Workiing In The Creative Media Industry - Legal Issues

In your next post I'd like you to add to your ongoing Industry work by telling me about Copyright and Intellectual Property. Read what I've written and follow the links to flesh out your understanding of these concepts and then demonstrate that understanding in a blogpost, instructions at the end of the waffle.

WHAT IS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY? 

Obviously, if you ran a bakery, you would want to protect your recipes, your ingredients, your equipment from other people stealing them. This is simply protecting property. Anyone trying to nick your stuff could get done for theft of property.
    In the media and other creative disciplines, producers want to protect their INTELLECTUAL property. You don’t want to write a great article and have someone rip off your words. You don’t want to make a great film and see clips crop up in someone else’s film. You don’t want to create a great game and have someone just rip it off and present it as their own. Those ideas, although you can’t hold them in your hand, are YOUR creation and deserve protection. Copyright is the law that protects this ‘intellectual property’. These aren’t objects, rather it’s the creative ideas and design concepts that creative work is made from - that's what copyright protects.

WHAT COPYRIGHT PROTECTS

Copyrights protect the EXPRESSION of an idea (but not the idea itself). 

EG – Mariokart– Copyright protects the artwork/sounds as an audiovisual work and the underlying source code that makes the game as a literary work. No one can copy the actual images/sounds in the game or the underlying program.

However copyright does not protect the idea of a player-controlled character driving karts around tracks being pursued by other player-controlled characters.

This applies across the media and creative industries. Copyright on Harry Potter protects the names of characters, places etc in the stories and of course J.K.Rowling’s actual text. It also stops anyone else  using the characters, places, names, details of JK’s stories in any work without her permission. 

It does not stop someone else writing a book about a school of magic. 

Remember - and this will be crucial to your definition - Copyright protects the SPECIFIC EXPRESSION of an idea, not the idea itself. 

HOW TO ASSERT COPYRIGHT

Copyright protection exists the moment an author fixes an expression in a tangible medium. 

This means the moment you finish your book, your album, your website, your game, your film, your radio show you automatically have copyright protection without doing anything further.

Copyright  exists for the lifetime + 70 years of the creator. 

So if I pegged it this year my books would still have copyright on them until 2088. After that they will become ‘public domain’ i.e anyone can use them. 

If someone uses copyrighted work without permission they can be TAKEN TO COURT AND SUED UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW which may result in fines/losing any income gained from that product. 

There is no official registration system for copyright in the UK and most other parts of the world. There are no forms to fill in and no fees to pay to get copyright protection.To help protect your copyright work, it is advisable to mark it with the © symbol, the name of the copyright owner and the year in which the work was created.

OKAY - TO WRITE ABOUT THIS FOLLOW THESE STEPS. 

1. Open up a new post - call it 'Legal Issues: Copyright and Intellectual Property. 

2. Add the heading 'Intellectual Property'. 

Define it, pointing out its difference to normal property.

3. Add the heading 'Copyright'. 

Tell me what copyright protects, how long it lasts and how anyone who makes something creative can assert copyright over it. 

4. Add the heading 'What It Means For Me'. 

Then have a think - how will Copyright apply to YOUR creative work in the gaming industry? What will you have to be careful of in your work, and what can you do if you see other work that seems to break the copyright you assert over your work? Give me a few lines on this. 

5. Publish your post labelling it 'Copyright', 'Intellectual Property' and 'Legal Issues'

Useful Links. 

The basics of copyright law are here – feel free to quote from these sources.

•https://www.gov.uk/copyright

• https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law

This is a  specific link about copyright in gaming. I would say if you're looking to create distinction level work this is a link you need to check out. 

http://newmediarights.org/guide/legal/Video_Games_law_Copyright_Trademark_Intellectual_Property#Whatiscopyright