May I have permission?
Lots of legal jargon in the reading this week: from ‘fair use’ to ‘public domain,’ ‘teacher exception’, and my favorite ‘creative commons.’
Copyright is serious business—and is incredible how much it impacts the daily lives of historians. The Digital History chapter brought up the point that putting an excerpt of a textbook online is permissible as long as its part of a gated system like Blackboard, but I notice that sometimes the e-reserve at the Library won’t allow text to be uploaded if they deem it to be outside the bounds of copyright i.e. too many pages of the book rather than just a mere excerpt.
I did find the discussion on orphan works and simply the ambiguity over works on the web to be interesting—and once again it underscores the newness of the digital arena. There are no hard and fast rules and often it is best for different groups like the Documentary Filmmakers document in the reading to ascribe and describe the best practices. Even though a lot of the rules for fair use seemed to be common sense, it is always best to document the process.
I appreciated the metaphor that was used by Cohen/Rosenzwieg that said that if a copy write violation is brought to the attention of a web designer, he/she can remove the offending quotation/image/audio/video in an instant while its harder within a physical object. In this instance the digital world is a unique center for information. However, in the arena of the creative commons, copy write that falls outside this public domain stifles creative and in our case the presentation of history to a public face. As a side note–can I just say I was astounded by the extension of law that extended the copy write for many great works for a longer period of time….
On the flip side, I always say err on the side of caution (which seems to be a phrase that copy write books seem to like) and that for your own work, be sure to document when and where it may be used. Again though, in terms of research, I also feel that it is critical that it be out there—and that while laying your faith in the world of academic ethics seems to be a rather risky business—sometimes it may be the only recourse/alternative to the dissemination of your materials for critique. Naturally though this taught coincides with the discussion of the Digital arena and New Scholarship…and the tricky terrain that Digital Historians and researchers as well as the public will have to negotiate in years to come.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
I agree with you that the library’s actions truly demonstrate the importance and confusion about copyright in the digital age. I’ve also noticed that the library won’t post more than a certain number of chapters of a text to Blackboard, but it will let you go off and photocopy a whole book if you check it out at the reserves desk. Sometimes the copy desk will even copy it for you…other times students are told it violates copyright policy. I guess this is just a prime example of gray areas of copyright law and a university’s particular policy.