Copyright Resource

Columbia University Libraries/Information Service has re-designed and updated it Copyright Advisory Office. From the site:

The Copyright Advisory Office of Columbia University has a central mission to address, in a creative and constructive manner, the relationship between copyright law and the work of the university in order to best promote research, teaching, library services, and community involvement. To that end, this office:

• Addresses issues of fair use, copyright ownership, and publishing arrangements in furtherance of higher education and the advancement of knowledge;
• Provides copyright information and education resources for the university community;
• Supports innovative policies, practices, and contracts to foster the creation, preservation, and accessibility of information resources; and
• Undertakes research and exploration of copyright issues to provide original understandings of the law and its importance.

The site includes an extensive section on Fair Use, including a fair use checklist (PDF).

Finding Images with Yahoo! Search

Yahoo has introduced new filters in its image search to help find Creative Commons-licensed images, although the term Creative Commons is not used in the filter. Use Yahoo Image Search filters to refine results to show only images that "User allows reuse."  You can limit to Commercial Use or to images licensed for "Remix, tweak, build upon." To find out about Creative Commons, you must click the Learn More link which takes you to the Creative Commons site. 

Fair Use and the Courts

This is an interesting article from Ars Technica addressing plagiarism, copyright, and fair use. It reports on the results of a court case in which students sued TurnItIn on the grounds that it violated the students' copyright by storing their papers online. The students lost because according to a federal court decision:

TurnItIn's use was "fair" according to the four factors found in US copyright law, with most weight being given to the "transformative" nature of what TurnItIn was doing with the papers.

Plaintiffs argued that [TurnItIn parent company] iParadigms’ use of their works cannot be transformative because the archiving process does not add anything to the work. TurnItIn merely stores the work unaltered and in its entirety. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals felt that argument "was misguided." Their conclusion:

The use of a copyrighted work need not alter or augment the work to be transformative in nature... iParadigms' use of plaintiffs’ works had an entirely different function and purpose than the original works; the fact that there was no substantive alteration to the works does not preclude the use from being transformative in nature.

So, an interesting interpretation of fair use. The article describes the court decision as a "primer on fair use," providing another copyright resource.

Fair Use Discussions Continue

This New York Times article Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt discusses the issues around the bloggers' practice of quoting content from other sources. This has usually been considered fair use under current copyright law,

But some media executives are growing concerned that the increasingly popular curators of the Web that are taking large pieces of the original work — a practice sometimes called scraping — are shaving away potential readers and profiting from the content.

While some of the discussion is focused on loss of revenue, there are interesting points and speculation about the future of fair use, blogging, and copyright. In an information world without physical boundaries, the easy ability to copy and paste, and the difficulty of tracking your words online*, these issues will only continue.

*New services like this one called FairShare are popping up to help content creators better track their work online. (via ReadWriteWeb)

Fair Use?

AP claims copyright infringement--and wants credit & compensation--of the photo Shepard Fairey used in his iconic Obama poster. What do you think--fair use?

Update:

Diane Wallace-Reid from Minneapolis shared this link to an NPR story on the issue.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100301384&sc=emaf

The Tangle of Copyright, Fair Use, and YouTube

Here is an interesting article on the issues of copyright, fair use, and user-generated content. It is a complicated issue, as you can see from the discussion of the various court cases and different perspectives from copyright holders, users, YouTube and other hosts for user-generated content, viewers, and others.

The article seems particularly timely in light of Mr. Rother's Rants and Raves post about his group's video being taken down from YouTube.

Article Citation:
Seidenberg, Steven. "Copyright in the Age of YouTube." ABA Journal Feb 2009 3 Feb 2009 <>.

GoogleDocs & Copyright

I am clearly behind on my blogging--like so many of you:-) I hope you are thinking and learning and will share what is happening.

Being behind, I am late in posting this information that responds to some questions about who owns the copyright for material produced using GoogleDocs. There were some rumors/doomsday posts in the blogosphere awhile back asserting that Google owns your copyright.

The answer is that the creator holds the copyright, just as the creator holds the copyright on any written or artistic creation whether or not a copyright is registered for the work. Take a look at Google's Terms of Service.

Google’s terms provide strong protection for intellectual property. Abusing other people's intellectual property rights is forbidden:

8.2 … You may not modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute or create derivative works based on this Content (either in whole or in part) unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google or by the owners of that Content, in a separate agreement.

It acknowledges your rights:

9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). …

And,

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. …