Library Juice 3:35 Supplement

Library Juice 3:35 Supplement - September 13, 2000 On Copyright ___________________________________________________________________________ The Erosion Of Public Protection: Attacks on the concept of Fair Use by Howard Besser, UCB School of Info Mgmt & Systems Paper delivered at the Town Hall Meeting on Copyright & Fair Use College Art Association, Toronto, February 1998 http://www.pipeline.com/~rabaron/ttm/BESSER.htm "In the past two years we have seen a major effort aimed at overhauling intellectual property law. Under the guise of responding to the challenge posed by the increasing amount of information in digital form, the content industry (publishers, motion picture studios, music distributors, etc.) has engaged in a veritable assault on long-standing public interest practices. In what law professor Pam Samuelson has termed the "Copyright Grab" (Samuelson), the content industry is exploiting concerns over digitization and attempting to reshape the law by strengthening protection for copyrightsholders and weakening public rights to access and use material." Also by Besser: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Copyright/ .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Intellectual Property and Copyright Ethics http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/alfino/dossier/Papers/COPYRIGH.htm Mark Alfino Department of Philosophy Gonzaga University Philosophers have given relatively little attention to the ethical issues surrounding the nature of intellectual property in spite of the fact that for the past ten years the public policy debate over "fair use" of copyrighted materials in higher education has been heating up. This neglect is especially striking since copyright ethics are at stake in so many aspects of academic life: the photocopying of materials for classroom use and scholarly work, access to electronic texts, and the cost and availability of single-source information technology such as Dialogue, library card catalogues, the Oxford English Dictionary, and a variety of other print and electronic resources. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. FAIFE/CLM Paper Session: Access to Information: Challenges to Equitable and Universal Access - Jerusalem, Israel, Tuesday 15 August 2000 Copyright as a Barrier to the Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression http://www.faife.dk/papers/ps00/smith.htm .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Section of Mary Minow's Library Law site on Copyright and Libraries <http://www.librarylaw.com/#Copyright and Libraries> Good starting point for the legal, as opposed to the philosophical, issues relating to copyright. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ALA Washington Office on Intellectual Property http://www.ala.org/washoff/property.html A good heads-up on a number of specific legislative issues. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. The Real Purpose of Copyright New laws converted a limited exclusive right into long-term ownership A Library Journal Editorial, by John Berry III July 1, 2000 http://www.ljdigital.com/articles/views/editorial/20000701_15171.asp .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age http://books.nap.edu/html/digital_dilemma/ A free full-text book from The National Academy of Sciences .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Intellectual Property An Historical Perspective on the Commodification of Information Written by Darcy Sharman, BA 1997, MLIS 2000 http://www.slis.ualberta.ca/cap00/dsharman/main.htm "Critics of the present situation often state that technology has spurred the commoditising process, and that the principles of information ownership are created and perpetuated by those who create technological trends. But is the commodification of information really such a new process? Is technology really its source? Or does the current situation have deeper social and political roots? This paper will examine the idea of information as a commodity from an historical perspective. It will propose that the role of technological innovations in supporting commodification is reflective of underlying cultural values that enshrine market processes, profit orientation, and disposability, rather than an outside force that the culture reacts against. The role of libraries as a counteracting force, democratising information access, will also be discussed." .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Reinvigorating Fair Use: A Social Economics Approach http://excellent.com.utk.edu/~bates/papers/ica99fu.html Benjamin J. Bates Associate Professor Dept. of Broadcasting University of Tennessee, Knoxville Paper presented to the Communication Law & Policy division, International Communication Association annual conference San Francisco CA, May 1999 Abstract: Recent efforts and revising and extending copyright law and policy in the U.S. has seemed to forgotten a fundamental, historic, tenets: that its goal is to foster social welfare by encouraging both the creation and dissemination of information, and that information creates social as well as private value. This paper lays a foundation for, and develops, a social economics approach which seeks to explicitly reinsert those tenets into consideration of information policy, specifically one set of policies that has more explicitly embodied the recognition of the social value of information dissemination and utilization -- "fair use." Employing a social economics approach, this paper proposes a new formulation of the fair use standards which should help to reinvigorate this important (and increasingly challenged) component of social information policy. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Chapter 3 of _Information Liberation_ by Brian Martin Published by Freedom Press http://www.ecn.org/freedom/books/martin.html "There is a strong case for opposing intellectual property. Among other things, it often retards innovation and exploits Third World peoples. Most of the usual arguments for intellectual property do not hold up under scrutiny. In particular1 the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas provides no justification for ownership of ideas. The alternative to intellectual property is that intellectual products not be owned, as in the case of everyday language. Strategies against intellectual property include civil disobedience, promotion of non-owned information, and fostering of a more co-operative society." .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Read them and weep Under the guise of protecting copyrights, measures threaten readers By Simson L. Garfinkel, 05/07/98 - Boston Globe http://simson.net/clips/98.Globe.05-07.Read_them_and_weep.htm .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Now Is The Time! Article on some bills that would re-copyright public-domain works http://promo.net/pg/cplea97/ .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Slashdot article - Information As A Global Public Good http://slashdot.org/articles/00/05/12/1246239.shtml .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Chuck Munson's "Librarians Against Intellectual Property" Pretty interesting.... http://www.infoshop.org/aip.html .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Copy Catfight How intellectual property laws stifle popular culture, and violate freedom of speech. About old works being kept in obscurity, and new ones being silenced. Article by Jesse Walker, Reason magazine. http://www.reason.com/0003/fe.jw.copy.html .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Negativland on Intellectual Property http://www.negativland.com/intprop.html .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Detritus.net http://www.detritus.net/ Dedicated to recycled culture .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Copy Rights ? Article by John Jacobs on the Subvertigo site Questions the ethics of copyright, along with the notion of original authorship http://sysx.org/vsv/copyriot.html .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. CounterSpin radio program on copyright "A few popular music acts have announced lawsuits against something called Napster, a web service that lets users share music files with one another. It brings up a number of questions about copyright protection and so-called "intellectual property," so we'll talk to one person who studies these things. Siva Vaidhyanathan teaches in the Department of Culture and Communication at NYU. He'll give us some background on copyright and free speech." Find the RealAudio at: http://www.webactive.com/cspin/cspin20000602.html .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. The Everything2 "node" on copyright http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=21017&lastnode_id= .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Applying Copyleft To Non-Software Information by Michael Stutz http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonsoftware-copyleft.html "Normal copyright asserts ownership and identification of the author, as well as prevents the use of the author's name as author of a distorted version of the work; it also prevents intentional distortion of the work by others and prevents destruction of the work. But it also carries other restrictions -- such as restricting the reproduction or modification of a work." "Copyleft contains the normal copyright statement, asserting ownership and identification of the author. However, it then gives away some of the other rights implicit in the normal copyright: it says that not only are you free to redistribute this work, but you are also free to change the work. However, you cannot claim to have written the original work, nor can you claim that these changes were created by someone else. Finally, all derivative works must also be placed under these terms." .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes (The Onion) http://www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatents.html In what CEO Bill Gates called "an unfortunate but necessary step to protect our intellectual property from theft and exploitation by competitors," the Microsoft Corporation patented the numbers one and zero Monday. _____________________________________________________________________________ Freelance Authors Regain Copyright Control Through Innovative Settlement SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., July 26 Document Provider to Obtain Permission Before Selling Authors' Articles Electronically Historic Legal Settlement Includes Class Notification to Authors The settlement, believed to be the first class action lawsuit of its kind in the nation, instructs commercial document delivery services to obtain permission from authors before their creative works can be sold electronically via the Internet. The case involved a group of individual authors who challenged UnCover, an online document delivery service that sold copyrighted magazine and journal articles over the Internet without the author's permission. UnCover pursued royalty contracts with many periodical publishers and paid copyright fees to publishers, but not to individual authors. The $7.25 million settlement, preliminarily approved by the federal court in Oakland, California, requires UnCover to expand its copyright permission and royalty payment system to include individual authors as well as publishers, and to obtain certain specified forms of permission before delivery of such articles. UnCover will now also offer a licensing agreement with any author who requests it, paying royalties semi-annually. The settlement fund will come from other settling parties. The settlement also uniquely initiates a search for thousands of authors, poets and other academic and creative writers who may have had their works sold by UnCover in the past. Any authors who retained their copyright in any article delivered by UnCover between October 22, 1994 and July 12, 2000 may be eligible to participate in the settlement. Anyone whose written work has been published in a magazine or periodical is strongly encouraged to visit the special Web site ( http://www.uncoversettlement.com ) where a potential class member can get complete information and submit their claim for a share of the settlement via the Internet. The Web site will be launched on Monday, July 31, 2000. "Selling individual articles electronically without author permission has been an industry-wide practice. We believe the law does not allow the practice, and this settlement should go a long way to changing it," said the authors' attorney John Shuff of the national law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P. ( http://www.rkmc.com ), known for its broad experience in complex litigation. "We hope the industry will take notice and adopt the same permission procedures as UnCover." The representative plaintiffs, a group of freelance and academic writers, and poets, were Joan Ryan, Jim Tunney, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Lyn Hejinian and Ron Silliman. "The intellectual property owned by authors is no different than music owned by songwriters or images owned by photographers," said copyright attorney Dan Reidy of the Law Offices of Daniel A. Reidy of Sausalito, California, co-counsel with Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P., referring to recent legal challenges to the electronic downloading and distribution of music and photos on CDs or via the Internet. "Authors have not only regained control of their work, but perhaps more importantly, they have regained control of their value," said Reidy. UnCover's founder, Ward Shaw, said that UnCover has long worked with publishers and rights organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the National Writers Union's Publication Rights Clearinghouse to pay copyright for delivery of the articles researchers and others need. "We are happy to work with individual authors directly as well," said Shaw. UnCover ( http://www.uncweb.carl.org ) maintains a database of approximat! ely eight million articles-increasing by approximately 5,000 per day -- from more than 17,000 periodicals, and specializes in supplying copies of articles from often hard-to-find scientific, medical and technical journals and other publications. /NOTE TO EDITORS: Copies of the Summary Notice are available upon request. The settlement Web site, http://www.uncoversettlement.com , will be launched July 31, 2000/ /CONTACT: Daniel A. Reidy of the Law Offices of Daniel A. Reidy, 415-331-7500, Janette L. Ferguson of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P., 415-235-6649, cell 650-579-2709, or Michael Traynor, 415-693-2110, or Robert L. Eisenbach, 415-693-2094, both of Cooley Godward LLP/ _____________________________________________________________________________ When Copyright Goes Wrong From advancing knowledge to protecting property By Mark K. Anderson EXTRA! May/June, 2000 Vol. 13, No. 3 Think fast: Why do we have copyright? If you responded that the reason for intellectual property laws is to protect creators from theft and piracy, then your answer is certainly in accordance with prevailing media coverage of copyright, trademark, and patent issues today. However, according to the Constitution, it's also wrong. In Article I, Section 8, Congress is given power to "secur(e) for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." But unlike any other assignation of legislative rights or duties in the Constitution, the copyright clause also explicitly lays out why Congress is being granted the power in question: "To promote the progress of science (i.e. knowledge) and the useful arts." That is, the Constitution dictates that government create a body of legal code that awards temporary monopolies to creators in order to encourage them to create. There's now a growing chorus of American voices, though, who charge that Congress has lost sight of its constitutional mandate, and is instead so tightening intellectual property restrictions that it effectively inhibits the progress of science and the useful arts. "It's always important to remember that coyright is a restriction on free speech, and it's a constitutionally granted restriction on free speech," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, faculty fellow at New York University and author of the forthcoming book, _Copyrights and Copywrongs: How Corporate Copyright Threatens Creativity and Free Speech in America_. "Therefore, we need to be careful when we play wih copyright, because it can have some serious effects on public discourse and creativity." Such recen legislation as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (1998), the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (1998) and the No Electronic Theft Act (1997) have all extended the power and duration of copyright protections. (The latter two laws were, it should be noted, upheld by a federal district court in Washington, D.C. last year.) The 1998 copyright extension tacked on 20 more years to copyright - meaning works for hire are given 95 years before hitting the public domain, while anything copyrighted by an individual continues to belong to her estate for 70 years after her death. Whether or not these provisoins remain within the realm of the constitutionally mandated "limited time" has been the subject of much debate in recent years. Now on appeal at the Washington, D.C. Federal Circuit Court is the case of Eldred v. Reno, in which five plaintiffs have challenged the constitutionality of the recent copyright extensions. They charge that, in ratcheting up the maximum copyright term 11 times from 59 years in 1962 to 95 years in 1998 - that is, 36 years in 36 years - Congress has been playing a carrot-on-a-stick game with copyrights. In the words of the complaint, "While formally, under each of these extensions, the term is limited, the practice of continually extending copyright terms retroacively means that Congress, in effect, is granting copyright holders more than a 'limited term.'" Ceasing and desisting The universality of patents, copyrights and trademarks is another area of concern. The satirical weekly paper The Onion (3/26/98) was only joking when it reported that "Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes." But NYU's Vaidhyanathan is far from alone in his concern that America has veered too far toward such a technocratic dystopia. Take the case of the Evolution Control Committee, an Ohio multimedia group. Two years ago this trio produced a 7" vinyl record that spoofed the hyper-violence of the evening news by cuting and pasting together a series of Dan Rather soundbites and CBS Evening News theme songs into a montage of death-and-destriction non-sequiturs. Last January, a lawyer from CBS sent a cease and desist letter to the ECC's record label, Eerie Materials, claiming the single ("Rocked By Rape" - the Dan Ratherism that forms the song's chorus) violated CBS's intellectual property rights. Although the label potentially had a fighting chance in court - the Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that parody is a protected form of fair use - Eerie instead opted to cave in to CBS's demands. (At press time the ECC was continuing to offer the work via its website, http://www.evolution-control.com .) In 1998, the New York RAcing Association sued equine artist Jeness Cortez for violating its intellectual property rights by including its Saratoga racetrack in her paintings, and in a separate action a company that owned the racehorse Cigar sued her for painting the horse's likeness. While a protracted legal battle came out in her favor, the experience was enough to lead Cortez to quit her profession, citing, as she told the Albany Times Union (9/1/98), "a lot of legal bellyaches and bills from NYRA and disdainful treatment." In the case of Prof. David Stowe of Michigan State University, who sought to study 1940's cartoons from Down Beat magazine for their sexual and racial stereotypes, court action was not even needed. In a move that's becoming increasingly common in academic circles today, the magazine refused to grant Stowe permission for fear that his study would make the publication look bad. Although Stowe may have ultimately had he law on his side - the legal definition of "fai use" in the Copyright Act of 1976 allows for scholarsly study of otherwise copyright-protected materials - the legal costs and headaches were too prohibitive to consider pursuing such work. As a final example, las January Norwegian police arrested 16-year-old programmer Jon Johansen. He had developed a program to play DVD video discs on a Linux computer system - which the DVD industry has to date refused to support. However, for breaking DVD encryption to create an "interoperable" platform - a legal procedure under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act - he was arrested for copyright violation. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan granted a preliminary injunction against distributing his program over the internet. Favoring the established A piece of music, a painter's career, a scholar's study, a computer program. Each of these losses to society, taken one by one, may not be considered cause for great public concern. But as part of an emerging pattern - and there are hundreds more of these individual cases - they suggest that despite the anti-piracy rhetoric that frames most media discussions of intellectual property protections today, the real problem with copyright is that Congress has forsaken its constitutional charge. "What happens is our copyright laws, in general, favor the established and hurt the emerging," Vaidhyanathan said. "They favor the old guy and hurt the new guy." The public has forgotten that America originally was a nation of copyright pirates - the leaflets and pamphlets that spurred the Revolutionary War were typically underground publications that violated colonial copyright provisions. The fact that America is now a nation that enshrines copyright zealotry stems in part from the rhetorical shift that has taken place over the last 100 years. We no longer speak of copyrights as government-granted monopolies - which carries a negative, miserly connotation. "In the 20th Century, the rhetoric of copyright is all about property," Vaidhyanathan said. "And when the rhetoric is about property, the argument ends. No one can be for theft. And therfore it's impossible to have a really intelligent, sensitive and fruitful discussion in public about what sort of copyright system would be best for us. Instead you have very emotional gestures toward ownership, like 'That's my song.'" Critics of copyright extremism do not argue for elimination of copyrights; they instead seek a balance of public access vs. private ownership more in accordance with the Constitution's expressed intentions. As Paul Rapp, the lawyer who defended Cortz against the New York Racing Association, put it, "Unless government comes in with a heavy hand and starts erecting walls, I think this whole thing is going to take place outside of the courts. People from time to time will ge thrown in jail for doing something wacky. But I've got a feeling that it's going to take place in an extralegal and virtual realm." ___________________________________________________________________________ L I B R A R Y J U I C E | http://libr.org/Juice/ | | Library Juice is supported by a voluntary subscription | fee of $10 per year, variable based on ability and | desire to pay. You may send a check payable in US funds | to Rory Litwin, at PO Box 720511, San Jose, CA 95172 | | Original material and added value in Library Juice | is copyright-free; beyond that the publisher makes | no guarantees. Library Juice is a free weekly | publication edited and published by Rory Litwin. | Original senders are credited wherever possible; | opinions are theirs. If you are the author of some | email in Library Juice which you want removed from | the web, please write to me and I will remove it. | | Your comments and suggestions are welcome. | | Rory[at]libr.org This page was created by SimpleText2Html 1.0.3 on 12-Sep-100. ep-100.