Quietly seething (all right, not quietly)

[sheenaghpugh]

I've been refusing the use of a certain poem to most people, including exam boards, for ages - not a matter of money, I just don't like the thing. Just got an email from my publisher:

"I've gone as far as we can with denying permission for the use of 'Sometimes' in the OCR exam, but this from the administrator:' I have as I said arranged for the poem to be greyed out before the exam paper is published on the web and therefore it will not appear after the exam, however I need to make you aware that candidates of the exam have been studying the poem as part of their syllabus and therefore it cannot be removed from the actual exam itself (their is an exemption in the Copyright Act for examinations).'"

Do note "their is", from an exam board - quis custodiet, eh? But what's even more interesting is that "exemption". I can understand that they may not need to pay you, but the implication is rather worse; it is that you can't refuse the use of it and they don't have to ask. Words like "unmannerly", "arrogant" and "semi-literate bastards" come to mind....

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That is annoying - and it makes me wonder how much else could be sneaked through the Copyright Act by being published as an 'examination'. E.g. You could publish Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Exam Edition, and all you'd have to do would be to put a quiz in the back.

I suppose they'd find some lawyerish way round that, but it strikes me as much the same idea.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

That's bloody annoying...

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

Right officious bureaucrats.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

I can imagine that there's a debate to be had about academic freedom in syllabus design, and maybe this exemption is part of that. But what about the author's rights?! Sheesh.

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

That just plain is rotten. 'Cannot' is a lie. They *could* remove it from the exam, but they don't want to, and they know the law won't force them to do so.

Arrogant is the least I'd call them. Would make me want to make up my own 'exam' using published material from the people behind the OCR exam and blithely inform them of the fact that I was teaching a community course for people of slow understanding and using their material free of charge which I thought would please them.

[fantasyenabler.livejournal.com]

"Semi-literate bastards"...I like it. It has a nice ring to it. ;)

[federhirn.livejournal.com]

Is this an upcoming exam, or one that has already taken place? Could you just let it be known that the poem is on the exam, thereby forcing the exam board to take it off again to avoid people knowing the exam topic in advance?

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Now there's a good idea.

[sheenaghpugh]

A lawyer friend of mine has found the relevant legislation - I quote:

"OK, I've found the answer in clause 32 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988:
*(3) Copyright is not infringed by anything done for the purposes of an examination by way of setting the questions, communicating the questions to the candidates or answering the questions.*

And for some reason that escapes me, except there must have been effective lobbying:
*(4) Subsection (3) does not extend to the making of a reprographic copy of a musical work for use by an examination candidate in performing the work.
*
Someone was asleep at the wheel when this Act was at the committee stage. And it seems that OCR had no need to stay their hand at all in honouring previous requests not to use the work, never mind their weaselling excuses now."

Too true.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

If they have to print it, can you demand that they take your name off it?

[sheenaghpugh]

By the look of the legislation, I can insist on nothing.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Back in the day, the examiners demanded that students learned the poems they'd studied by heart for the exam -- the printed poem for analysis was meant to be one the students would never have seen before.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Words like "unmannerly", "arrogant" and "semi-literate bastards" come to mind....

...and should be put to paper (perhaps omitting the "bastards"). It might stop them using this poem in future.