Copyright Advisory Network

I’ve been remiss in not posting about a great new resource for librarians and others working in cultural institutions: Peter Hirtle’s new book, “Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums.” I finally had the time to read it in its entirety over winter break, and I believe it will definitely be useful to anyone having to think about these issues. If you’re involved in decision-making related to digitization, dealing with orphan works, or having to consider those types of hard questions, I’d say this book is a must-have. IMHO. ^_^ I’ll provide a more in-depth description when I have a chance, but I wanted to make sure that it made our lists of resources now.

Carlos Ovalle Academic libraries, Copyright news, Fair use, International copyright, Orphan Works, School libraries, Technology

The Copyright Alliance (not to be confused with the Library Copyright Alliance) is one of, if not *the* largest promoters of strong copyright in existence. It’s membership list mainly consists of copyright and entertainment industries. I’ll occasionally look at their cited scholarship when I feel like being depressed about the state of copyright scholarship. They’ve recently created the nonprofit Copyright Alliance Education Foundation to educate K-12 educators and students about copyright.

Unsurprisingly, I have problems with the materials found on that site. It’s not all bad, but one should be very careful before using any materials “as-is.” The materials stress the importance of permission, the vagueness of fair use, and a fear of technology. Believe it or not, I started reading the document with a sense of hope- creating copyright materials for K-12 is not easy. The organization has dedicated a lot of resources to this important subject; I had at they would acknowledge some of the purposes behind copyright law and the areas that are controversial. Sadly, it was not to be. In simplifying a complex subject (and this is even for the teachers, not only for the students), the organization has made their elements a lot less useful for educators who are actually interested in getting copyright right.

My biggest gripe is that they offer a simplistic and binary view of how copyright works, in and out of the classroom. In the guide for educators, they claim that the use of copyrighted materials requires fair use (characterized as scary, vague, uncertain) or permission. My first question: how in the world can you offer a copyright guide specifically for educators without talking about educational exemptions to copyright? We have actual exemptions specifically for educators in copyright law! Their guide specifically denies such exemptions. In the FAQ, they state that there are no special privileges for educators. That statement is completely incorrect. Sections 110(1) and 110(2) offer teachers ways to use copyrighted material that are not covered by fair use. Furthermore, their coverage of fair use could use a great deal of work. They don’t appear eager to have students attempt to use fair use, and in my opinion really minimize its importance.

As I was writing this message, Tim sent a message about EFF‘s new site: http://www.teachingcopyright.org/
The EFF talked about a “balanced” copyright system. The Copyright Alliance doesn’t. The EFF site walks people through the decision making process in determining whether or not a use is fair, and discusses different situations in which a use was determined to be fair. The EFF site isn’t perfect (and I’ll write to them with a couple of suggestions), but it’s a much more appropriate and realistic introduction, in my opinion.

Would that everyone could work together. The people in the copyright industries aren’t bad people. But there really are some fundamental differences in beliefs about public good and fairness in general that have made compromise difficult (and it seems to be the public side that is willing to compromise). I’ll write about this later when revisiting the government’s Section 108 report.

I believe that copyright is useful and important. I also believe that copyright exemptions are vital to creativity and innovation. Teachers, please be aware that there are problems with the Copyright Alliance’s approach. It’s very one-sided about issues that are not one-sided. I’m not saying reject it out of hand, but be careful. Not all of the true/false statements they offer can be evaluated by a true/false statement.

Carlos Ovalle ALA, Advocacy, Copyright news, Copyright resources, Fair use, School libraries, Technology

More important copyright news from District Dispatch:

In December 2008 the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) and the Music Library Association (MLA) submitted comments to the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress, asking for an expansion of the previous exemption to the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to include the following:

• The exemption should apply to audiovisual works included in any college or university library, not just the library of the media studies department
• The exemption should apply to classroom uses by instructors in all subjects, not just media studies or film professors

LCA and MLA followed up in February 2009, submitting additional evidence supporting the circumvention of access control technologies of audiovisual works included in a library of a college or university. The associations highlighted the absence of alternatives available and included additional examples of film clips used by college and university faculty – from many academic disciplines.

On Friday, May 1 in Palo Alto, CA, the Copyright Office began a series of hearings on the proposed anti-circumention exemptions. Yesterday, the hearings moved to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where they’ll conclude on Friday, May 8. Jonathan Band, testifying on behalf of the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) offered evidence in support of the expansion of the exemption (for a transcript of the testimony, go here). Band said that DVDs provide the high-quality audio and video necessary to discern subtle forms of communication central to teaching language and criminal justice classes. Band went on to question the alternatives to circumvention offered by content industry representatives, such as videorecording a TV screen or asking permission from film studios in order to use a clip. Finally, Band excoriated rightsholders for opposing the modest expansion of the exemption to include all faculty on campus. He said,

They know that whether the exemption is granted or rejected will have absolutely no impact on the level of infringement…they insult us by treating us as potential infringers who can’t be trusted to use a technology any 12-year-old can download from the Internet.

Many others testified yesterday in support of this exemption, or similar exemptions. Check out the Twitter feeds from OITP, Public Knowledge, and Wendy Seltzer for more updates. Follow #dmca1201 on Twitter for proceedings over the next 2 days. And don’t miss this surreal video of members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) showing the Copyright Office how users should not be allowed to circumvent copy protections on DVDs because there is a viable alternative – videorecording a TV set!

MPAA shows how to videorecord a TV set on Vimeo.

Timothy Vollmer ALA, Copyright news, Events, Fair use, Technology 1201, acrl, ALA, anti-circumvention, arl, copyright, copyright office, DMCA, dmca 1201, hearings, library of congress

Oh, Amazon. Every now and then you do things that make it difficult for me to be a fan (and customer) no matter how much I like your stuff. (This is a characteristic you share with Blizzard, so you’re at least in interesting company.)

First, the Kindle 2.

My house is filled with bookshelves and books, perhaps unsurprisingly. Holly has been very interested in the potential for electronic books to serve as a replacement for physical books in certain circumstances- for example, for travel, ease of storage, and the possible replacement of some of MY books. We bought the Sony Librie from Japan some years back and have had a mixed experience with it. For her birthday we bought a Kindle 2. That one didn’t work out so well, so Amazon sent a replacement, which is what I’m basing “the good” below on.

The Good:

-Readability. It’s a good device for reading standard text- without killing your eyes.
-WHISPERNET. Free access to the Internet, just about everywhere, without a monthly charge. This isn’t all good (elaborated below), but it’s been useful for using sites like Wikipedia.
-Text to Speech. The “experimental” text to speech feature is surprisingly decent. It’s not as good as a regular audio book, naturally, but it’s certainly been usable when set with the male voice at the fastest speed. H has been using it regularly, and it is by far her favorite feature.
-Images look surprisingly good. One of the things we’ve been very interested in is the use of the Kindle 2 as a manga reader, and it does that job adequately (with a couple of caveats I’ll address below).
-Free books. There are several free public domain books available from the Kindle store, as well as some newer free books (usually the first in a series). For example, the first book in the Temeraire series, His Majesty’s Dragon, is free.
-It’s easy to buy things. This can be dangerous (see “the ugly” below).

The Bad:

-The manga selection sucks. There’s about one.
-The overall selection could be better.
-Book organization could be better. It would be nice to have folders or better ways to view your books instead of a big list that you can only organize in a limited number of ways.
-The browser. The Kindle is in black and white, and not all sites render well- not even sites that are mostly text.
-I wish they’d kept the ability to use memory cards with the Kindle.
-I keep on comparing it to my iPhone and trying to zoom in and out to no avail. ^_^;

The Ugly:

-DRM. I disagree with the idea of tying a specific copy to a specific device. This alone almost caused me not purchase the Kindle 2. That’s the basic reason for my dislike of DRM, which goes beyond that- my experiences with DRM with games, music, and the work of libraries and archives have made me very distrustful of its use.

-Having to zoom in each manga page to get the best image possible. Really, they should just allow you to keep it zoomed in at all times. (Zooming basically takes away the top and bottom information bars.)

-It’s easy to buy things. Possibly too easy. We returned the first Kindle 2 we received because it would freeze when we did certain things (such as, oh, hitting the “back” button on the first page of any chapter). When this first occurred, we pressed various buttons to try to get it to unfreeze, and nothing worked- not even a hard shut down. After about 10 minutes or so, the screen started responding again- and somehow, during this time of non-response, we purchased the then best-seller 3 times. Oops. Amazon promptly refunded the purchases, and after a week or so and a number of phone calls I convinced them to send us a replacement, which has worked much better.

-Amazon’s capitulation on the text to speech issue. I submitted feedback and received their standard reply, part of which is excerpted below.

We’ve looked carefully at the legality of Kindle 2′s Text-to-Speech software, and it is clearly legal.

Nevertheless, we believe many rights holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat. With text-to-speech, Kindle can still read every newspaper, magazine, blog and book out loud to you, except if the book is disabled by the rights holder. We believe most rights holders, usually the publisher or author, will decide to keep text-to-speech enabled.

Here’s the thing: if it’s clearly legal, then rights holders don’t deserve to be in the driver’s seat. In this case, users do. You’re not doing us any favors; quite the contrary, your stance can hurt lawful use in the long run. I realize that you’re probably doing this in order to convince publishers to put their books on Kindle in the first place (not to mention possible contract disputes), but I’m pretty unhappy with the decision.

Also, Neil Gaiman’s take on the subject seems eminently sensible.

-Amazon’s attack on the ability to place other legally purchased books on the Kindle. If Amazon wants electronic books to succeed, I think they’re doing it wrong.

All in all, despite the problems we’ve had, we both agree that we like the Kindle. We truly hope that Amazon changes its practices, and we hope that the Kindle continues to improve.

Cross posted at copy this blog.

Carlos Ovalle Copyright news, Technology

A recent piece in the NYTimes Bits Blog points out a study from the University of Washington which showed that the technologies Big Media uses to investigate illegal file sharing regularly produce false positives.

From the Bits blog:

In two separate studies in August 2007 and May of this year, the researchers set out to examine who was participating in BitTorrent file-sharing networks and what they were sharing. The researchers introduced software agents into these networks to monitor their traffic. Even though those software agents did not download any files, the researchers say they received more than 400 take-down requests accusing them of participating in the downloads.

The researchers concluded that enforcement agencies are looking only at I.P. addresses of participants on these peer-to-peer networks, and not what files are actually downloaded or uploaded — a more resource-intensive process that would nevertheless yield more conclusive information.

In their report, the researchers also demonstrate a way to manipulate I.P. addresses so that another user appears responsible for the file-sharing.

An inanimate object could also get the blame. The researchers rigged the software agents to implicate three laserjet printers, which were then accused in takedown letters by the M.P.A.A. of downloading copies of “Iron Man” and the latest Indiana Jones film.

This is not the first time flaws in the RIAA/MPAAs’ strategy have been revealed, and librarians and other concerned parties have been calling for more transparency in their tactics for quite some time. Now opponents of file-sharing lawsuits – not to mention the defendants in those lawsuits – have scientific evidence that these tactics implicate innocent people. And laser printers.

MollyKleinman Copyright news, Technology DMCA, file sharing, MPAA, RIAA