So what is in the public domain? (weekly widget) November 15, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Information Notes , add a commentThe public domain, according to Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, “is the realm of material—ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts—that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon.” In the United States, anything that was published before 1923 is in the public domain. Works published between 1923 and 1963 may be in the pubic domain, if they were published without notice (the symbol (c) with a date and name), or if the original copyright was not renewed after the first term of 28 years. It is often difficult to be certain about this, although the database of renewal records made available by Stanford University is a big help. Government works — works created by government employees (but not necessarily independent contractors working for the government) — are also in the public domain because the copyright law does not allow an initial claim of protection in such works. Works published with a Creative Commons license may also be in the public domain, although usually they are partially protected by copyright but available for non-profit reuse. Unpublished works are in the public domain if the author died over 70 years ago. It is important to note that all of these rules have some additional complexities; this chart by Peter Hirtle is very useful for sorting out the intricacies of copyright terms.
Most importantly, facts and ideas are in the public domain, since copyright only protects expression. Patents, however, do protect ideas, so the idea of a patented invention is not free for others to use without a license, while ideas contained in copyrighted expression are.
P2P and New Business Models November 14, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Issues and Legislation, Digital Rights Management, Technologies , add a commentPeer-to-peer file sharing is usually not a scholarly communications issue in itself. Most such activity involves the infringing reproduction and distribution of music and video files, and it is more of a problem for colleges and universities than a benefit. Nevertheless, there are legitimate forms of file-sharing that happen at universities (and between them), and the big danger that recreational file swapping poses to schools is that draconian measures to control the illegal activity will also inhibit legal and productive collaboration.
The problem posed by illicit file-sharing will not be solved by increased enforcement measures; the genie is already out of the bottle in that regard — P2P swapping has grown beyond the bounds of any attempt to stop it using either law or technology. What are needed to curb the growth of P2P are business models that make legal acquisition of digital music and movies more attractive than the illegal alternatives. Georgia Harper from the
How long does copyright last? (weekly widget, a little late) November 11, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Information Notes , add a commentThe original term of copyright protection in England was 14 years. In the US it began, in 1790, at, potentially, 28 years (a 14 year term that could be renewed once), then went to a system of two terms of 28 years, so that a renewed copyright lasted for 56 years. In 1976 we changed our law dramatically. Copyright became automatic as soon as a work was “fixed in tangible form,” and the copyright term was based on the life of the author. After another term extension in 1998, copyright in the US now lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. For works created anonymously, as works for hire, or by a corporate author the term is 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter. These changes mean that the public domain is barely growing at all in the US, since everything is protected automatically and it is now protected for a very long time.
To Assign or Not To Assign? November 6, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Authors' Rights, Copyright Issues and Legislation, Open Access and Institutional Repositories , add a commentThe International Association of Scientific, technical and Medical Publishers issued a statement last month on the benefits to authors of assigning copyright to publishers. The thrust of the statement is that publishers are better placed than authors to defend against plagiarism and copyright infringement, to ensure broad dissemination of the articles in question, and to manage issues like requests to reprint and migration to new formats. Each of these points is very debatable, and Peter Suber provides both excerpts of the document (which is itself very short) and a comment that refutes the assertions list above in a very concise and competent way. Not surprisingly, his conclusion is that publishers primary concern is to protect their own interests and that a concern for authors’ rights is, at best, secondary.
One point on which Suber and the STM publishers agree is that a complete assignment of copyright need not preclude authors from making their work available in open access through a personal webpage, institutional repository or disciplinary archive. Even when faced with a demand to assign the copyright, authors may negotiate to retain the right to deposit their work in the ways suggested, as well as to retain other rights. There seems to be little doubt, and the STM publishers do not even argue the point, that open access deposit is a benefit to scholarly authors. But authors will have to decide for themselves if assigning copyright while retaining that right really serves their best interests or whether they should negotiate to keep their copyrights and give the publisher a more limited permission to publish.
Second thoughts November 5, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright Issues and Legislation, Open Access and Institutional Repositories, Technologies , 2commentsOn Google — the New Yorker has a learned and fascinating article on the Google Library project this month, by historian Anthony Grafton. The Google project has gotten inordinate praise in some quarters, as well as its share of criticism (see here, for my contribution to the latter). But Grafton’s article is neither wholly critical nor wholly laudatory; his is an attempt to place Google in the history of efforts at building a universal library and to realistically assess what can actually be accomplished. He points out that a truly comprehensive history of humanity, which some have claimed Google will provide, will still remain out of reach. For example, much “gray” literature and archival material will never see the light of scanning, nor will the cultural production of many of the world’s poorest countries.
This latter point is especially troubling. Poor countries are not just consumers of cultural production, they do also produce it. The digitization of so much western/northern literature could have two negative effects on this production. One would be to push developing world literature further to the margins in the developed world. The other is that, in so far as technology is available within those developing countries, the easy access to material through Google could marginalize a country’s own cultural production even within its borders.
Nevertheless, Grafton is properly amazed at the level of access that digitization has made possible. As he says, picking up his opening theme, “Even [Alfred] Kazin’s democratic imagination could not have envisaged the hordes of the Web’s actual and potential users, many of whom will read material that would have been all but inaccessible to them a generation ago.” Digitization offers great things, but a realistic valuation of those benefits recognizes that no single means of access should replace all the others; the Internet will continue to coexist with libraries, archives and whatever the future holds that we can not yet imagine; all will be part of any genuinely comprehensive look at human history.
On Second Life — On a less exalted plane, the New York Post reported last week on a law suit filed by and against Second Life entrepreneurs alleging copyright infringement of products designed and sold entirely within the virtual environment. See another comment on the lawsuit here. As the comment points out, many educators are looking closely to consider the educational potential of Second Life or other virtual worlds. This lawsuit raises some interesting questions that will need to be answered in order to exploit that potential. For example, do real world laws protecting the rights of creators even apply to Second Life? Is copying someone else’s design in Second Life stealing, as the plaintiffs allege, or is it merely part of a giant “video game” that should not have real world legal consequences? The answer to that question should be a prerequisite to placing educational content into Second Life; teachers typically want to protect the content they produce, or at least share it on their own terms. Whether Second Life will be subject to real world laws, intra-world regulation amongst its members, or merely arbitrary decisions enforced by Linden Labs, its owner, will have a profound impact on how much time, money and content educators are likely to invest in Second Life.
Interestingly, the same defendant who argues that Second Life is a giant video game in which real world laws should not apply also claims that his home in Second Life was subject to an illegal search and seizure by the plaintiffs when they entered to photograph the allegedly infringing items. Just goes to show how hard it is for us to escape our real world notions of property and privacy.
