Copyright & Rights Management

Chelcie Juliet RowellINLS 752: Digital Preservation & Access

UNC School of Information & Library Science8 November 2011

“Our desire to keep digital information around for the future runs smack into the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.”

Hirtle, Peter B. “Digital Preservation and Copyright.” Stanford University Libraries. Copyright and Fair Use. http://fairuse.stanford.edu/commentary_and_analysis/2003_11_hirtle.html.

Copyright & Digital Preservation

• Copyrights of author, e.g. reproduction, public display, derivation

• Moral rights of author, e.g. attribution, right to retract a work from distribution

• Public domain• Legal deposit mandate

Coyle, Karen. “Rights in the PREMIS Data Model: A Report for the Library of Congress.” Washington, DC: Library of Congress, December 2006. http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/Rights-in-the-PREMIS-Data-Model.pdf.

IP Law for Libraries in a Nutshell

• The law allows you to make a copy of a computer program (if you legally own it) and adapt it for different view paths.

• The law does NOT allow you to share the archived file of the computer program or to reproduce or adapt documents produced using the computer program.

U.S. Copyright Act, Title 17 of the United States Code, Section 117.

Exception: Computer Programs

Up to 3 copies of a work in any format, analog or digital, on the following conditions:• open to public or allow access to non-affiliated

researchers• copying can’t be for “direct or indirect commercial

advantage”• must own legal copy of original item• copies made must carry notice of copyright• must conduct reasonable investigation to confirm that

unused copy cannot be obtained at fair price• access to digital version must be confined to premises

of library or archives

U.S. Copyright Act, Title 17 of the United States Code, Section 108.

Exception: Preservation Copies

Leaves definition of what is fair to be resolved in court based on the following factors:• Purpose and character of the use, including whether

such use is of commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes

• Nature of the copyrighted work

• Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

• Effect of the use upon the potential Market for or value of the copyrighted work

U.S. Copyright Act, Title 17 of the United States Code, Section 107.

Exception: Fair Use

1. Exceptions and limitations to the rights of copyright owners must be confined to certain special cases

2. Which do not conflict with the normal exploitation of a work, and

3. Do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder.

Coyle, Karen. “Rights in the PREMIS Data Model: A Report for the Library of Congress.” Washington, DC: Library of Congress, December 2006. http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/Rights-in-the-PREMIS-Data-Model.pdf.

3 Steps To Determine Fair Use

• legal mandate to preserve• limited legal permission to preserve• preservation of one’s own materials• preservation based on permission obtained

from the rights holder, e.g. IR preservation of faculty publications

• preservation based on fair use exception, e.g. preservation of orphan works

• preservation of items in the public domain

Coyle, Karen. “Rights in the PREMIS Data Model: A Report for the Library of Congress.” Washington, DC: Library of Congress, December 2006. http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/Rights-in-the-PREMIS-Data-Model.pdf.

Preservation Rights Scenarios

“[P]ublic libraries might be able to manage greater public access to books with cloudy copyright status through assertions of fair use than they might be able to obtain through a collective license. Because…libraries tend to be risk averse, there could be an inclination to agree to a collective license that did not maximize access, just to obtain the clarity necessary to move onwards.”

Peter Brantley, “Dividing Collective Licenses,” PWxyz, the news blog of Publishers Weekly. 21 October 2011. http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=7624.

Copyright & the DPLA

“[A]lthough there is risk in digitizing materials that may be in copyright, this risk should be balanced with the harm to scholarship and society inherent in not making collections fully accessible.”

“Triangle Research Libraries Network Publishes Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Digitization Based on ‘Well-intentioned Practice’ Document,” OCLC Research News. 15 February 2011. http://www.oclc.org/research/news/2011-02-15.htm.

Copyright & TRLN

Imagine you are the PI on a grant for the digitization of Swarthmore College’s Peace Collection, which includes items that fall within a broad range of copyright categories:• correspondence by Nobel Prize-winner Jane Addams• brochures from now defunct grassroots organizations• clippings and photocopies of published news articles

How would you develop a decision matrix for selecting materials for digitization that balances risk management with making collections accessible?

Discussion