I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing lots of notices lately about a symposium coming up in June in Washington, DC, on “Sustaining Culture in Copyright”, on how we can better balance “cultural innovation” with copyright owners’ rights. This happens to be taking place on June 22-24, right at the start of the American Library Association’s annual conference, also in DC. Now, I’m from Alaska, and generally the idea of being somewhere as warm as DC can be in the summer does not greatly appeal to me. After all, isn’t summer the time when folks should be leaving DC for cooler climes?! This time, though, I might be just a little bit jealous. Three whole days learning about copyright in a current context, with speakers like Peter Jaszi of Washington College of Law, American University, and William Patry, now of Google, Inc.! Information related to filesharing, social media, net neutrality! What fun!
For more information about UMUC’s Center for Intellectual Property’s 2010 Symposium, see http://www.umuc.edu/cip2010.
For more information about ALA’s Annual Conference, see http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/upcoming/annual/index.cfm
Freya Anderson
ALA, Copyright news, Events
According to an article* in the UCLA Newsroom,
UCLA is taking steps to restore the streaming of previously purchased instructional content behind password-protected course websites, a practice the campus believes is permitted under various provisions in the federal Copyright Act.
The article indicates that while UCLA had stopped streaming to show good faith during negotiations, they had determined that their uses were allowable under Fair Use, as well as the TEACH Act safe harbor, and so they intend to restart streaming sometime in the spring semester. They did modify protocols so that faculty now specify the intended education use for material, although they believed that their previous practice was within the law.
Although there was no ruling by a court, UCLA sharing their reasoning may help smaller institutions, who may not have ready access to intellectual property specialists, in determining which of their own practices may be allowable under current copyright law.
Thanks to Janet Croft for the tip!
* Hampton, Phil. “Campus to restart streaming of instructional video content.” UCLA Newsroom, March 3, 2010.
Freya Anderson
Copyright news
The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) has posted a free basic video on copyright at http://216.183.190.29/. It’s geared towards corporate clients, but I think that it’s pretty good for others too: cute, catchy, and more balanced than I had expected. It provides brief explanations of copyright, public domain, and fair use.
I posted a link rather than embedding the video in this post, because their license agreement allows for posting on a corporate intranet, but seems to disallow including it here. The other aspect that I found discouraging is that they didn’t include a publication date. Strictly speaking, this may not be necessary, because they are licensing the video, which trumps copyright, but of all places, the CCC should understand the importance of a publication date and should include it.
Freya Anderson
Copyright resources
copyright, education
Fair use is one of the most important concepts in the day-to-day implementation of copyright law, and yet, by its very nature, it is a difficult one for many people to understand. We have four factors, which are sort of equal, but sort of not, and there are altogether too few cases that are unambiguous. Most people I know who are into copyright spend a fair amount of time explaining fair use, working out fair use analyses, or arguing those analyses with others.
In the October 21, 2009, Slate article, “Is there ‘Hope’ for Shepard Fairey?” Tim Wu answers the question, “How does fair-use law work, anyway?” without once stating the four factors of fair use. Does he oversimplify? Perhaps. Wu’s approach is a first for me, but I think his explanation, which focuses on “categories” of use, may be really helpful in providing a different perspective. Maybe it will even help turn on some copyright lightbulbs.
Freya Anderson
Fair use
copyright, Fair use
I just love some of the comics out there now. XKCD.com
consistently covers some of my favorite topics, from the cancelled Whedon TV show Firefly, to intellectual property issues.
Knowing of my somewhat unusual interests, a colleague recently pointed out another comic strip to me. Shortpacked! has a recent strip which addresses Creative Commons and the public domain. Alas, it seems they have made a small error, basically equating work under a Creative Commons share alike license with the public domain.
In the former, the creator retains copyright but allows others to use the material as long as any work created is shared similarly. With public domain, no one owns copyright in the work, and there are no copyright restrictions at all.
Freya Anderson
Creative Commons and Open Licenses, Public domain
copyright, Creative Commons and Open Licenses, popular culture, Public domain
