This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Oppenheim, C., Phillips, J., Wall, R. (Eds.).The Aslib Guide to Copyright. London, UK: Aslib, 1995. ISBN 0-85142-311-6 £124. ISSN 1353-1530 £70 p.a.
Printer friendly versionA comprehensive, ongoing publication dealing with this ever changing area has been long overdue. The looseleaf format lends itself to this purpose, together with an ASCII (DOS) version provided on disc makes it very user friendly.
As for content, comprehensive is the watchword. I will list the contents to illustrate:-
Nature of copyright
Media categories and copyright duration
Owners rights and restricted acts
User permissions and guidelines
Administration of rights
International aspects
Problem areas and current issues
Documents UK
Documents EU
Legal cases
Bibliography
Contacts
Forms
Glossary
Index
Not only is the explanation of the law full and easy to follow (with Glossary and Forms), the UK & EU Documents section back this up with copies of the legislation, including Statutory Instruments and Council Directives and case law. Other relevant areas covered are licensing schemes and areas of law under dispute. The latter covers electrocopying, contents pages, implied terms, charges for copying, declaration forms and much more. The Bibliography and Contacts are extremely useful for following up problem areas, with the index providing fast access to relevant entries.
Given the nature of copyright law, delays in updates are inevitable. 3 updates are due between March and June 1996, the first of which will cover case law. From June 1996 there will be updates covering international issues & future legislation; this will include Electronic copyright & related rights Green Paper COM(95) 382 final (Brussels, 19.07.1995) and hopefully the Commissions Legal Advisory Board reply to this Green Paper. The impact of global network on copyright legislation or enforcement and World Trade Agreement (Uruguay Round) on TRIPS (trade related intellectual property ) will be also be discussed in this context.
The delays in updates are unfortunate, though unsurprising.
The editors are attempting to rectify this by running 2 update
years over 18 months. One area causing delay seems to be
disagreement between the editors as to legal interpretations.
Given that there is a specific section Problem areas and current
issues, these differing opinions could be usefully aired, for
instruction and entertainment of readers (yes, law can be fun!).
As for recommendation, if you or your users need to check on
broader aspects of copyright this publication should definitely
be on your shelves with its updates.
MARK PERKINS
19 February 1996