Tag Archives: copyright

Another copyright case, another victory for libraries

Last Tuesday, in the case of Kirtsaeng vs. John Wiley & Sons, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold the “first sale” doctrine for materials purchased from non-U.S. sources.  This ruling allows legal purchasers of copyrighted material from overseas to continue to subsequently resell, loan, rent, etc., copyrighted material.  Continue reading →

Conference report: “Adventures in Copyright: Navigating Your Way Through Intellectual Property”

I recently traveled to Baltimore to spend three days among “my people” at the Center for Intellectual Property symposium. My people, of course, are those who spend a lot of their professional lives thinking about copyright. Just a few weeks before the conference began, the long-awaited Georgia State e-reserves opinion was handed down. Perfect timing for this crowd. It was the talk of the conference, as was the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, which was released earlier this year. I’d previously taken several online courses through the CIP and was thrilled to see these engaging teachers, thinkers, and defenders of Fair Use in person. Plus my hotel room had a view of Camden Yard and I got to enjoy the National Aquarium on my way out of town. And I might have had a few crab cakes. Many of the talks were recorded and video is available online. My brief summaries of the talks are below. Continue reading →

Faculty Authors – Retaining Your Author Rights

Faculty, before you sign that next publishing contract, read the information about retaining your author rights by adding an addendum to your publisher’s contract.  Links to this information may be found at the bottom of the LIS for Faculty page (shortcut  http://go/lis4faculty).   Or you can use these direct links:

Thanks to Jeff Rehbach for creating these pages.

discussion of video and copyright

This is from one of the lists that I am on, and seemed worthy of broader distribution via the LIS Blog.

The Association for Information and Media Equipment has recently challenged one of our institution’s copyright compliance regarding the posting of video on university servers for instruction. As we understand it from the press, this challenge has resulted in the institution no longer posting the video for fear of legal action.

This situation echos previous instances when content owners have threatened our institutions with litigation for infringement, for example the various institutions whom the American Association of Publishers approached regarding e-reserves and course management systems a few years ago. It differs from the peer to peer aspect of copyright significantly because, apart now from HEOA compliance, our colleges and universities did not have liability as conduit service providers, i.e. the allegedly infringing material was not being served from our servers, we acted only as I.S.P.s. Thus, this current matter is serious. Not only does it threaten exorbitant legal expenses and damages in both dollars and reputation, by touching instruction it threatens the exercise of our missions.

Steve Worona, on EDUCAUSE’s behalf, has begun a blog to educate people about this matter and stimulate discussion in the community. http://www.educause.edu/blog/sworona/UCLAVideoStreamingDamnedDammed/197444

Please take a moment to learn more about this matter, as we are learning about it, and most especially talk with your colleagues at home and around the community. It may be that higher education must approach the issue from a range of positions (standing firm on fair use, understanding better the opportunities and limitations of the Teach Act, proactively and collectively arranging for licensing are some examples that jump quickly to mind) but what is absolutely critical is that we do so as a community, working to help each other to preserve our missions.