Copyright & Fair Use

The Center for Intellectual Property will host a Community Conversation with the Association of Research Libraries’ Brandon Butler about  the Kirtsaeng v. Wiley & Sons case on May 21 from 1-2pm EST. If you are interested in attending this free, virtual event which is for CIP members, please contact Kathleen Collins prior to May 20.

Here’s a new one to add to your growing copyright and fair use collection: Copyright Questions and Answers for Information Professionals: From the Columns of Against the Grain.  The author, law professor Laura Gasaway, is a regular contributor on copyright issues for the library/publishing news site, Against the Grain. “It’s like a more extensive version of The Code,” writes one CUNY librarian who recommends the book, “in that it gives detailed answers to great questions very specific to our field – and it comes highly endorsed by Kenneth Crews, among others.” As always, keep in mind that such information-rich resources like this are by no means the province of librarians only. All of us in higher education have to wrestle with copyright and fair use questions, and it behooves us to try to get a grip on them.

 Join Us for a Free Online Seminar sponsored by the CUNY Office of Library Services; Presented by Magna Online Seminars

 “How Recent Copyright Court Cases Affect Distance Education:

What Educators Need to Know About Copyright”

Tuesday, April 30, 2013, 2pm-4pm

John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Lloyd Sealy Library Classroom, 899 10th Ave.

Presenter Linda Enghagen, University of Massachusetts at Amherst is the author of Fair Use Guidelines for Educators. Professor Enghagen will guide us through a review of best practices in fair use, including distribution of course material and assignment design.  The webinar will show you how to establish and implement policies to assure copyright compliance.

After participating in the seminar, you can be confident about distributing materials and assignments in your distance courses. You will:

• Develop a working understanding of the transformative use doctrine
• Learn practical strategies for employing the transformative use doctrine in course design and delivery
• Develop a working knowledge of best practices in fair use

The online seminar is open to anyone in CUNY.  We encourage all to attend, especially:

• Administrators developing and implementing online programs
• Instructional designers
• Faculty
• Librarians

RSVP by April 19: Kathleen Collins, kcollins@jjay.cuny.edu

Remember the enterprising Thai-born, U.S. college student who made a bundle and helped pay for his tuition by selling textbooks that his friends and family had bought abroad and shipped to him? Today, the case of Supap Kirtsaeng has resulted in a 6-3 landmark Supreme Court ruling. Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons holds that legally acquired copyrighted works can be resold by their owners, and it does apply to works made overseas. So, for instance, textbooks that are produced and sold abroad can be re-sold online. The case involves Section 109 of U.S. Copyright Act, 0r “first sale doctrine,” which limits the distribution rights of a copyright owner and allows the owner of a lawfully-made copy of a copyrighted work to sell or loan the copy without permission from the copyright holder.

For more details, see reports from the Huffington Post, Publishers Weekly and the patent law blog Patently O.

An update on recent posting about the Georgia State eReserve case. Either the Dept. of Justice has bigger fish to fry or actually read the case very closely. Another check mark in the positive column for academic libraries.

It’s not news that we haven’t heard the last of the Georgia State eReserves case, but now it seems the U.S. Dept. of Justice might be getting involved – and not on the fair use side. Get the latest scoop.

The recent death of Aaron Swartz has highlighted not only his work and activism but the crucial issues at hand related to digital rights, copyright and open access. The video accompanying this article, his keynote speech at last May’s F2C:Freedom to Connect 2012 event in Washington, D.C., is engaging and informative.

Today’s claim to fame is not only the day you give your resolutions a second thought, but it is also Public Domain Day. This year, the works of Bruno Schulz, Stefan Zweig, Léon Daude, Violet Hunt, et al, shed the control of whoever their copyright owners might have been, step into the public domain, and make themselves available for us to use as we like. Celebrate by getting creative and building upon the creativity of others!

In the Fall of 2011, a judge threw out the case against UCLA for streaming video for educational purposes. Cut to Fall of 2012: ditto. The same judge, who had allowed the educational media trade group to amend its complaint that UCLA was violating copyright law, dismissed the sequel, too. Both ambiguity (fair use’s milieu) in the law and the subsequent dismissals lead to a triumphant feeling for UCLA, but a feeling is still not something that can be codified. A reposting here of the Center for Social Media’s advice on the subject of teaching with steaming video might help.

This one in the case against the digital library HathiTrust. Here’s the Chronicle‘s news brief, and then for background, an informative treatment by a NY Law School professor and the Chronicle’s full article on the case from last year.