Fixing the DMCA? October 15, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Issues and Legislation, Digital Rights Management, Technologies , 2commentsThe Digital Millennium Copyright Act added two important sections to the copyright act, one that has proved somewhat useful in fostering fair use and the balance between owner’s and user’s rights, and one that, in stark contrast, threatens to drastically overturn that carefully crafted balance. The “safe harbor” provided for online service providers has assisted the growth of web 2.0 applications that offer an unprecedented opportunity for user creativity that pushes the boundaries of fair use. The strict protection of electronic protection measures (anti-circumvention rules), on the other hand, has arguably given content producers the means to control each and every use of their content, forbidding any uses they wish to prevent, even if those uses would otherwise be privileged under the rest of the copyright law.
A new article by Professors Riechman, Dinwoodie and Samuelson, available here on the Social Science Research Network and forthcoming in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, examines these two provisions carefully, in the context of their origins in the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty and the US Congress, as well as the important interpretation of each in the courts. The professors find in the development of the safe harbor “notice and takedown” mechanism that has successfully protected OSPs a fascinating suggestion for how to fix the clearly dysfunctional anti-circumvention rules.
It is difficult to summarize an article this complex, although the clear writing and argumentation in this piece makes it far easier than many other law journal articles to comprehend. The authors examine the way the concern of the
What does Copyright protect? Our first widget. October 11, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Information Notes , 3commentsCopyright protects original expression in fixed form. “Original” means there must be some element of “authorship,” but the standard here is very low. A phone book is not sufficiently original, but my grocery list probably is. “Fixed” means that the expression must be available in a medium that can be perceived; unrecorded oral expression is not protected. Most importantly, “expression” means that copyright does not protect ideas, only the form in which those ideas are expressed. I am free to use ideas gained from another’s work in my own original expression without authorization.
Copyright widgets October 11, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Information Notes , 2commentsA colleague recently suggested the value of putting out short tidbits of information about copyright on a regular basis as a way to educate a community and keep attention focused on copyright issues and opportunities. It seemed like such a good idea that this site will begin carrying such short information briefs (called widgets in honor of my colleague’s affection for that word) each Thursday (I hope).
All of this site is placed under a Creative Commons license (Attribution, non-commercial, no derivative works), but it seems appropriate to explicitly offer these informational widgets for reposting to other academic communities if they seem helpful.
These widgets will be collected under the more descriptive blog category of “copyright information notes,” with the hope that they will cumulate into a helpful review.
A Civil Debate about Open Access October 4, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Open Access and Institutional Repositories, Scholarly Publishing , add a commentThe two articles I want to recommend here are about the cost of open access to publishers, who fear loss of revenue if OA were to become the norm in the academic world, versus the social costs of continuing as things are, where fewer and fewer people have access to significant research as the toll for access to subscription journals rises.
In his response to
Keeping your copyright October 2, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Authors' Rights, Scholarly Publishing , add a commentThere is a great new website to help those who create stuff — whether they are filmmakers, musicians or academic authors — understand and manage their copyrights. Several groups at Columbia University law school, working with a Board of Advisors, have created the site to walk creators through the rights they have, how they can manage those rights to accomplish their personal goals for their work, and even the common terms found in many publication contracts. The need for this website is summed up very well in its first paragraph:
“Today, too many creators take a passive attitude toward their copyrights. The matter seems complex, and publishers or distributors may tell you that everyone does it their way, or that giving up copyrights is standard practice. But giving up your rights under copyright is a decision, not a default option. If you stand passively by, you may over the course of a long creative career produce a large body of work, most of which is owned and controlled by other people, whose interests and yours may diverge.”
Academic authors and creators should take these words to heart and use this website to develop a proactive strategy for managing the rights they have in the works they create. The vast array of options now available for sharing and exploiting one’s own creative work suggest that passivity is no longer a sensible option, and the information offered by this site is exactly the remedy needed.
