Category: Copyright

Oxford University Press Backs Google Book Search Settlement

In "Saving Texts From Oblivion: Oxford U. Press on the Google Book Settlement," Tim Barton, President of Oxford University Press, discusses the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement.

In conclusion. he states:

So we at Oxford University Press support the settlement, even as we recognize its imperfections and want it made better. As Voltaire said, "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien," the perfect is the enemy of the good. Let us not waste an opportunity to create so much good. Let us work together to solve the imperfections of the settlement. Let us work together to give students, scholars, and readers access to the written wisdom of previous generations. Let us keep those minds alive.

Copyright and E-Reserves: Update on Cambridge University Press et al. v. Georgia State University

In "Interesting Development in Georgia State Case," Kevin Smith provides an update on Cambridge University Press et al. v. Georgia State University, an important case about copyright and electronic reserves in libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

Earlier this year, the Georgia Regents adopted a new copyright policy after a select committee reviewed and entirely rewrote the older one. The new policy is shorter, more easily comprehended and more pragmatic. . . .

After this new policy was adopted, attorneys for GSU filed a motion for a "protective order" which would state that only information about electronic course content going forward, under the new policy, could be "discovered" by the plaintiffs. GSU argued that since they were a state institution, and therefore entitled to immunity from damages, the plaintiffs could only get prospective relief (an injunction) and therefore should be limited to information about practices related to the policy under which GSU would go forward. After some legal maneuvering, the Judge granted this request last week.

ARL Publishes Author Addenda, SPEC Kit 310

The Association of Research Libraries has published Author Addenda, SPEC Kit 310. The table of contents and executive summary are freely available.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This survey was distributed to the 123 ARL member libraries in February 2009. Respondents were asked to provide information on the use of author addenda at their institutions, which rights authors were encouraged to retain, and the methods by which libraries were conducting promotion and outreach efforts on the topic of author rights and addenda. Seventy libraries (57%) responded to the survey. Of those respondents, 35 (50%) indicated that authors at their institutions were using author addenda, and 33 libraries (47%) indicated that they “did not know.” Only two libraries indicated that authors at their institutions were not using author addenda.

The majority of respondents (77%) did not formally collect information on the use of author addenda on their campuses at the time of this survey. Evidence was gathered mostly in an informal way, either when an author contacted the library with a question related to copyright or an author addendum, or through anecdotal stories of success or failure in using an addendum. Fifty-two percent (36) of the responding libraries reported that an author addendum had been endorsed by administrators or a governing body at their institution or by their consortia, while 62% (43) responded that there had been no endorsements. There had been more endorsements at the consortial level than at the institutional level. Eight libraries (12%) reported that an institutional endorsement was under consideration at the time of the survey. A larger number of libraries (46 or 68%) reported that their institution or consortium had worked to promote the use of an author addendum by providing links to an author addendum and copyright information on library Web sites or making faculty presentations on author rights (particularly pertaining to the NIH Public Access Policy).

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents in the form of sample addenda, brochures, handouts, and author rights Web sites and slides from presentations to faculty and library staff.

Google Book Search Bibliography, Version 4

Version 4 of the Google Book Search Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship.

This bibliography presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Book Search. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Book Search and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical.

Google Book Search Settlement: Interview with Michael Healy, Expected Executive Director of the Book Rights Registry

The Copyright Clearance Center has released an interview with Michael Healy, expected Executive Director of the Book Rights Registry (digital audio of the interview is also available). The Book Rights Registry will be established as part of the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement.

Here's an excerpt:

And let’s be clear, what we’ll be building here is a remarkable and unique resource, the like of which has not been seen in the industry before, which is a very comprehensive data set, which links publications back to works around which those publications are clustered. And then, you’ll have those works and publications linked for the very first time to comprehensive metadata records about rights holders, who owns what. Then, layer on top of that again, the opportunity that the settlement gives authors and publishers to express what Google and others do with these digitized books, the display rights, the pricing, etc. Then, you have a very complex mix of data sets, which need to interoperate successfully for the Registry to succeed. And I think that highlights an important point of this settlement, which we may come on and talk about later when we discuss the benefits, but it is important to emphasize that the Registry will be a vehicle through which—and the settlement document underpins this—the Registry will be a vehicle through which rights holders can exercise control on the use made by Google and others of these digitized works.

Read more about it at "Authors Guild/AAP/Google Settlement Gives Authors, Publishers 'Unprecedented. . . Control' Over Their Copyrights."

“File-Sharing and Copyright”

Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf of the Harvard Business School have released "File-Sharing and Copyright" as a working paper.

Here's an excerpt:

As our survey indicates, the empirical evidence on sales displacement is mixed. While some studies find evidence of a substitution effect, other findings, in particular the papers using actual file-sharing data, suggest that piracy and music sales are largely unrelated. In contrast, there is clear evidence that income from complements has risen in recent years. For example, concert sales have increased more than music sales have fallen. Similarly, a fraction of consumer electronics purchases and internet-related expenditures are due to file sharing. Unfortunately, we know little about the distribution of these impacts. How markets for complimentary goods have responded to file sharing remains an area of inquiry that is largely unexplored in academic research.

A Guide for the Perplexed Part II: The Amended Google-Michigan Agreement

The American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries have released A Guide for the Perplexed Part II: The Amended Google-Michigan Agreement.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The University of Michigan, one of the original participating libraries in the Google Book project, recently entered into an amended agreement that will govern the relationship between Google and Michigan if the proposed Google Book Search settlement is approved by the judge.

Jonathan Band, author of "A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement," has provided a concise description of the Google-Michigan amended terms. The document highlights some rights and responsibilities of participating libraries, including the following:

  • Michigan and any partner library can initiate a review of the pricing of the institutional subscription to determine whether the price properly meets the objectives set forth in the settlement agreement.

  • Google must provide to partner libraries information on books, such as whether Google is treating the book as in the public domain and whether a book is being excluded from any display uses for editorial or non-editorial reasons.

  • Google will provide Michigan with a free institutional subscription for at least 25 years.

  • Michigan is permitted to provide digital copies of the public domain books to academic institutions and research or public libraries for non-commercial research, scholarly, or academic purposes, as long as the library uses reasonable efforts to prevent bulk downloads of the copies.

Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics Workshop Materials Added to Scholarly Communication Toolkit

ACRL has added materials from its Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics Workshop to its Scholarly Communication Toolkit.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is extending the reach of the "Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics" workshop by adding related materials to its popular Scholarly Communication Toolkit. The materials—including short videos, presentations templates and handouts—were developed for the half-day workshop offered at the ACRL 14th National Conference in Seattle and traveling to five locations around the country this summer (http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/april2009/acrlscroadshowhosts.cfm). Now librarians can make use of these tools to enhance their own knowledge or adapt them to offer related workshops on their own campuses. The Scholarly Communication Toolkit is available online at http://www.acrl.ala.org/scholcomm/.

Developing a basic understanding of scholarly communication issues should be a high priority for every librarian. Enhancing understanding of how scholars work along with the systems, tools and technology to support the evolving work of the creation, personal organization, aggregation, discovery, preservation, access and exchange of information in all formats is one of six strategic priorities for 2009-13 developed by the ACRL Board of Directors (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/about/whatisacrl/index.cfm). The newly developed tools support this strategic priority, with a focus on new methods of scholarly publishing and communication, copyright and intellectual property and economics along with open access and openness as a principle.

Harvard Graduate School of Education Faculty Adopt Open Access Policy

The Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty have adopted an open access policy. (Thanks to Open Access News.)

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) voted overwhelmingly at its last faculty meeting to allow the university to make all faculty members' scholarly articles publicly available online. The resolution makes HGSE the fourth of Harvard's 10 schools to endorse open access to faculty research publications. The Faculties of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard Law School, and the Harvard Kennedy School all passed similar policies in recent months. . . .

As a result of the resolution, HGSE faculty will now provide their scholarly articles to the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication for deposit in an open access digital repository that is currently under development. When the repository launches later this year, the contents will be freely available to the public, unless an author chooses to embargo or block access. The policy makes rights sharing with publishers and self-archiving the default, while allowing faculty to waive Harvard's license on a case-by-case basis, at the author's discretion.

“Google Book Search Settlement: Foster Competition, Escrow the Scans”

In "Google Book Search Settlement: Foster Competition, Escrow the Scans," Peter Eckersley proposes that digitized books involved in the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement be put in escrow for some period, then made freely available.

Here's an excerpt:

One good compromise might be to require that anyone who takes a blanket license (whether under the Google Book Search settlement, or under any legislation that might expand the settlement to others) must deposit a copy of the raw scans that they create with the Library of Congress or with the entity that administers the blanket license (e.g., the Books Rights Registry). After a period of years, let's say 14, the term of the Founder's Copyright, those scans should be made available at no cost to any others who take the relevant copyright licenses.

This would not only encourage market entry and competition in the online digital books arena, but would also foster innovation in the field. There's nothing that encourages digital innovation quite like access to an enormous dataset. After all, before Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google, they were graduate students at Stanford. They were able to build a new search engine by downloading their own copy of the web, messing around with it, and figuring our a better algorithm for querying it. New start-ups working with digital books should have the same kind of opportunity.

French Constitutional Council on Création et Internet Law: Three Strikes and You’re Not Out

On the basis that “every man is presumed innocent until he has been proven guilty,” the French Constitutional Council has rejected the provision in the Création et Internet law that would have allowed the HADOPI to disconnect alleged copyright infringers from the Internet.

Read more about it at “France Suspends Three Strikes“; “French Court Defangs Plan to Crack Down on Internet Piracy“; "French Court Savages ‘Three-Strikes’ Law, Tosses It Out."

Public Perceptions of Copyright and the Creative Commons: Bunnyfoot User Testing Report: OPSI—Crown Copyright

The UK Office of Public Sector Information has released the Bunnyfoot User Testing Report: OPSI—Crown Copyright.

Here's an excerpt:

75% of respondents did not recognise this image [Creative Commons Attribution License symbol].

Lack of recognition was highest amongst the "general public"—87%. And lowest amongst respondents from the OPSI website—55% did not recognise the image.

The majority did not understand the meaning of the image. Understanding was highest amongst the OPSI website respondents—35%.

This is not surprising as this group was also the group in which the most had heard of Creative Commons licences before—47% (vs 10% of the "general public" and 29% of the OPSI database).

Only those likely to be more familiar with copyright (inferred from their route to the survey) are likely to have a previous understanding of Creative Commons terminology and imagery. One might argue that if these are used moving forward, more people will become more familiar with these, however, the benefits at this stage of shared/added meaning would only really apply to a minority—a minority who are likely to have a strong understanding of Crown copyright already.

“Summary and Conclusions. Final Chapter of Scholarly Communication for Librarians“

Heather Morrison has self-archived "Summary and Conclusions. Final Chapter of Scholarly Communication for Librarians" in E-LIS.

Scholarly Communication for Librarians is written from the perspective of a passionate advocate for Open Access and transformative change in scholarly communication, and is based on a course first taught at the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Topics covered include perspectives from the different groups involved in scholarly communication, including the scholars themselves, journals, publishers, and librarians. There are chapters devoted to Author’s Rights and Intellectual Property, Economics, Open Access, and Emerging Trends and Formats. The following summary highlights the major points of each chapter.

Justice Department Sends Civil Investigative Demands to Google about Google Book Search Settlement

The Justice Department has sent civil investigative demands to Google about the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement. Various state attorneys generals are also looking into the settlement.

Read more about it at "Google Book Deal Faces Growing Scrutiny," "Probe of Google Book Deal Heats Up," and "U.S. Presses Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Book Settlement."

In from the Cold: An Assessment of the Scope of ‘Orphan Works’ and Its Impact on the Delivery of Services to the Public

JISC has released In from the Cold: An Assessment of the Scope of 'Orphan Works' and Its Impact on the Delivery of Services to the Public.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The scale and impact of Orphan Works across the public sector confirms that the presence of Orphan Works is in essence locking up culture and other public sector content and preventing organisations from serving the public interest. Works of little and/or variable commercial value but high academic and cultural significance are languishing unused. Access to an immense amount of this material, essential for education and scholarship, is consequently badly constrained, whilst scarce public sector resources are being used up on complex and unreliable 'due diligence' compliance. Without any kind of UK or European Union-wide legal certainty, there will remain a major risk for all users of Orphan Works. The quantity of Orphan Works and their impact is only accelerating as content is being created and digitised without adherence to any single internationally recognised standard for capturing provenance information.

The data and anecdotal feedback suggests that many public sector organisations are themselves unsure as to the extent of the problem, and that staff awareness and understanding are often limited.

There are also suggestions that often works are selected for digitisation based on the fact that they do not pose any copyright issues, thus creating a black hole of 20th century content. These issues stress the need for an informed and skilled public sector to deal with all the issues associated with copyright-related materials, the necessity for access to resources to deal with Orphan Works, and an informed and proportionate understanding of the nature of the risks associated with the use of these works.

Welsh Journals Online: Final Report

JISC has released Welsh Journals Online: Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

Welsh Journals Online is the most challenging digitisation project ever undertaken by the National Library of Wales. It aimed to create a website giving free searchable and browsable access to the contents of back-numbers of the major journals relating to Wales or the Welsh language. These journals form the core of the Library’s collection of printed books and are its most-used resource.

The journals were chosen to represent the diversity of material available, and cover English- and Welsh-language titles including scholarly articles on topics from archaeology to zoology, poetry, fiction, reviews and obituaries. The project publishes 400,000 pages of text, from 52 titles; the 180,000 pages of Welsh content represents the single largest corpus of text in the language available on the web. Some of the titles are well-known and widely used as sources (eg Archaeologia Cambrensis), while others have been overlooked or are difficult to access (Yr Arloeswr). . . .

The website is fully exposed to Google and it is likely that many new users will find the resource through general searching of the web. For those who are unfamiliar with the journal literature of Wales some contextual help is provided in the form of factsheets; lesson plans based upon these have also been created to assists teachers wishing to use the Welsh Journals Online website to discuss the questions of copyright, searching, or referencing.

The majority of the material is covered by copyright, and licensing and rights management formed a significant part of the project. The need to control display at page level (so that where necessary a single article or photograph could be blanked) required detailed metadata to record permission, gathered in cooperation with the publishers. Of the titles included, the proportion of blanked pages is very low (less than 0.1%), but rights issues led to the exclusion of some titles completely. The Library did not offer any payment for permission and works by Dylan Thomas, Robert Graves, and R S Thomas are therefore not shown. Given that the cost-per-page of web publication is approximately £2, the payment of even minimal fees would transform the economics of mass-digitisation.

EFF Launches Teaching Copyright Curriculum

The EFF has launched Teaching Copyright.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Last week, after months of work, EFF launched Teaching Copyright, a balanced, fact-based curriculum for high school educators looking to discuss copyright issues in the classroom. We decided the time was right to unveil the project after the debut of the Copyright Alliance Education Foundation (CAEF), which is offering a variety of educational materials assembled by the film, music and software industries. After reviewing those materials, we thought it was crucial that educators have a real alternative.

Center for Intellectual Property to Launch CIP Member Community

The Center for Intellectual Property at the University of Maryland University College will launch the fee-based CIP Member Community in August.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

A Community Built for Clarification
Exclusive access to members-only Q&A sessions, guides, forums, teaching resources, newsletters and legislative alerts—plus discounts on online workshops and conferences.

A Community Built for Connection
Exclusive information sharing, career networking opportunities . . . and more.

A Community Built for Certification
Copyright Leadership in Higher Education, a new, renewable professional certification offered through CIP and UMUC.

Introducing Copyright: A Plain Language Guide to Copyright in the 21st Century

The Commonwealth of Learning has published Introducing Copyright: A Plain Language Guide to Copyright in the 21st Century as a PDF file under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This book was written for those who want to learn about copyright in the 21st century. It explains copyright protection and what it means for copyright holders and copyright users. It also introduces readers to contemporary topics: digital rights management, open licences, software patents and copyright protection for works of traditional knowledge. A final chapter tries to predict how technology will change the publishing and entertainment industries that depend on copyright.

The book assumes no special knowledge and avoids technical language as much as possible.

“Deal or No Deal: What If the Google Settlement Fails?”

In "Deal or No Deal: What If the Google Settlement Fails?," Andrew Richard Albanese examines the uncertain future of the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement.

Here's an excerpt:

"This thing is going to die," one close observer of the settlement told PW [Publishers Weekly]. "Let's put it this way—with all the sketchy things in the agreement, there is no way [the parties] want people to look at this longer, rather than shorter."

MPAA Attorney Says Even One Personal Backup Copy of DVD is Illegal

Bart Williams, an MPAA attorney, said in a hearing about the Realnetworks v. DVD Copy Control Association case that even if a consumer made single copy of a DVD for acquired for personal use that: "One copy is a violation of the DMCA."

Read more about the case at "DVDs and the Big Picture," "RealNetworks: MPAA Is 'Price-Fixing Cartel'," "Reminder from the MPAA: DRM Trumps Your Fair Use Rights," and "What to Expect from the RealDVD Decision."

Google and University of Michigan Sign Expanded Digitization Agreement

Google and the University of Michigan have signed an expanded digitization agreement that incorporates the terms of the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Specifically, the agreement:

Expands the scope of Google and University of Michigan's partnership:
The University of Michigan continues its tradition of leadership in library digitization by being the first library to expand its partnership with Google under the terms of Google's settlement agreement with a broad class of authors and publishers. The principles underlying the new agreement are to ensure access to our collection, to provide a solid foundation for future research and study, and to provide the greatest public good for patrons of libraries around the US.

Broadens public access to University of Michigan's collections:
Once the settlement is approved by the court, readers and students throughout the US will enjoy the benefits of University of Michigan's collections, including free previews, the ability to buy access to University of Michigan's books online, and institutional subscriptions.

Supports shared services with other libraries:
The agreement empowers University of Michigan to broaden public access to its collection by using digital files of books that Google scans to strengthen and support initiatives like HathiTrust.

Provides greater digital access to University of Michigan's collections for students and faculty:
University of Michigan will get a digital copy of every book held in their collection, whether it's scanned from Michigan or at another library.

Broadens access to public domain books from University of Michigan's collection:
The University of Michigan will be able to share digital copies of public domain works Google has digitized from its collection with fellow academic institutions, libraries, and other organizations for non-commercial purposes. These provisions enable Michigan to share its digital library collection with students, scholars, and other library users around the world.

Subsidizes University of Michigan's Institutional Subscription:
If approved by the court, Google's agreement with authors and publishers allows it to make millions of digitized books available to colleges and universities via a subscription. Under our new agreement, Google will subsidize the cost of Michigan's subscription based on the number of books scanned from Michigan. In practice, this means that Google will subsidize the entire cost of Michigan's institutional subscription–so that Michigan's students and staff will be able to access and read almost every book Google has digitized from 29 libraries around the world, for free.

Expands access for students, faculty, and patrons with disabilities:
Google will make public domain works digitized from Michigan's print library collection accessible to users with print disabilities in the same ways as in-copyright books covered under the settlement agreement.

Safeguards the public's access to knowledge:
Michigan's agreement includes collective terms Google has committed to that can be enjoyed by any of Google's other partner libraries. Michigan is the first university to sign on to these terms, which give libraries new ways to help safeguard the public's access to these books.

Establishes a mechanism to review prices:
Our agreement gives Michigan and other participating libraries the power to review the pricing of Institutional Subscriptions to make sure that they are priced for "broad penetration," as required by the settlement agreement. That means that the reviewer will evaluate whether subscriptions are affordable enough to allow universities, libraries, and other institutions across the country to take advantage of them.

If they determine that prices are too high, University of Michigan and other participating libraries who sign these collective terms can challenge the prices through arbitration, and Google will be required to work with the Registry to adjust the pricing accordingly.

Ensures access to millions of books for generations to come:
Google has committed to make the books it has scanned publicly available for free search, consumer purchase, institutional subscriptions, and other services established by the settlement agreement. Our agreement ensures that libraries and their patrons can continue to use digital copies of the millions of books Google has scanned well into the future, even if Google goes away.

Also see the press release.

Technological Accommodation of Conflicts between Freedom of Expression and DRM: The First Empirical Assessment

Patricia Akester's Technological Accommodation of Conflicts between Freedom of Expression and DRM: The First Empirical Assessment is available in the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law repository.

Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

When technological measures were under consideration in the mid 1990s two stark scenarios presented themselves: on the one hand, an ideal world where copyright owners could use DRM to make their works available under a host of different conditions in a way that responded to the diversity of consumer demand; on the other, a more bleak environment where all users of copyright material (and much non-copyright material) would be forced to obtain permission and pay to access material that previously would have been available to all. . . . Patricia Akester examines how these issues are working out in practice. Based on a series of interviews with key organisations and individuals, involved in the use of copyright material and the development and deployment of DRM, she provides a sober assessment of the current state of affairs.

Digital Video: Remix Culture: Fair Use is Your Friend

The Center for Social Media at American University has released Remix Culture: Fair Use is Your Friend.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Last summer the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video nearly crashed our servers with people downloading the document. Based on this demand, we created Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend is a collaboration with the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property—a program of AU's Washington College of Law—along with Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project. The video was funded by Google.

See also the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.