Category: UK Law

Copyright joy for law firm libraries!

Yay!
As emailed out over lis-law last week, the Copyright Licensing Agency have developed a CLA licence just for law firms. Body of the press release below:

New licence for law firms

15th October 2008

CLA have announced the launch of a new licence designed specifically for UK law firms.

From 1 November 2008, the new Law Licence will offer law firms additional benefits to the existing photocopying rights.

The Law Licence now enables articles and clippings from law reports, journals and press cuttings (magazines, journals, legal and other periodicals, but not newspapers) to be scanned, stored electronically and distributed externally to clients.

The new licence has been developed in consultation with The Law Society of England and Wales and the City of London Law Society so that it meets the needs of law firms that wish to copy from law reports and journals, business titles and other published media.

Chris Holland, Librarian & Head of Information Services at the Law Society said, “CLA photocopying licences are well established within the legal sector. This new licence gives additional rights to make digital copies, reflecting the much increased use of digital technology in law firms, including the use of electronic case files and shared email folders. It also removes the previous limit on the number of photocopies that could be made for a single occasion or purpose, thus providing more flexibility than the previous law firm licence to photocopy.”

The licence will be officially launched at the Law Autumn event at Birmingham NEC on October 15 & 16 where customers will be able to find out more about the benefits from CLA licensing staff.

CLA’s Andy Greenan, who is leading the licence launch, says, “Law firms want to be able to digitise relevant articles and reports to share with individual clients by email or within a case-based file. For the first time this licence allows that and I am sure demand will be high.”

Law firms that already hold a CLA licence will be able to upgrade from 1 November.

For further information about the benefits of the new Law Licence, please contact CLA on 0800 085 6644, email licence@cla.co.uk or see www.cla.co.uk.

Now, I’m assuming that if the Law Society of England and Wales are happy with this, it’s equally applicable for Scotland. Hopefully. Being able to legally scan and store certain things can be handy, although we’ve often already negotiated these sort of agreements with individual publishers. Any reduction in the amount of time spent faffing abouttrying to work out what we’re allowed to do, and with what materials, will be very nice!

No publicity, please!

So, last week I did a firewalk for charity, at Edinburgh Zoo. Due to the ‘delightful’ roadworks going on in Edinburgh for, ohhh, eternity, I arrived at the event at 7pm just as the briefing started, instead of the planned 6.30pm for registration.

Apparently, in the few minutes before the briefing officially started, it was announced that a daily news show crew were there to film us, and if anyone objected to being filmed, could they make themselves known. It seems like nobody did, because we were all filmed by the crew at various points, usually in the background to the presenter.

I have absolutely no desire to be on TV, particularly during a stressful event, so I was not best chuffed to find out by questioning other firewalkers that what I thought was perhaps going to be a promotional clip for the company organising the firewalk, or for the Zoo itself was actually going to end up on national telly. Added to this was the fact that I had not been asked about my agreement to the filming, and had not given permission either verbally, or in writing.

I’ve viewed the report, and can clearly see myself at one point, although others might not recognise me. I have no way of knowing what other footage that I may have been in was cut.

So, my questions are…
Since I was repeatedly filmed in a private place (the seminar room of the Zoo) without my permission, could I justifiably have objected to the use of the footage?
Is the firewalk area of the Zoo (a grassy public area in the middle, after opening hours of the Zoo) also a private area?
Is it legal to film people like this when they haven’t given any sort of proveable agreement?

It’s a moot point now, as the footage is out there, but it’s something that annoyed me, as I think you can tell!!

Technical terminology

I was looking at some Bills on the Parliament website, and I wanted to find out more info about what some of the stages abbreviations meant. So I clicked on the link to take me to this page.

And I was delighted to learn that ‘ping pong’ is a proper term, when discussing the progress of legislation through Parliament.

PP – Ping Pong, where the bill passes back and forth between the two Houses debating amendments to the bill

  • L – Commons’ Amendments considered in the House of Lords
  • C – Lords’ Amendments considered in the House of Commons

Brilliant -the mental images of members of the House of Lords and House of Commons playing Ping Pong in Parliament will keep me amused all day!! 🙂
Off to have flashbacks to Pong now!

I think I’m offended

So, after you hit retiral age, if there’s nothing else for you to do at a law firm, you get to become a librarian?

And what does an 88 year old DO in terms of library work? Is it just an honourary title, which allows him to potter around the office, or is he regularly asked to do research?
Did he use online resources, or work mainly with the printed texts?

Actually, I’m genuinely interested – I would love to think he was whizzing about in Westlaw, digging up stuff from LexisNexis Butterworths Direct, looking up the Statute Law Database, shattering preconceptions about older people and technology!!

Although sadly, I think it’s more likely that ‘librarian’ was just a job title they gave him to keep him happy, rather than because he was a great researcher, and helped keep his service users on top of the rapid changes in their profession…