If I cite the source I am using, can it still be copyright infringement? (weekly widget) November 30, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Information Notes , add a commentCitation is a cure for plagiarism, which is a different, but related, problem from copyright infringement. Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of the work of another — falsely claiming or creating the impression that you are the creator of someone else’s work. It is possible to plagiarize a work even if it is not protected by copyright; one can plagiarize from Adam Smith, who died in 1790, as easily as from Milton Friedman, who died last year. And citing the source always cures plagiarism.
Citation, however, does not cure copyright infringement, which is the unauthorized use of another’s work. If you copy an entire journal article by someone else, without permission, into a book you publish, you probably have infringed copyright, even if you add a footnote citing the original author and source. Citation may help show a good faith fair use argument, but it neither prevents plagiarism nor guarantees fair use. Copyright infringement is avoided either by having the copyright owner’s permission when using someone else’s material or by relying on one of the many exceptions to copyright.
Copyright, of course, does not protect everything. You cannot infringe a copyright when you use public domain material, especially when you take only ideas from another source but do not copy protected expression, since copyright does not protect ideas. But if you fail to acknowledge the source of those ideas, you may still be guilty of plagiarism.
What makes a journal valuable? November 28, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Scholarly Publishing , 2comments
provides, rather than a measure of influence per article… To make our
results comparable to impact factor, we need to divide the journal
influence by the number of articles published.”
Leaving aside the complex mathematics explained at their site, the Eigenfactor is based on an algorithm that maps how a hypothetical researcher would move from article to article based on cited references. This mapping yields a measure of the amount of time that researcher would spend with each particular journal. The score of a journal is based on that finding, and the influence of articles is measured by the influence of the journal in which they are published. This method corrects for peripheral citations and, it is claimed, for different citation patterns in different disciplines.
processes while also inhibiting the application of other measures of
value. In the new digital environment, activities other than traditional
or formal publication should be valued in the reward structure for scholarship.”
By any other name? November 26, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Scholarly Publishing , add a commentLast week Paul Courant, Dean of Libraries (and formerly Provost) at the
Even amongst the handful of academic libraries that have appointed positions with scholarly communications in the title there is wide variation in how that role is understood. For some a scholarly communications officer is primarily a copyright consultant, for others an advocate for digital publishing, for some an advocate for legislative change and for yet others a collections librarian trying to deal with alternative publications and journal subscriptions. As Courant points out, what all the various tasks have in common is attention to the business of scholarly publishing – the economic, legal and physical mechanisms by which scholarship is disseminated. Functionally, one might call a scholarly communications program that point (or points) at which an academic library is engaged with scholarly publishing in a role other than as a consumer. Attention to this bundle of concerns, however, extends well beyond the library at many institutions, and it must do so if real change is to occur.
At Duke we became aware of the naming problem when the new Libraries’ home page included a link for “Scholarly Communications” that was very seldom followed. We decided to rename that link “Copyright and Publishing” — the topics actually discussed in this space — in hopes of attracting more readers. Certainly for faculty the latter name identifies concerns they often are very conscious of, while the former likely does not. I sometimes wonder if “Copyright and Publication Librarian” might not be a more accurate and descriptive title for my position. Yet in the final analysis I am not ready to scrap the phrase “scholarly communications” just yet.
Terms of art are always difficult to handle. To take an example from my other profession, which is laden with them, a lawyer writing a brief who wants to argue that some element of her case is so obvious that no evidence for it need be adduced will use the phrase “res ipsa loquitur”; if she does not, a court will think her poorly trained. But if she uses it when talking to a client, she is guilty of poor professional judgment; attorneys must avoid obfuscation when explaining law and strategy to lay people. Terms of art are shorthand means of communication within a community of practitioners but they require explanation and clarification outside that “inner circle.” If we were to adopt Courant’s suggestion that we simply speak of “publishing” instead of scholarly communications, we would encounter a different confusion, but the same need to explain to the uninitiated exactly what we mean. Scholarly communications is now a recognized term within much of the academy, but like many such terms it is foreign to those outside the ivy-covered walls. I plan to continue to treat my oddly uncommunicative title as a teaching opportunity and decide in each instance whether I am better served by using it (and often having to explain what it means) or by substituting a longer but more descriptive phrase in those situations where the term of art will fail entirely to gain attention from the audience I am seeking.
Should I register my copyright? (weekly widget) November 21, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Information Notes , add a commentIt is no longer necessary to register in order to have copyright protection, just as it is not required anymore to have the symbol (c) attached to a work in order to protect it. Copyright protection is automatic, starting as soon as a work is fixed in tangible form. But registration is still important in some situations. You must register a work before you can sue someone else for infringement, and registration creates a presumption that you own a valid copyright. Also, registration within certain time limits makes it possible to receive a larger damage award and attorney’s fees if a copyright owner can prove infringement. So registration is a good idea to protect the economic value of a work, but it is not required; each creator can make a decision about whether or not registration will best serve that individual’s interests.
Registration is accomplished by filing a form, found on the Copyright Office’s web site, along with a copy of the work being registered and a fee, which is currently $45.
Desperate ploy, or copyright coup? November 19, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Issues and Legislation, Fair Use , 1 comment so farIn the digital age, it is hard to imagine that personal photocopying still poses much of a worry for copyright owners. Isn’t the real problem, after all, the ability to make perfect copies and to share them instantly with thousands of others? Traditional photocopying poses neither of these dangers, and personal copying is a long settled fair use, isn’t it?
Not, apparently, for Access Copyright, the Canadian copyright licensing agency that, like its US counterpart the Copyright Clearance Center, collects and distributes permission fees for various uses of copyrighted material. Access Copyright has recently filed a lawsuit seeking 10 million dollars – the largest damages award ever sought for copyright infringement in Canada – from the office supply chain Staples. Their claim is that Staples should be liable for infringing copying done by customers on equipment provided by the stores. There is a news report on the suit from the Canadian Press here, a negative assessment from P2Pnet here, and a comment from a Canadian professor of IP and technology law here.
To prove secondary liability on the part of Staples, Access Copyright will have to convince a court that Staples should be held responsible for copying done by its customers. As Professor Geist points out, that may be a difficult hurdle to clear. In Canada, as in the US, liability for those who merely supply the equipment to make copies is rare; the US provides statutory protection for libraries in such cases and the Canadian Supreme Court has established a similar “presumption” in favor of Canadian libraries. Explaining why that presumption should not apply to Staples will be a challenge for this lawsuit.
But the issue that should really worry us, the issue that makes this a radial attempt to change the terms of the copyright bargain rather than merely a desperate ploy to protect a new source of revenue as traditional sources dry up, is that Access Copyright will have to show that the personal copying done by customers is direct infringement of copyright. Only if that is true can Staples be held secondarily liable for providing the means for that infringement. But personal copying has been almost universally believed to be fair use (or, in Canada, “fair dealing”). Students have made single copies of journal articles and book chapters for their own study for as long as photocopies have existed, and consumers have made personal copies of TV shows with their own VCRs with the blessing of the US Supreme Court. So what has changed?
The clue is in the fact that this suit was brought by a licensing agency, not by publishers or authors. What we are seeing here is a new assertion that personal copying was never legal, only tolerated by copyright owners until they could create a mechanism to collect payments. The same digital technologies that have allowed so much infringement also now allow content owners to efficiently offer licenses and collect payments for individual uses that could never have supported a market before. Although it is still more efficient to sue the alleged contributory infringer instead of the consumer who is the direct infringer, this saber rattling by a licensing agency should tell us quite clearly that content owners intend to move toward a pay-per-use model. If such suits are successful, every consumer-made copy logged at a store or even at a library photocopier could be subject to small payments, which would be administered through an online licensing agency.
At a recent conference in Washington, DC, Cary Sherman, the President of the Recording Industry Association of American, refused to acknowledge that personal copying of a music CD for listening on an individual MP3 player was fair use. Instead he said that this likely was infringement, but that the industry had agreed internally not to pursue such cases. The Canadian lawsuit suggests that, if a precedent can be set regarding the much less contested area of personal photocopying, any such forbearance around consumer copying will quickly become a thing of the past.
