Chair of the meeting was Barbara Stratton, secretary of LACA and copyright advisor to CILIP. Barbara gave us a resume of the most significant changes to copyright since implementation of the directive, stressing also that there was a lot that hadn't changed. She highlighted the new definition of broadcasting; copyright for educational purposes "the blackboard exceptions"; new rights for owners of electronic media; the new treatment of incidental and temporary copies that most of us are blissfully unaware of creating while surfing the internet, and thankfully no longer illegal. Fair dealing, she said was now on a non-commercial basis, copying for private study was fine, though acknowledgements have to be made. Lastly, libraries and archives now were under an obligation to run their photocopying services on a non-commercial basis. There were new rules for the visually impaired, but under separate legislation. In order to provide a library and information service, we now had to have licences to copy, and she mentioned some of the organisations who would sell us a licence: CLA, NLA, the Copyright Society, ERA, OU, BSI, OS, Performing Rights, and the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society to name but a few. It's up to us librarians to ensure that we get good value from our licences. We want to carry out a whole range of activities - we want to copy, scan, digitise, but there is no blanket licence to enable us to do all these activities and furthermore, the pricing mechanism is anything but transparent.

Second up was Esther Gunaratnam, an IP lawyer at Laytons. She commented that she liked to approach things from first principles, and went on to apply this first principle approach to the new legislation. The new act, she said, was technology neutral, it didn't matter if you were wired, or wireless. The legislation laid out restricted acts - i.e. what could only be done by the rights holders - for example, copying for reproduction, photocopying, scanning or downloading, excepting incidental copying. Helpfully, she explained that streaming is a live feed, so can't be copying, except that a streamer could be communicating a copyright work. Also restricted is electronic transmission - this could be broadcasting, posting on a website, sending hypertext deep linking or arguably e-mailing. The above were criminal offences, which could incur a two-year prison sentence, but she was quick to point out that these restrictions were targeted at online pirates, file swappers and that as the law was so new, it was yet to be tested. But, she noted, directors and managers were personally responsible for their employee's actions. She went on to outline the exceptions to the above restrictions, including, as mentioned, temporary copies. Firstly fair dealing, but with the proviso that there is no legal definition of fair dealing and we are reliant on Lord Denning's interpretation which was to consider the extent of the abstract, the use of the extract and the proportion of the complete work. Another exception was research and private study, which should carry an acknowledgement and have a non-commercial purpose. A further exception was for libraries and archives, she explained, who could make single copies for study and research, as long as a declaration form was filled out. Interlibrary loan services had to be run on a non-commercial basis, only charging for the cost of the service. The visually impaired were allowed a single accessible copy for personal use, as long as that version was not already commercially available. The last exception was one we are familiar with - judicial proceedings, which she stressed, have to be existing proceedings, not something that might happen in the future.

Esther went on to explain another criminal offence - that of circumventing technical protection measures (TPM) and the only exclusion here was for cryptography research - for developers who needed to investigate these systems. Another acronym was mentioned - RMI - Rights Management Information e.g. a watermark, and to remove these was also an infringement.

The last speaker was Andrew Hughes, who kindly stepped in at the last minute to take the place of Graham Cornish, who had lost his voice. Andrew is vice-president of Onesource, and one-time co-founder of the NLA. Andrew takes a very pragmatic approach to copyright, and takes into account the nature and value of the material to be copied. With most online content, an agreement exists between the supplier and user, defining what can and can't be done. Most content, he said is owned by someone, but sometimes it is just too uneconomic to enforce copyright, as the value is too small. That sort of copying normally passes as fair dealing. This is where the collecting societies play such a useful role, collecting monies and providing clearance for all sorts of activities. He illustrated this by an example of a pub playing music by Sting. It would be impractical for the pub owner to phone up Sting each time his music was played, but the collecting society gave clearance for this activity, and also collected and distributed the fees. Some collecting societies have a vast turnover, for example the Performing Rights Society's is £250m. In a way, the collecting societies act as a sort of insurance policy, and the fee buys some rights. Andrew went back to his pragmatic approach when he explained that that Onesource does not seek permission to link to other sites as it was "bleeding obvious" that these sites would welcome the publicity associated with the linking.

Want my advice? I belong to the squeaky clean school when it comes to copyright and would advise that you get your licences in place, and ensure that everyone, especially your print room, knows their limitations. Then check your holdings against excluded titles and arrange permissions with publishers or buy any separate licences if available. It helps if you know the purpose when ordering documents through document delivery services, so that you pay the correct fee or get the correct forms signed. Put up your posters, srick down your stickers and you should be ©overed.