Broadcast Copyright
In the United Kingdom, there are two distinct classes of broadcast: those made before and those made after the commencement of the Copyright Act 1956. Under the Act of 1911, passed before the invention of radio or television broadcasting, no copyright existed in a broadcast, and this was not corrected until the Act of 1956. Until the 1950s not even the Broadcaster had the technical means of recording or replaying a broadcast signal, so there had been no need to make provision for copyright protection.
The 1956 Act is not retrospective in its effect, so a television or radio broadcast made before 1 July 1957 (the commencement date of the Act) has no broadcast copyright: Schedule 7 para 17, Copyright Act 1956.
In the case of a broadcast made after the commencement of the 1956 Act, the copyright in a broadcast programme expires 50 years from the end of the year in which it is broadcast: section 14(2), Copyright Act 1956. Repeating such a broadcast does not extend the period of copyright, whether the repeat is during or after the 50 year copyright period: section 14(3), Copyright Act 1956.
The 1956 Act restricts only two matters: it prohibits recording the broadcast for commercial purposes, and it prohibits causing the broadcast (if it is a television broadcast) to be seen in public by a paying audience: section 14(4), Copyright Act 1956.
These provisions were re-enacted in substantially the same terms in the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, in order to preserve the distinction (established in the 1956 Act) between broadcasts made before and after 1 June 1957.
The 1988 Act applies only to broadcasts made after it came into force on 1 August 1989: section 170 and Schedule 1 paragraph 5(1), Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. But it effects merely a continuation, in the main, of the pre-existing law on broadcast copyright established in the 1956 Act, while adding protection for the new technology of cable television.
In the 1988 Act provision was made for the first time for material distributed by cable television, in the form of a separate copyright for cable programmes. This copyright lasts for the same period as broadcast copyright. However, there is no protection for cable programmes transmitted before 1 January 1985. Subsequent amendments to the 1988 Act have now merged the definition of a cable programme into the definition of a broadcast.
Read more about this topic: Copyright Law Of The United Kingdom
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