Copyright

I have a friend who is a writer.  Writing is her profession, and her main income comes from selling her work.  Even a comparatively short newspaper or magazine article is the result of several hours’ work in researching and fact checking, followed by more hours of initial drafting, plus the time spent thereafter honing the prose, with each word and phrase carefully chosen and placed to be as effective as possible in setting the tone, and providing smooth readability.  A short story or book can take weeks or months of drafting, editing and re-drafting.  It’s the same with all experts who manufacture handmade one-off items for a living – the income comes from selling what you have made, and what puts you in the bracket to earn a living from your talent - is being able to make something of a better quality than most people could.  And each thing any professional craftsperson makes - has to bring in enough money in comparison to the cost of the materials and the number of hours spent on creating it, to make a viable profit.

 

I know there are a lot of Leaders within Guiding who find copyright and performing rights laws an inconvenience, a barrier to what they want to do, or feel they should only apply to professionals and not to amateurs like them, or charities such as their units.  Or who don’t understand them, or don’t realise that they apply to everyone no matter at what scale.  It can be easy to imagine that ‘big business’ can afford to give away it’s produce cheaply or free, and therefore shouldn’t be charging fees to the small-scale users of their wares – what’s a children’s performance at the village hall, or a few dozen photocopies of a script, or showing a video at the Brownie sleepover, or photocopying a resource, to them?

 

The initial difficulty which writers and composers face is similar to the one the chair-maker has – that once they first sell the item they have painstakingly made, that item can then be sold on repeatedly over the coming years, possibly for a higher amount than the maker was paid for it.  But until recently the chair-maker has at least had the assurance that her chair can only be used by one owner at a time, and that if people want more chairs to exactly match the original, then they have to hire her services as no-one else would be able to make an exact match – however for writers, that safeguard does not exist.  Photocopy machines and scanners mean that it is easy for a handcrafted piece of writing to be copied hundreds of times, in seconds, and circulated far and wide without the creator knowing, far less benefiting.  If people ignore copyright laws, then the writer does not get their share.

 

Also, the reason a handcrafted chair can be sold for a price which reflects the quality of materials and number of hours it took to make, is because people appreciate and respect the skill of the carpenter, sure that they could not possibly make anything as good themselves.  Yet writers and composers often don’t get the same respect for the skill of their craft – lots of people fondly imagine they could write a novel if they only had the time – they assume that time is their only barrier, that the original idea and the talent to write that idea up well would both follow automatically.  Yes, anyone can fasten together a few planks and make something which could be termed a chair – though it may well lack the comfort, beauty or stability of a well-made chair.  And anyone can throw together a few sentences into paragraphs and make a story or article out of them, but it takes a craftsperson’s skill to add design, style, quality, artistry, beauty, clarity, polish, readability, atmosphere, tone . . . most of us do not have that talent.

 

‘The labourer is worthy of his hire’ – well, if you want to use a script or song someone else has written, then you are effectively hiring them and their skills.  And that is what you are paying for, when you pay a copyright fee on a script or piece of sheet music.  If you want to use an artist’s recording of a piece of music, for the girls to sing or dance to, or a writer’s play script for a pack performance, or an activity pack someone else has written for your unit programme or camp theme, then the same principle applies in terms of the performing rights.  You’re hiring both the original writer of the piece, the performing artists on the recording, and all the trades involved in the production of the recorded work - and it therefore seems only reasonable that you pay your share of the cost of all those people’s skills.  One look at the credits list of even a low-budget film will give an idea of how many people it takes, and who all has to make a living.

 

Within Guiding, there are some skilled amateur writers who produce resources for their own units.  Some of them are very generous, and offer to share their work with other Leaders and units, often entirely free.  All they ask in return is that they are given the credit for that hard creative work – so if someone has a copyright symbol © on a resource they have created, you should be careful to ensure that the symbol is never removed, and that you respect their right to claim the credit for their work.  And if someone hasn’t put a copyright symbol on, but you know them to definitely be the originator, you could add it, to ensure that credit goes where it’s due and isn’t mis-attributed.  (And of course, if you get have a gift of that sort, you wouldn’t pass it on to anyone else, or make extra copies beyond the number originally agreed, without getting fresh permission from the originator that she is happy for it to be shared further than she originally authorised.)

 

Others produce packs of ideas which come along with a badge to be bought, in which case their plan is that the money charged for the badges will help to cover the production costs of both pack and badges combined, often leaving a little over to be put towards a stated good cause.  Sadly, there are actually some people who will obtain and use several ideas from a resource pack but not buy even a token badge in return, with the result that instead of the originator covering their costs and raising some money for the good cause as planned, they actually raise far less than they ought have, and could even make a loss – which doesn’t seem very fair or Guide-like.  Other Leaders, who find themselves with spare badges left over after using the activity pack with their unit, will put the spares up for auction, make a profit on the leftover badges thus sold – but do they donate those profits to the cause the badge was being sold in aid of? Or do they pocket them?  I do hope they go to the cause which was intended, but I suspect the answer would be ‘only some do, most don’t’.

 

Yes, sometimes copyright can ‘get in the way’ of what I do in Guiding.  There are some songs which I don’t use for unit performances because I feel the fee is too high to justify for a small charity like mine.  I can’t always get hold of the copyright-free clipart I want, and I don’t currently have the time or skill to create my own.  And it can be tempting to take the easy option rather than do the right thing over copyright.  But by the same token, it means that some of the resources I’ve worked hard to produce have been protected, and it means I get fair acknowledgement for my time and effort in creating them.  Wouldn’t it be great if everyone in Guiding played fair over copyright, and respecting creative work?

Guiding History Myths

There are quite a few stories about the history of Guiding which have been published in the official Girl Guide Association history books, especially those written and published before 1978.  Problem is, if you do a little research and fact-checking, then you find that the history books contain quite a lot of what is quite clearly myth.  And a lot of people’s knowledge of Guiding history is based on what they were told when they were Guides, by Leaders who retold the stories from the official books, naturally assuming them to be accurate.  We can’t criticise them for telling us what was in the official books, but if we know the facts then we can work to get the truth out there – in many ways it’s a far more exciting story that the myth is! 

 

So, here are 6 common Guiding history myths, and the true answers . . . apologies in advance to anyone I upset . . .

 

Olave Baden-Powell founded Guiding, or, Robert and Olave Baden-Powell are ‘the founders’.

Two commonly-repeated myths, but both clearly wrong.  You can either say that Robert Baden-Powell founded Guiding, or you can say that Robert Baden-Powell and Agnes Baden-Powell together founded Guiding, depending on your interpretation.  But either way, what is 100% clear is that Olave did not have any role whatsoever in the founding of Guiding.  Robert had the original idea for Boy Scouts, Agnes used the idea as a basis to set up Girl Guides as a separate movement.  Olave had no connection or involvement with Scouting before 1912, or Guiding before 1915, as she states herself in her autobiography  – so that’s the whole of the Girl Scout era plus the first 5 years of Girl Guides, during which time both the Guide and Brownie sections were created and established, and many of the structures and programmes both created and refined.  So anything which happened in Guiding prior to Olave becoming a County Commissioner in 1916 was clearly done on Agnes’s watch, and under Agnes’s leadership.  And anyone who joins something five years after it started, no matter how large or lengthy their contribution thereafter, cannot be termed a founder.

 

There were a dozen girls at the Crystal Palace rally.

Well, yes. . . you could say there were a dozen girls at the Crystal Palace rally, given that there were actually over 1000 Girl Scouts there, most of which were there quite legitimately having applied for tickets in the approved way.  Oh yes, those who held tickets were welcomed in the gates regardless of gender, and at that early date over 1000 Girl Scouts made it to the Crystal Palace Rally on that Saturday and were amongst the 10,000 Scouts present – given that only those in London and the surrounding Counties could realistically have got there given public transport in those days, how many thousands of Girl Scouts must there have been spread around the UK and potentially beyond, by that time?  Especially given that a goodly number of Girl Scouts also attended the Scottish Rally at Scotstoun Stadium, earlier that year?

 

Robert Baden-Powell’s first encounter with Girl Scouts was at the Crystal Palace Rally, and he was surprised to discover that they existed.

Clearly not true on either count.  The Rally was held in September 1909, whereas Robert wrote about Girl Scouts in his personal column in “The Scout” magazine in January 1909 acknowledging the many Christmas Cards he had received from Girl Scouts – so there is no question that he knew they existed in significant numbers – and in that column he also praised their skills, so it would seem strange that people claim either he did not know they existed, or was in some way disapproving of them.  (Also, the column referred to Girl Scouts in initial capitals with no quote marks or other caveats.)  During the period 1907-1909 Robert Baden-Powell travelled around the UK speaking at public meetings about Scouting, and there are numerous accounts of both boys and girls approaching him after his speeches to enquire about how to start Scout troops, getting a positive reception, and being inspired to found both Boy and Girl Scout troops immediately thereafter.  That would suggest that he gave a positive reception to all who approached him as potential leaders in Scouting, regardless of gender of the Leader, or of the youngsters they proposed to recruit.

 

It was the girls who gate-crashed the rally demanding “Something for the girls” who forced the start of Guiding.

Perhaps they were one of the factors, but they were by no means the only factor.  It is likely that Miss Violet Markham was at least as significant.  Fact is that in that era, mixed activities (other than for nursery-age children) were considered totally inappropriate for boys and girls who were not siblings.  State schools still had separate entrances for boys and girls to go in, and where mixed classrooms existed, the class was segregated - private schools were invariably single-sex.  Although boys had a fair bit of freedom, the behaviour rules for girls were very strict, especially among the middle and upper classes.  Yet when “Scouting for Boys” was published, girls as well as boys were able to obtain copies, and some girls took up the ideas with enthusiasm and formed their own Patrols, whether with parental approval or not.  These Girl Scout Patrols were sometimes accepted into existing Scout Troops, with the Scoutmasters happy to assess tests and award badges, others met separately from the boys but were attached to a Scout Troop, with the Scoutmaster visiting the Patrol meeting to do badge testing, some again were independent.  In the autumn of 1909 a heated correspondence started up in “The Spectator” magazine, initiated by Violet Markham, who wrote of a local Scout troop where allegedly both boys and girls attended and took part in drill until a late hour of the evening.  She objected both to the mixed group and to the late hour the meetings ended.  Responses to this initial letter (and an editorial) deplored this and pleaded with Baden-Powell to confirm that he wholly disapproved of such mixed activities.  This negative publicity against mixed troops in Scouting is as likely to have been at least as strong a factor as was the misbehaviour of a small group of Girl Scouts who, having turned up at an all-ticket event both late and without tickets, chose to march through the gates in a literal gate-crashing ploy, all in clear breach of the Scout Law.

 

Girl Guiding was initially fairly unsuccessful, and it was only when Olave took over that it got going.

Well, once Agnes took the helm in 1910 and started both to organise the existing Girl Scouts and rapidly adapt Scouting into a group parents might approve, it grew more rapidly than Scouting was growing at that point, and in spite of the difficulties brought by the outbreak of the 1^st World War, it continued to grow rapidly throughout the 1910-1916 period.  Olave did do a lot of work from 1916 onward to develop the County structure which Agnes had started, but it is difficult to say how much of the growth post-1916 can be attributed to Olave’s input and how much would have been on-going from the work which Agnes had already done in travelling the country visiting units and making speeches at public meetings.  So it wouldn’t be fair to say that everything was hopeless before 1916 and wonderful after, or that everything positive was clearly Olave’s work . . .

 

Agnes was old-fashioned, and Olave brought in the energy that was needed to transform Guiding.

Certainly there was a significant age difference between them – when Olave became Chief in 1916 she was 27, and Agnes was 58 – but although Agnes might appear a product of her generation, even a brief look at the list of her hobbies would create a rather different impression from the prim Victorian lady the old photos might imply – metalwork, bicycle stunt riding, aviation with both balloons and aeroplanes, astronomy, first aid, radio communication, camping, nature study would all suggest that Agnes was clearly an up-to-date lady in tune with modern times, who did not lack for energy or range of experience and ideas, and Agnes did put a good bit of her time (and money) into Guiding . . . the difference between them lay more in their personalities, not their ages or attitudes.  Consideration also needs to be given to the fact that Agnes was a year younger than Robert, and no-one seems to have questioned whether he was too old-fashioned, or lacking in the drive to get the Scout movement going on a sound footing . . .