Procurement News Notice |
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| PNN | 1333 |
| Work Detail | SO YOU’VE heard that the G might be reviewing the legality of Virtual Private Network (VPN) as part of a review that it is doing of the Copyright Act which was last amended significantly in 2004. But if you weren’t thrown by all the talk about VPN, you would have noticed there are actually other proposals that the Ministry of Law (MinLaw) and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (Ipos) is considering. The consultation period, which was from August 23 and extends to October 24, will take into account a total of 16 proposals for modification of the Copyright Act. If you’re interested to submit your feedback, you can do so here. We went through the full consultation paper and picked out five other possible changes that you should take note of: 1. If you are a creator of commissioned works, you might have first ownership of copyright Currently, if a person commissions a photograph or a piece of art from a photographer or an artist, the first ownership of copyright goes to the person who commissions this piece. And by the current conditions, the photographer or artist can’t use his work for anything else. Not even his own portfolio. But the proposal suggests to give first ownership to the producer of the work. This is also to prevent owners unknowingly giving up their copyright ownership to the commissioner. The proposal also draws attention to a clear delineation between the concepts of authorship and ownership. A 2011 case also clarifies this difference. In the court case, publishing company Asia Pacific Publishing sought to overturn the decision of a High Court judge, who had ruled that an incorporated body could be the author of a work. It succeeded as the Court of Appeal overturned the judgement, ruling that an incorporated body cannot be considered as an “author” for the purposes of copyright law. It differentiated between the terms “authorship” and “ownership” which it said were “not synonymous terms”. “The former refers to the concept of creating and the latter to one of possessing proprietary rights. An author need not be an owner and the converse is equally true,” said the Court of Appeal in its judgement. 2. You might be able to register your work on a copyright registry to keep a record of your ownership Even though there is automatic copyright protection over the works that are being created right now, MinLaw and Ipos are considering creating a registry for owners to register their copyright. The proposal suggests that with the registry, it will be easier to trace the ownership of works, to establish copyright ownership and with that, to resolve any issues that arise over disputes of ownership. 3. If you’re from a non-profit educational institution, you might have more leeway to copy material If you’ve done university coursework before, you’d be aware of the 10 per cent allowance you are given to “lift” from your research. The proposal considers whether the threshold should be retained and if non-profit institutions, which are currently given a five per cent allowance, should have the same leeway. 4. Copyright protection may only exist for 70 years after your death For some works, such as literary, musical, dramatic works, and engravings, the copyright protection is calculated from the date of publication of the work, so, as long as the work remains unpublished, the works will have infinite copyright protection – which remains even after you die. MinLaw and Ipos are proposing to limit the period of copyright protection to 70 years after the death of the creator (regardless of when and if the work was published), which is in line with countries such as the United States, and the United Kingdom. In the case of creations which are not by a single identifiable human creator, or if the creator is unknown, the paper proposes that the works be protected by copyright for 70 years after first publication if they’ve been published within 50 years after they were first created. If they were published more than 50 years after they were created, their copyright protection period will start from when they were first created. 5. Exception to copyright for text and data mining efforts If you’ve been making numerous copies of papers and other work for the purposes of text and data mining, you might have been infringing copyright, especially if you didn’t seek permission for each of the works. However the proposal seeks to create an exception which allows the copying of copyrighted works for the purposes of data analysis, provided the user has legitimate access to the work already, such as through journal subscriptions. The proposal goes further to say that the final analysis that comes from the works can be commercialised too. |
| Country | United Kingdom , Northern Europe |
| Industry | Information Technology |
| Entry Date | 02 Sep 2016 |
| Source | http://themiddleground.sg/2016/08/30/5-possible-changes-copyright-act-affect/ |
