Page 86 - Law and the Media

Copyright
Copyright in sound recordings is owned by the person who makes the arrangements
necessary for the making of the recording. In most cases this will be the record company
rather than the artist himself.

Films
A film is defined by Section 5(1) of the CDPA as:

...a recording on any medium from which a moving image may by any means be
produced.

This broad definition includes virtually any recorded moving image as a film. Video
recordings are included as films. Video piracy is therefore a copyright infringement. As
technology advances, the definition should be capable of embracing new forms of media.

A film itself will have copyright protection. Several other aspects of a film will also have a
separate copyright as ‘underlying works’ – for example, the script or the book the film is
based upon, and other copyright works integrated into the film, such as clips from other
movies or television shows.

Copyright does not exist in a film that infringes the copyright of another film.

Broadcast and cable programmes
These two distinct methods of distributing a work protect the act of transmitting or sending
visual images, sounds or other information. The copyright in a broadcast is owned by the
person making the broadcast. The copyright in a cable programme belongs to the person
providing the cable service. Satellite broadcasts that can be received by members of the
public, but not intersatellite transmissions, are also copyright works.

If a television programme is pre-recorded, copyright will exist in the broadcast itself and in
the actual film that is broadcast, as well as in the ‘underlying rights’ such as the script and
any music devised for the programme. Making of a video recording of the television
programme may therefore infringe all of these copyrights. However, when a broadcast is of
a live event, for example the FA Cup Final, the only copyright created is in the broadcast
itself. There is no copyright in a live event.

Copyright does not exist in a broadcast or cable programme that infringes the copyright of
another broadcast or cable programme.

3.2.4 Published editions of works

The copyright in a ‘published edition of the whole or any part of one or more literary,
dramatic or musical works’ protects the copying of a work that has no copyright but attracts
copyright in the typographical arrangement of the edition.
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