example of this arrogance earlier this week in the Seanad, during the Report Stage debate on the Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Bill 2018.…

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Orphan works – a small corner of copyright law that will suffer after Brexit

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| Copyright

BL-spare-rib-final-homepage-banner-(element)From today’s Guardian:

Spare Rib digital archive faces closure in event of no-deal Brexit

EU copyright exception would no longer protect British Library scans of pioneering feminist magazine

Spare Rib, the trailblazing women’s magazine that defined generations of feminism, faces the axe from the British Library’s digital archive if there is no Brexit deal, it has emerged

The magazine ran from 1972 to 1993, and all 11,000 articles, cartoons and photographs were made digitally available in 2015 as part of the joint efforts of the British Library (BL) and the Spare Rib Collective.

The British Library’s website explains:

Spare Rib Archive – possible suspension of access

Polly Russell explains why the Spare Rib resource may be suspended in the event of a ‘no deal’ withdrawal from the EU

In 2015, as part of our commitment to making our intellectual heritage available to everyone for research, inspiration and enjoyment, the British Library digitised and made available the full run of the feminist magazine Spare Rib available via the Jisc Journals platform.

The EU orphan works directive currently allows … material [where the rights-holder cannot be identified after a diligent search] to be made available by cultural heritage institutions. Around 57% of the Spare Rib archive – some 11,000 articles and images from 2,700 contributors – benefits from this protection.

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