• our understanding of copyright,

• the law that governs it,

• and the way that OUPS agrees and carries out our responsibilities regarding the distribution of material with the people who own that material.

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We hope it will explain why we don't just share all the material that is presented at our events to the general public as a matter of course.

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What is copyright ?

According to the Intellectual Property Office, copyright is the exclusive right of the person who owns the copyright of a piece of work to:

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• be identified as its author;

• object to derogatory treatment of the work;

• have privacy of certain photographs and films;

• copy the work;

• issue copies of the work to the public;

• rent or lend the work to the public;

• perform, show or play the work in public;

• communicate the work to the public;

• make an adaptation of the work or do any of the above in relation to an adaptation.

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In the UK, the main legislation dealing with intellectual property and copyright is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) 

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What is the OUPS position on copyright ?

OUPS supports the rights of authors to control the distribution of the work they create in the ways described by the Act above. We will only distribute material relating to our events in the formats, and to the audience, that the owner grants us written permission to, and our default position is that without written permission we have no permission.

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We reject the view that work should be shared (publish presentations, email PDF copies of copyright material, upload videos to YouTube etc.), just because it can be.

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How do we agree permission to share copyright material ?

When an individual presents on behalf of OUPS, whether as a tutor at our academic events, a speaker at a pub social or conference, or in any other capacity, we may ask for permission to share copies of the work presented. If we don't ask, we have no permission.

We will ask which formats of any copies we have permission to share - for example photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, electronic copies of the material presented or combinations of the above.

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We will also ask, for each format, whether we can have permission to distribute it to the general public, to event attendees only, to OUPS members only or combinations of these, using the format described here.

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What's the consent process ?

If you are a presenter at one of our events, we would:

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1. Agree the form and limits of the permission you grant us as described above in principle;

2. Create any recordings (photos, audio, video) that you have granted permission for;

3. Edit them appropriately and make them available to you to review;

4. Get your confirmation that you are happy to grant us permission to share the material prepared for publication with the agreed audience in practice, or make any changes you deem necessary before granting this permission;

5. Publish the material in the format agreed to the audience agreed. 

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In the case of electronic copies of presentations, we would ask you to provide a version that you are happy for us to distribute on your behalf (typically with any copyrighted images, unpublished data etc. removed).

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Can I change or withdraw consent ?

Yes - OUPS' position is that you own the copyright, you say what goes. However once material has been distributed we can only guarantee that we will stop making it available for further access. We are unable to guarantee that we can retrieve any copies that may have been sent via email or that have been downloaded from our websites for example.

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Do you distribute everything you have permission to distribute ?

In some cases our presenters may require us to make available any recordings or material they give us as a condition of their participation.

However in other cases we may decide not to use the permission granted, and not to distribute certain material. For example we may decide that the quality is not acceptable, or we may take a view that it would impact on the commercial success of future events (e.g. we might record an overview day but then decide that if we release the recording nobody will come to any future presentations).

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This is all very complicated - where's the simple version ?

OK, let's try this:

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• If I want to cut my grass, you can loan me your mower but you can't break into your neighbour's shed, steal their lawnmower and give it to me ... it's the law and it's generally thought of as pretty bad manners.

• You can ask them if it's OK for me to borrow it to cut my grass, and if they agree then everyone's happy.

• But you can't use it to set up a grass-cutting service and send it back a year later knackered ... we're back to the good manners thing.

This policy describes