ART AND COPYRIGHT.
| Author | Herman, Alexander |
ART AND COPYRIGHT, BY SIMON STOKES, THIRD EDITION
ISBN 9781509934256, 304 pp. published by Hart Publishing
This review first appeared online on 24 August 2021 on the IPKat Blog (ipkitten. blogspot.com). The author would like to thank Hayleigh Bosher for permitting its publication in print form.
It was a delight to learn last year that Simon Stokes, copyright solicitor at Blake Morgan in London, was working on a third edition of his eminently useful Art and Copyright. The book was released this year by Hart Publishing, an imprint of Bloomsbury, and one does not need to progress deep into the book to appreciate the wisdom behind the revision.
Much has changed in the world of copyright since the last edition was published in 2012. There has been increasing harmonisation and standardisation at the EU level and a growing assertion by the CJEU to establish shared rules for interpretation to apply uniformly across the territory. We have witnessed the impact of decisions such as Infopaq, Spiegel Online and Svensson and--perhaps more germane to the arts and creative sectors--those of Painer, Deckmyn and Pelham. And then of course came Brexit, which meant that the United Kingdom would no longer form part of the EU's shared copyright landscape, with the potential for greater divergence in the future should UK judges begin to deviate from the above-referenced CJEU case law.
At the domestic level, plenty has been introduced in the UK over the past decade to change the state of play, with implications for both visual artists and the museum sector. In 2014, a total of nine regulations came into force, each of which presented a significant change to UK copyright law. In the area of exceptions, new fair dealing purposes were added for quotation (a significant expansion on the existing exception for criticism and review), as well as for caricature, parody and pastiche. These additions can serve as a boon to artists, now seemingly more capable than before of reproducing works by third parties without consent for the purposes of collage, parodie statements, mash-ups and appropriation art. For museums, there are now exceptions for digital displays of collection works on dedicated terminals and, in certain situations, for making preservation and replacement copies. And of course there are now regimes for managing orphan works: one in the UK based on licensing and another in the EU benefiting cultural heritage institutions through a copyright exception.
It has...
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