TRL, Copyright and Much Ado About Something!

The UK company formerly known as Transport and Research Laboratory (TRL) are commissioned, usually out of public funds (ie. YOUR taxes) to produce road safety reports. Whether this be for the DfT or County Councils.

Unfortunately, when TRL was privatised by the Tories in the 1980's they were allowed to retain full copyright over all of the reports they produced. This, effectively, puts them in the private rather than the public domain for the following reasons.

1) A copyright holder has ABSOLUTE control over how their material is distributed or whether it is distributed AT ALL.

2) Charges can be imposed for copyrighted material which put it out of reach of the general public. Lets face it, what man in the street can afford to pay £40 for a road safety report, let alone the whole bundle they would need to successfully criticise one?.

3) If the material isn't open to ALL then it is definitively NOT in the public domain.

4) TRL have confirmed in writing that although they claim only to charge an administrative fee, they intend to jealously guard copyright by all means possible. The stated restrictions include copies of PDF documents and extensive quoting from TRL material of any kind.

5) Recent changes in patents and copyright laws across the EU (and the rest of the world) are changing copyright breach from a civil into a criminal offence. The Notts MAG stance is that any material which is critical to road safety and particularly that which has been paid either directly or indirectly from the public purse should be freely available to all and NOT subject to restrictive copyrights on distribution.

To this end we have been lobbying our MP, Paddy Tipping (Sherwood) with a view that the government takes this issue seriously. However, it is difficult getting them to see the problem.

Unfortunately the implications are only likely to be recognised should The Labour Party find itself in opposition after the next government. Should this be the case then they will have, effectively, handed an instrument of oppression and a means of silencing criticism and dissent to the new incumbents.

As with Soviet Russia, where photocopy machines were illegal, if you can't copy and disseminate information, newsletters or quote in a critique then you cannot challenge the establishment. If anyone "gets" what we are saying here then please write to your MP and let him or her know how you feel about the issue.

There is more information at the Nottinghamshire MAG Noticeboard

Snowball