---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Alan Story <[email protected]> Date: 2010/7/29 Subject: [CopySouth] The Winston Churchill Archives Go Online To: CopySouth Copyright Issues in the Global South <[email protected]> Colleagues: Below is a copy of a letter to the editor of the The Guardian newspaper (UK) that I sent in today. ( I obviously have no idea whether it will be printed). I sent it in response to this article in today's Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/29/winston-churchill-digital-archive-o... ......... Dear Guardian: The words “available online” in the headline “Complete Churchill archive to be available online” conceal far more than they reveal (29 July, pg 11). Yes, it is true that more than one million items of Britain’s often-quoted former prime minister will be posted on the Internet in 2012 through a digital privatisation deal with the publisher Bloomsbury. But in order to access them, every user will have drop an undisclosed number of pounds in a Rupert Murdoch-like user pay toll booth, with the profits going to the publishers and Winston Churchill’s heirs. Why we should have to use a credit card rather than a free library card to read the papers of a key public figure, Britain leader during the critical World War Two years? Sixty years later, why aren’t they part of the nation’s heritage rather than someone’s private property? Indeed, why are having to pay to read something which many people may think the British people already own? Yes, we did shell out £12 million in lottery funds in 1995 to purchase Churchill’s papers, but what we foolishly did not obtain from the Churchill family was the copyright to his papers. As a 5 June 1997 Guardian article, headlined ‘Cashing in on Winston’ explained, “The Major government often showed itself less than bright, but to buy the papers without buying the copyright was an act deserving of stupidity.” In 2010 and for another 15 years, the public will be forced to keep on paying for access and Churchill’s heirs --- who, after all, did none of the actual writing and can only cash in again due to the birth lottery of who your parents or grandparents happen to be ---- have been given a chance for a second windfall, this time a digital windfall. And why for another 15 years? In 1995, the UK’s duration of copyright was extended from life of the author, plus 50 years, to life of the author, plus 70 years. Without this legal change, Churchill’s work would have been in the public domain and freely available in the year 2006 as he died in 1955. The fact that this change also extended the duration of already published work exposes the supposed justification for copyright: to give an incentive to writers. How you can provide an incentive to a deceased author is a question no one has ever been able to explain to me. Additionally, because Churchill’s heirs still own the copyright in these papers, they will also be able to decide if scholars and others will be able to use these words --- and how many words are allowable --- in their own historical analyses of Churchill and this key period of British history. I suggest The Guardian should have repeated the same headline for this article that you used in 1997: ‘Cashing in on Winston.’ Alan Story Senior Lecturer/ Reader Intellectual Property Law Kent Law School, Canterbury, UK. ......................... Alan Story Senior Lecturer/Reader , Intellectual Property Law Kent Law School University of Kent Canterbury Kent United Kingdom CT2 7NS [email protected] Phone: +44 (0)1227 823316 "I have my principles, but if you don't like those, I have others." ________________________________________ _______________________________________________ CopySouth mailing list [email protected] http://copysouth.org/mailman/listinfo/copysouth_copysouth.org -- Diego Saravia [email protected] NO FUNCIONA->[email protected]