Copyright Advisory Network

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

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

Check out the great open access events going on this week at the University of Michigan, sponsored by the University Library. If you aren’t around Ann Arbor, be sure to borrow the ideas for future events, discussion, and action at your institution.

“The University of Michigan University Library is hosting a week-long, campus-wide exploration of Open Access during the month of March. We define Open Access as free, permanent, full-text, online access to peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly material. The series of events will bring together scholars, publishers, authors, copyright experts, and librarians from a range of disciplines to discuss the impact of Open Access on academic research and publishing. The mission of universities and libraries is to ensure public access to knowledge, and we will examine the role the Open Access movement may play in service of that mission.”

Read more here.

Timothy Vollmer Academic libraries, Advocacy, Copyright news, Creative Commons and Open Licenses, Events, Open Access copyright umich universityofmichigan universitylibrary

Cross-posted on District Dispatch:

Members of library community discussed the implications of the Google Book Search settlement in a meeting hosted on February 9, 2009 in Washington, D.C. by the American Library Association Washington Office, the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College & Research Libraries. Under the settlement, Google and the American Association of Publishers and Authors Guild resolve their legal dispute over the scanning of millions of books provided by research libraries. The settlement still requires approval of the presiding judge.

Although this is a private settlement, the result has very real implications for public policy and the way libraries of all types will operate.  The mission of libraries is to provide the broadest public access to the use of information, and the library community has a long history of advocating for laws and policies that protect the rights of library users. Because of the complexity of the agreement, its potential long-term impact on libraries, thus user interests, and the enormity of the book collection involved, many librarians have raised questions about the settlement’s impact.

Issues raised at the meeting that members believe are of key concern to libraries include:

-Access. What will the settlement mean for protecting the public’s ability to access and use digital resources from the nation’s libraries? Since the Book Rights Registry established as a condition of the settlement will represent the interests of the authors and publishers, who will represent the interests of libraries and the public? What are the financial implications of participation? Could the settlement create a monopoly that threatens the mission of libraries by raising the prices to an unreasonable level that limits public access?

-Privacy. What will reader privacy look like in a Google subscription-based world? Will the years of hard-fought effort to protect library users’ confidentiality be compromised as a for-profit company has new capabilities to monitor and track user reading habits under this settlement?

-Intellectual freedom. Are there academic freedom issues to consider? What are the implications of Google’s ability to remove works at its discretion? Will there be notification of their removal? What are the issues regarding possible access and use restrictions on the Research Corpus?

-Equitable treatment. Since not all libraries are addressed in the settlement, what impact will it have on the diverse landscape of libraries? In light of tight economic times, will this negatively affect libraries with lean budgets? Will it expand the digital divide?

-Terms of use. Under the terms of the agreement, will library users continue to enjoy the same rights to information under copyright and other laws? Will the settlement impact the legal discussions and interpretations of library exceptions that allow for library lending, limited copying and preservation?

Next, the executive boards and other leadership bodies of the library associations will consider a number of options available to them to have their voices heard in this debate. To stay posted on the latest developments of the associations’ next steps, see www.ala.org/washoff; www.arl.org; and www.ala.org/acrl.

Download this document as a PDF

Timothy Vollmer ALA, Events acrl, ALA, arl, Google, googlebooksettlement, settlement

Reproduced here via OITP’s Google Books Settlement site.

ALA’s Committee on Legislation and Office for Information Technology Policy hosted a panel session Saturday at the ALA Midwinter Conference in Denver. The session was called “Google Book Settlement: What’s In It For Libraries,”   and aimed to educate librarians on the initial terms of the settlement, hear from leading a few leading library and legal experts, and offer time for audience members to pose questions to the panel participants.

As mentioned in an earlier post, panelists included Dan Clancy, Engineering Director for the Google Book Search Project, Paul Courant, Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan, Karen Coyle, Digital Librarian and Consultant, and Laura Quilter, Librarian and Attorney at Law.

Dan kicked off the panel by giving a brief overview of the main points of the settlement. He stressed that the agreement is a compromise, and settles the class action lawsuit between Google, the Association of American Publishers, and the Authors Guild. The explained that the settlement class includes anyone with copyright interest in a book before published before January 5, 2009.

Dan said that the settlement does not affect books in the public domain, and does not include journals, magazines, newspapers, and images if the rightsholder of the image in a book is different than the rightsholder of the book itself. The settlement also applies only to rightsholders in the United States.

Mr. Clancy explained that the settlement allows Google to continue to scan, index, and otherwise use non-display versions of books. This corresponds with the default status today for in print books. Currently, Google’s scan index the contents of books, allowing users to search the full text of works, but only displaying up to 3 snippets of text per work (a snippet is considered a “non-display” use).

Read more…

Timothy Vollmer Events ALA, alamw09, col, denver, discussion, Google, googlebooksettlement, oitp, session, settlement