Category: Copyright

"Can Beethoven Send Takedown Requests? A First-Hand Account of One German Professor’s Experience with Overly Broad Upload Filters"

Ulrich Kaiser has published "Can Beethoven Send Takedown Requests? A First-Hand Account of One German Professor's Experience with Overly Broad Upload Filters" in Wikimedia Foundation News.

Here's an excerpt:

The first video I uploaded to YouTube promoted the website where my digitized copies of public domain recordings are available to download. In this video, I explained my project, while examples of the music played in the background. Less than three minutes after uploading, I received a notification that there was a ContentID claim against my video. ContentID is a system, developed by YouTube, which checks user uploaded videos against databases of copyrighted content in order to curb copyright infringement. . . .

I decided to open a different YouTube account "Labeltest" to share additional excerpts of copyright-free music. I quickly received ContentID notifications for copyright-free music by Bartok, Schubert, Puccini and Wagner. Again and again, YouTube told me that I was violating the copyright of these long-dead composers, despite all of my uploads existing in the public domain. I appealed each of these decisions, explaining that 1) the composers of these works had been dead for more than 70 years, 2) the recordings were first published before 1963, and 3) these takedown request did not provide justification in their property rights under the German Copyright Act.

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AI Copyright?: "Authors and Machines"

Jane C. Ginsburg and Luke Ali Budiardjo have self-archived "Authors and Machines."

Here's an excerpt:

Today, developments in computer science have created a new form of machine—the "artificially intelligent" system apparently endowed with "computational creativity"—that introduces challenging variations on the perennial question of what makes one an "author" in copyright law: Is the creator of a generative program automatically the author of the works her process begets, even if she cannot anticipate the contents of those works?

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Creative Markets and Copyright in the Fourth Industrial Era: Reconfiguring the Public Benefit for a Digital Trade Economy

The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Developmen thas released Creative Markets and Copyright in the Fourth Industrial Era: Reconfiguring the Public Benefit for a Digital Trade Economy.

Here's an excerpt:

A rapid succession of technological advances—big data, robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence—is steadily changing how firms engage in productive activity, how consumers interact, and how knowledge goods are acquired, shared, and governed. The rise of big data and the increasingly widespread adoption of artificial intelligence across many industries have complicated our understanding of the values of twentieth-century intellectual property rules. . . . This paper explores the fundamental questions facing the copyright system in the new industrial and digital era. It considers a broad range of issues including the evolving concept of authorship, originality, exhaustion issues, and the fair use or fair dealing doctrine in the new global context. It concludes with recommendations on how to redesign global copyright for innovation, competition, and inclusion.

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"Creative Commons Awarded $800,000 from Arcadia to Support Discovery and Collaboration in the Global Commons"

The Creative Commons has released "Creative Commons Awarded $800,000 from Arcadia to Support Discovery and Collaboration in the Global Commons."

Here's an excerpt:

CC Search—together with the Commons Metadata Library and the Commons API—will form the Commons Collaborative Archive and Library, a suite of tools for discovery and collaboration. CC aims through the development of this suite of tools to make the global commons of openly licensed content more searchable, usable, and resilient, and to provide essential infrastructure for collaborative online communities. The project elements will feature an index of every openly licensed and public domain work on the web (the Library); an API allowing developers to query the metadata library and to develop services and integrations for content in the Commons; and CC Search, a search engine that harnesses the power of open repositories and allows users to search across a variety of open content through a single interface.

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"The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access"

Julie Baldwin and Stephen Pinfield have published "The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

Whilst take-up of open access (OA) in the UK is growing rapidly due partly to a number of funder mandates, managing the complexities of balancing compliance with these mandates against restrictive publisher policies and ingrained academic priorities, has resulted in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) often struggling with confused researchers, complex workflows, and rising costs. In order to try to address this situation, the UK Scholarly Communication Licence (UK-SCL) was formulated to bypass the root causes of many of these challenges by implementing a licensing mechanism for multiple-mandate compliance in one single policy. This is the first empirical study to focus on the genesis of the UK-SCL and how its implementation has been conceived thus far. A qualitative research method was used, taking the form of 14 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from the initiative across the UK. The results indicate that those working within UK HEIs are concerned with the complexity of the current OA policy landscape and are frustrated with the inertia within the current system, which has resulted in higher costs, further publisher restrictions, and has not addressed the underlying tensions in academic culture. The UK-SCL is seen by its initiators as a way to achieve further transition towards OA and take back some element of control of the content produced at their institutions. The study concludes by modelling the ways in which the UK-SCL is intended to impact relationships between key stakeholders, and discussing possible implementation futures.

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License Change at Major Social Media Site for Photographers: "500px Nukes 1M+ Creative Commons Photos"

Michael Zhang has published "500px Nukes 1M+ Creative Commons Photos" in PetaPixel.

Here's an excerpt:

But overnight, all of the CC photos that have been uploaded since 2012 have been nuked from 500px. Users can no longer choose a CC license during uploading, search for CC photos, or download them.

Jason Scott reports on Twitter that the photos have been archived in the Internet Archives' Wayback Machine:

3 terabytes of Creative Commons photos going into the Wayback machine thanks to the efforts of dozens of volunteers slamming from NO warning and going for 48 hours straight. Amazing work, everyone. It's going to take a while to understand exactly what we got.

Note that the Wayback Machine is only searchable by site URL.

The Creative Commons photos have not been deleted; however, the Creative Commons license has been. Consequently, the user has no way to know about the existing Creative Commons licensing terms. On logon today, 500px gives the user the option of opting out of commercial distribution by Getty Images.

See also: "500px Photo Site Abandons Freely Shareable Images with Commercialization Push."

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University of California: "Re: Declaration of Rights and Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication"

The University of California's University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication has released "Re: Declaration of Rights and Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication."

Here's an excerpt:

1. No copyright transfers. Our authors shall be allowed to retain copyright in their work and grant a Creative Commons Attribution license of their choosing.

2. No restrictions on preprints. Our authors shall have the right to submit for publication work they have previously made available as preprints.

3. No waivers of OA Policy. Publishers shall not require our authors to provide waivers of our Institutional OA Policy as a condition for publishing our work.

4. No delays to sharing. Publishers shall make work by our authors immediately available for harvest or via automatic deposit into our Institutional OA repository or another public archive.

5. No limitations on author reuse. Our authors shall have the right to reuse figures, tables, data, and text from their published work without permission or payment.

6. No impediments to rights reversion. Publishers shall provide a simple process for our authors to regain copyright in their previously published work.

7. No curtailment of copyright exceptions. Licenses shall not restrict, and should instead expressly protect, the rights of authors, institutions, and the public to reuse excerpts of published work consistent with legal exceptions and limitations on copyright such as fair use.

8. No barriers to data availability. Our authors shall have the right to make all of their data, figures, and other supporting materials from their published work publicly available.

9. No constraints on content mining. Publishers shall make licensed materials open, accessible, and machine-readable for text and data mining by our researchers, at no additional cost and under terms that allow retention and reuse of results.

10. No closed metadata. Publishers shall make bibliographic records, usage metrics, and citation data for our authors freely available, easy to parse, and machine-readable.

11. No free labor. Publishers shall provide our Institution with data on peer review and editorial contributions by our authors in support of journals, and such contributions shall be taken into account when determining the cost of our subscriptions or OA fees for our authors.

12. No long-term subscriptions. Publishers shall provide our Institution with plans and timelines for transitioning their subscription journals to OA.

13. No permanent paywalls. Our Institution shall receive perpetual access for previously licensed content and back files shall be made freely available once a journal transitions to OA.

14. No double payments. Publishers shall provide our Institution with data on hybrid OA payments from our authors and such payments shall reduce the cost of our subscriptions.

15. No hidden profits. Publishers shall use transparent pricing for the services they provide our authors when levying article processing charges and other fees associated with publishing.

16. No deals without OA offsets. Our Institution shall only enter into publishing agreements that include offsets for OA publishing by our authors.

17. No new paywalls for our work. Work by our authors shall be made OA on the publisher’s website as part of subscription terms for new journals.

18. No non-disclosure agreements. Publisher agreements with our Institution shall be transparent and shall not contain terms that prevent the sharing of their contents.

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Fair Use in the Visual Arts: Lesson Plans for Librarians

Alexander Watkins et al. have self-archived "Fair Use in the Visual Arts: Lesson Plans for Librarians."

Here's an excerpt:

The authors guide art information professionals in crafting learning experiences that empower students to understand copyright and take advantage of fair use in their art, design, and academic practices. The College Art Association’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, endorsed by ARLIS/NA in 2015, is a key document that has the potential to transform the use of images in the visual arts. Education will be an essential part of the integration of the Code into the visual arts, and art information professionals are well positioned to teach fair use and the Code. This book was created to further ARLIS/NA's mission to support the evolving role of art information professionals, which increasingly includes copyright and fair use instruction. The lesson plans in this book will help those new to copyright instruction teach the Code through engaging activities and assignments. The lesson plans are also meant to inspire teachers experienced with fair use instruction through creative ideas and new ways to integrate copyright instruction into art classes, digital humanities projects, and design education.

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Current Best Practices among Cultural Heritage Institutions when Dealing with Copyright Orphan Works and Analysis of Crowdsourcing Options

Victoria Stobo et al. have self-archived "Current Best Practices among Cultural Heritage Institutions when Dealing with Copyright Orphan Works and Analysis of Crowdsourcing Options."

Here's an excerpt:

The purpose of this study is to establish the current state of best practices among Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHIs) when dealing with in-copyright orphan works in three countries: the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Italy. A baseline understanding of current practice provides a benchmark against which crowdsourcing (or any other proposal) to address the challenge posed by orphan works can be evaluated. The research team used a purposive sample to approach the 'Big 3' national libraries and film archives in each country, typically including the national library, the national archive and the national film archive. The researchers also aimed to include at least one institution from each jurisdiction that had used the EUIPO database, and one institution that digitized orphan works but opted not to use the database.

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