wibble

As a sort of follow-on from the previous chart run post, I put this together before that post.  It doesn’t provide a definitive answer to the whole copyright aspect of charts on websites, but explains my reasoning for re-instating the search in a round-about way…

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law
UK Copyright Law fact sheet from UK Copyright Service

Rights covered
The law gives the creators of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic works, sound recordings, broadcasts, films and typographical arrangement of published editions, rights to control the ways in which their material may be used.

The rights cover; broadcast and public performance, copying, adapting, issuing, renting and lending copies to the public.

In many cases, the creator will also have the right to be identified as the author and to object to distortions of his work.

Key here - “adapting, issuing”
The data is created by OCC (well, Milward Brown really), and issued by them.  Therefore they hold the copyright to the data.  Chart sites ”adapt” this data to create the chart runs, and issue it, via a search engine to the public.  It is this that the OCC can object to - “object to distortions of the work”

When rights occur
Copyright is an automatic right and arises whenever an individual or company creates a work. To qualify, a work should be regarded as original, and exhibits a degree of labour, skill or judgement

Interpretation is related to the independent creation rather than the idea behind the creation. For example, your idea for a book would not itself be protected, but the actual content of a book you write would be. In other words, someone else is still entitled to write their own book around the same idea, provided they do not directly copy or adapt yours to do so.

Key here - “and exhibits a degree of labour, skill or judgement”
I’ve heard before that why there is copyright on the charts is that the companies have had to pay people to collect the data, and they need to recover these costs somehow, hence the licensing of the charts for loads of money. There isn’t any skill or judgement used any more, but costs increase and need to be recovered.
also - “provided they do not directly copy or adapt yours to do so.” 

The data for chart runs etc are directly copied from historical newspapers/magazines/other websites.  There has been no originality in the creation of the data (new data can’t be created as it wouldn’t be the same chart then )

Duration of copyright
The 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act states the duration as;

For literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works
70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies.

Typographical arrangement of published editions
25 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was first published.

Which do charts fall under?  I’ve seen in the latest Guinness book there is a notice that the charts 1960-2005 are (C) OCC  (more than the 25 years for a typographical arrangement), or can they be considered literary works? (In my opinion, probably not)

Restricted acts
It is an offence to perform any of the following acts without the consent of the owner:

Copy the work.
Rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public.
Perform, broadcast or show the work in public.
Adapt the work.

So copying and adapting the charts without consent is not permitted….  (to me this sort of contradicts interpretation above?)

Acts that are allowed
Fair dealing is a term used to describe acts which are permitted to a certain degree without infringing the work, these acts are:
Private and research study purposes.
Criticism and news reporting.

To me means you can keep a database for your own use - however, you can’t issue any data from it, unless it’s in the form of a “criticism or news reporting” - similar to the style that James Masterton now uses.  He used to list each position and give a commentary, rather than just lumping all the news into one article.  This may have stopped because of copyright issues??