For councils, exchanging information about the community, politics, local industry and technical requirements is critical.
Content also flows from other councils, PR/marketing agencies, tourism bodies, consultants and constituents. It’s easy to breach copyright laws by inadvertently copying, sharing and storing copyright material without permission.
The Copyright Agency provides annual value-for-money copyright licences for councils. Licences are the most cost-effective way to have the right permissions in place for a whole range of activities where other people’s work is copied, communicated and digitally stored by council staff.
Copyright licensing is not new. Many Queensland councils already have annual licences in place to ensure compliance, reduce risk and provide permissions for their staff members’ everyday office activities while complying with federal law.
IS YOUR COUNCIL COMPLIANT?
Check your knowledge against these common copyright myths:
- Local Governments are a form of government so a licence is not needed.
For the purposes of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), councils are not Government (the “Crown”) and are not covered by the government statutory licensing provisions.
- We have immunity from copyright breaches under the Freedom of Information Act.
FOI legislation does not override copyright compliance obligations. Queensland’s Right to Information Act 2009 contains no provisions for unauthorised reproduction or communication of copyright works by councils.
- Our media monitoring agreements cover us for copyright Media monitoring agreements with Copyright.
Agency licensed media monitors do provide for some internal sharing of media content within council by email, and for articles to be stored on an intranet for 12 months. But other uses, including ongoing digital storage and website use, need to be licensed separately.
- We credit the authors or source material, so we’ve covered off our copyright obligations.
Attributing the creator is a separate obligation under moral rights law. Compliance with moral rights obligations does not remove the need to ensure you have copyright clearance for the use of a work.
- We don’t need a copyright licence as we make sure our employees don’t infringe.
There is evidence that “no copy” policies are ineffective as they do not match with actual practices. One telling statistic is that no council has ever purchased a one-off pay-per-use licence for internal purposes, yet Copyright Agency has recently identified over 300 councils nationally that have copied or communicated our members’ works in some way. These 300 councils include some of the same councils previously contacted by the Copyright Agency in relation to the unlicensed use of content.
This story is from the Feb-March edition of the Council Leader magazine and was contributed by Greg Taylor of the Copyright Agency. Keep an eye out for it here or contact us if you would like to receive a hard copy.