Copyright and other issues associated with photographs taken by Dial Recorders

Notes for recorders and authors who have received a regularising request from BSS
 

History

When in 1997 the Registrar started to include photographs in the Fixed Dial Register and later into the Mass Dial Register, a policy was drafted by the then Registrar, Patrick Powers, to ensure that recorders submitting photographs  - and other material to the Register did so under conditions which gave the Society permission to use it.  That policy, first implemented in 1998, is still in effect.  It is available on the Society's web site, it is also here and it is included in the Miscellany - the document given to all new members when they joining the Society.  It says:

1. No material should be submitted to the Society for which the Recorder does not own or has not obtained a licence in respect of, the copyright. Copyright in all submitted material remains with the recorder/licence holder but, by sending it to the Society, it must be clearly understood and agreed by all affected parties that title to the material passes to BSS and by the act of such passing, the Recorder/Copyright holder grants to the Society a perpetual and irrevocable licence to use any part or all of the submitted material as it sees fit and without restriction in furtherance of the Society’s aims. It is the Recorder’s responsibility to ensure that he/she is entitled to issue such a licence.
 

Additionally the policy also states:

2. Dials which are in, or are visible from, any public place or are located in places which are at times open to the public may generally be recorded without restriction. However, dials that are privately owned and generally out of the public view should only be recorded with the permission of someone who may reasonably be supposed to be acting for the Owner or Keeper of the dial. The Society takes steps to restrict the dissemination of information on dials which are vulnerable by reason of their value or for some other reason. If the Recorder, the Owner/Keeper or the Registrar has reasonable grounds for such a restriction then this is recorded together with the details of the dial and the full details are not published without permission from the Owner or Keeper of the dial or even passed to other BSS Members except for good reason and then only with a written undertaking of confidentiality. Access to view privately owned dials, whether or not their details are regarded as confidential, can be obtained subject to prior agreement from the Owner or Keeper.

Sometimes a dial owner might still be concerned about whether the recording of his or her dial would effectively publicise the existence, and even the location of, their dial to the public at large and dial recorders might be concerned that other persons outside the Society might benefit unreasonably from their work.

3. To provide a protection for this BSS dial recorders were both assured and instructed to assure dial owners, that the Register would only ever be published to BSS Members and to the UK Heritage Organisations.  A further control was instituted to ensure that copies of the Registers sold to BSS Members remained the property of the Society and were to be returned to BSS in the event that the copy was no longer needed.  Chris Daniel also secured an assurance from the Antiquarian Bookseller, Rogers Turner, that they would not accept copies of any edition of the Register for secondhand resale.  The Council of the the Society additionally and specifically confirmed and authorised its dial recorders to assure dial owners, that under no circumstances would the BSS Register be placed on the Internet.

Recent thinking

In 2012-13 the then Council came up with the idea that the BSS website should after all include a section devoted to publication of some UK dials and for this to include images.  Naturally dials vulnerable to theft or vandalism would be excluded from such a section but in an attempt to obtain permission for this a note was placed in the Newsletter saying that this was the intention and asking for any dial recorder who might object to their images being placed on the internet to notify the Secretary.  This, of course, opened up a whole can of worms because, in the previous few years, world legislation on copyright had changed.  Now copyright is owned by an author or a photographer (and later by their estate) for a period ending 75 years after their death.  It was thus not possible to secure permission by a simple notice in the Newsletter.

Not only this but in the same period new international standards were established by which an author or photographer may specify, control and even receive payment for, the commercial use of images and articles placed on the Internet.

August 2013, BSS's request for permission

As a result of these new issues, the BSS Registrar wrote to its list of dial recorders to say that the Society has been advised to regularise the situation and stated that since 2002 (it was actually 1997/8) reports to the Register have been on the basis stated in 1. above and asking for confirmation that their pre-2002 reports adhere to this.  However right though it is to establish this there are some other questions to be answered.

Dial recorders receiving the above request from BSS are advised to obtain answers to the following before giving their agreement:

• Whether or not publication to the Internet is now envisaged when it was always excluded from the permission previously granted by photographers to BSS.

• What protections the Society will place on any Internet based images?

• What commercial controls the photographer or author will be able to set under something like a 'Creative Commons' licence?  More information here

• How any income received from commercial exploitation will be handled?

• How any such permissions and controls will be policed?

• Who will bear the costs of any needed policing?

• Whether the owners of all dials to be mentioned on the Internet will be first approached to ensure they have given their permission for Internet exposure?

• How the Society will hold harmless all dial recorders from their earlier promises to owners that their dial will never be exposed on the Internet?

NB: The above policy considerations do not apply to articles you may have authored in the BSS Bulletin. With those the copyright remains with the author and your original permission relates only to publication in the BSS Bulletin - not elsewhere. Furthermore in the case of articles in the Bulletin you, the author, have not given BSS any licence for further use.  You do of course have the responsibility to obtain prior permission from any third party for publication within your article of any images or other copyright material that you might be reproducing there.   Your permission should be sought before any attempt is made by BSS to publish an article of yours on the Internet or elsewhere and of course you may need to approach any third party copyright holders again since their initial permission to publish in the BSS Bulletin almost certainly would not have covered Internet or other exposure.

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