Copyright, Diggers and archaeology

[P Prentice]

Well done-and you are able to this on the grounds of copyright infringement. If it were not for the law of copyright your actions may well constitute assault. Your a natural copyright holder, alright

natural yep - derived from historical precedent yep - so no need to mess with it
but there is no precedent for insisting constituting assault
and there is clearly no consensus for further complicating and diminishing research

[mpoole]

Well done-and you are able to this on the grounds of copyright infringement. If it were not for the law of copyright your actions may well constitute assault. Your a natural copyright holder, alright[

FFS.




UK Copyright

[Martin Locock]

Can Unit of 1 respond to my request to clarify what he/she thinks diggers might be able to use copyright for?

[Unitof1]

http://www.webmasterworld.com/content_co...245159.htm

[ShadowJack]

Why on earth did you post this?

Either respond to the request or stop trolling

[mpoole]

There's the dead horse over there >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[pdurdin]

Here's a relevant case which brings up questions regarding archaeology and ownership. I will not name names or give specifics, for obvious reasons!

A volunteer organization completed a geophysics survey of a site. The data, in unprocessed format (the numbers, not resulting images) was given to an unaffiliated person involved in geophysics (for review, analysis or just to show them, it's not clear). This person used the results in a presentation and failed to acknowledge the organization who gathered the data -- apparently they even placed their own name on them.

The legality, copyright status, etc are not obvious in a case like this. The data is made up purely of observations which anyone with the equipment and access could get, and when it was (mis)used it wasn't taken from any published source, just the raw numbers. From what I've read, data like that is probably covered by database rights, but it's not altogether clear.

Which brings up the question: if an archaeologist makes an observation -- whether it be by digging, geophysics, or otherwise -- and someone else has access to the resulting information outside a published source, is it illegal to use it? Is there any way you can protect your observations from misuse, since they're not inherently protected by copyright?

[Martin Locock]

Copyright is primarily an economic right. In determining what use might be made of someone else's work, repeatablility is a low test: the fact that someone could recreate an elevation of a building by re-measuring is not a justification for them re-suing someone else's (the 'sweat of the brow' concept), and the level of originality need not be high (as long as some process of selection or creativity is required). So in the geophysics case copyright may have been breached.

But that is a side issue to due acknowledgement of others' work: this case would be a clear breach of the IfA code of conduct 1.5.

You can't stop someone re-using your data, with acknowledgement; you have some limited protection against the date, or your interpretation, being misrepresented.

[Marcus Brody]

I hesitate to attempt this, but what I think Unit of 1 is saying is that he considers primary site records produced by diggers to be copyright material, and that by retaining this copyright, diggers would be able to make money by charging for access and use. I'm not a copyright lawyer, so I can't comment on whether this is correct or not (though my feeling is that this interpretation may be wrong). Even if this interpretation is correct, however, I don't see how this would prevent the use of this primary material in the production of derived material such as a data structure or publication report. The person writing the report wouldn't be reproducing the context sheet word-for-word, but rather would be synthesizing all the primary records to produce a document derived from the various sources. As I understand it, there's not an issue with reading something (whether this is a book or a context sheet) and then making used of this information - after all, surely this is the basic mechanism by which knowledge is transmitted!

I suppose it's possible that Unit may be arguing that a digger should hold onto his or her paper context sheets, and not turn them over to the company until some form of licence has been agreed, together with an appropriate fee for access to the documents. Again, my understanding is that copyright applies to the information itself rather than the physical form in which this information is held, so (to reduce it to a ridiculous level) the company could argue that they provided the digger with the paper context sheets or permatrace, therefore they're entitled to hold onto these and consult them as needed as a source of derived data for use in report production.

It's also possible that Unit may be correct in terms of his own personal circumstance. I don't know for sure, but from his various comments, it sounds like he's a sole trader who produces his own reports. In his case, it seems logical that the copyright on the reports would reside with him, as would be the case for any commercial unit. I'm not convinced that it necessarily follows that the same model applies for diggers employed by a company, however. I'm pretty sure that every contract I've signed has stated that the copyright on work produced when working for a firm resides with the company. Whether this is right or wrong I don't know, but it seems fairly clear cut to me that if you don't agree with this and want to argue for retention of copyright, you simply don't sign the contract.

[mpoole]

I hesitate to attempt this, but what I think Unit of 1 is saying is that he considers primary site records produced by diggers to be copyright material, and that by retaining this copyright, diggers would be able to make money by charging for access and use. ...

It's also possible that Unit may be correct in terms of his own personal circumstance. I don't know for sure, but from his various comments, it sounds like he's a sole trader who produces his own reports. In his case, it seems logical that the copyright on the reports would reside with him, as would be the case for any commercial unit. I'm not convinced that it necessarily follows that the same model applies for diggers employed by a company, however. I'm pretty sure that every contract I've signed has stated that the copyright on work produced when working for a firm resides with the company. Whether this is right or wrong I don't know, but it seems fairly clear cut to me that if you don't agree with this and want to argue for retention of copyright, you simply don't sign the contract.

Excellent observations. Copyright is fairly straightforward. I'm not a laywer but I have worked on the issue regarding copyright in other situations where people have lost a great deal of money through the illegal copying and uploading of copyrighted material to sub-rosa file-sharing sites. It's a huge problem for people such as musicians whose CDs are 'shared' or DVDs which are copied and 'shared' illegally. It's a big problem, and it is important that a copyright holder be given the chance to determine what happens to items to which they hold copyright. That doesn't always mean there is money exchanged for access to the copyrighted information BUT it does mean that it is the choice of the copyright holder how the access is determined. If they don't want their information accessible other than by physical, printed materials accessible only through a library or other physical resource that's their right.

Unitof1 seems to think that diggers are oppressed, which may be true, I can't say as I'm not an archaeologist, but they work according to their contract conditions and those generally include the clause you mentioned, where copyright belongs to the employer.