Copyright offences

The judgement by the Civil Court condemning a radio station to pay substantial damages for broadcasting copyright music, without having been licensed to do so by the society representing the copyright owners, should serve as a warning to all those in this country who behave cavalierly with material whose copyright is owned by others. Breach of copyright occurs not just by illegally copying and selling CDs and DVDs that are covered by copyright.

Publishers in this country do not think twice about using in their own publications illustrations published in books by other publishers, without asking permission from the copyright owner and paying any fee that may be due, or even acknowledging the source of their illustrations.

A book published very recently by a leading publisher does exactly this. It reproduces a number of illustrations from a book and a journal edited by me, and from a book that included an article by me. Permission to do so was not sought from my publishers and no attempt was made in the captions or in the prefatory material to indicate the publications from which the illustrations were derived.

This is a shameful practice that ought to be stopped forthwith, but perhaps that will be only when an offending publisher has been condemned to pay damages just like the radio station.