Web / Multimedia
Digitisation
It has been established that the conversion to digital form of any work is a form of copying, and therefore digitisation is covered by copyright law. This applies to all forms of media, whether in the form of photographs, audio, video, or text. It follows that the procedures for clearing copyright for the digitisation of materials are the same as for other copying activities. Note that the ERA licence permits the digitisation of TV programmes, although delivery over networks of this material is a grey area which awaits clarification from ERA.
However, digital media are much more modifiable and adaptable than other forms of media. Once a resource has been digitised, it can be modified totally beyond recognition, and therefore it might be argued that the final product is not a copy of the original, so copyright in the final product rests with the person who created that product, and not with the original copyright holders. In any case, if the final product is unrecognisable as a copy of the original, it is highly unlikely that the original copyright holders will pursue the case. On the other hand, if the modifications to the original digitised version of the resource are only slight, such as adding a tint or re-sizing the image in the case of a picture, the final product in this case will bear a strong resemblance to the original, and it would certainly be advisable to obtain permission.
Most digitisation and subsequent processing results in a product which sits somewhere in this continuum between no modification and modification beyond recognition. What is quite clear, however, is that copyright has been breached because of the original digitisation of the resource, if permission is not granted for that digitisation. Additional permission will also be required for its modification, and generally the rights holders will want to know what you intend to do with the digital copy and how it will be used, including the context in which it will be placed.
Publishing
Resources are generally digitised so that they can be published in electronic form, such as in a CD-ROM or on the Web. If you put an image, music, a video clip, a digitised manuscript or other such material into such a multimedia package in any combination, you have to follow the individual clearance procedures for each item, as described in other areas of this site.
Costs for clearing music copyright, for example for Web use, will be much higher than for a limited run of a video, DVD or CD-ROM, because access is potentially worldwide and the material could arguably be said to be less secure from secondary piracy. The principle of copyright is to protect the ability of rights holders to profit from their material, and if users can obtain this material over the Web, they may do so in preference to purchasing it, thus causing a loss in income to the rights holders. It follows that copyright clearance costs for World Wide Web distribution are high. If you are publishing within a closed Intranet, with password access to a restricted number of users (i.e. not world wide) the copyright costs are likely to be lower.
Inadvertent copying
Every time you view the contents of a Website, you are copying. Web browsers save all images and text in an area of the computer's hard disk called the cache, and they remain there long after you have left the website from which they came. You have therefore copied images and text, or rather, your browser has, and if the original web developer has not obtained copyright clearance for this use of these images, not only will that person have broken copyright law, but technically so will you. You are unlikely to be pursued, however - but if you then take any of these images and text from the cache (or deliberately save them during your viewing of the page) and use them in any way, then you need clearance to do that. Just because you see an image or text on the Web doesn't mean that you can rip it off and use it in any way you like! This also applies to material on CD-ROM and DVD.
