I was excited to see Library Journal covering this report. As Albanese states, this may not lead to anything…but it’s a good start. The language in the report is vague, but in my opinion that is the only way to go with issues like this. We’ll never get anywhere if we request unfettered access, digitization or unlimited preservation copies to works in question–so using phrases like “reasonably necessary” gives both libraries, and legislators, elbow room. Click here to read the executive summary (or the full report if you’ve got a spare hour) and to see a somehow very sweet & grainy picture of the 108 crew.

From Library Journal:

Andrew Albanese — Library Journal, 4/2/2008

The Section 108 Study Group has delivered its long-awaited report. The diverse 19-member panel was chartered in 2005 to inform legislative changes to update the Copyright Act’s exception for libraries and archives for the digital age, but it remains unclear how quickly, or if, the group’s carefully-worded, conditioned recommendations will ever make it into law. The were delivered to the Librarian of Congress, James Billington, and the Register of Copyrights, MaryBeth Peters, this week, and are intended to “provide a basis on which legislation could be drafted and recommended to Congress.” Overall, the report reflects significant work and discussion on a range of issues relating to libraries and copyright-but also deep, ongoing tension between publishers and libraries in the digital age.

Notably, the report recommended the Section 108 exception be extended to museums, which are currently ineligible. That, however, represents the only clear, unambiguous recommendation in the report. The others include broad language that could be interpreted many ways by legislators. For example, the report suggests Section 108’s “three copy rule,” which permits libraries make up to three copies of a published work for replacement purposes, be amended to allow “a limited number of copies as reasonably necessary” to create and maintain “a single replacement copy.” That point is further conditioned, however, on a library determining that a replacement copy is not available at a “fair price,” and an acknowledgement that “there may be circumstances under which a licensed copy of a work qualifies as a copy obtainable at a fair price.” (more…)

While at the Midwinter ALA Radical Reference meeting we were visited by a young man who wanted to talk to us about a new project he was working on.. The Open Library, which essentially frees up library records for all. It sounded like an exciting project, and I liked his moxie. That said, I didn’t know anything about him and wondered about the viability of his project. Then I stumbled across this article from the Chronicle, detailing his project, and also detailing him and his past projects. Turns out he helped write RSS at the age of 14, and then sold his company Reddit to Conde Nast while still a teen. Ho hum. I have much greater confidence and renewed excitement about this project. If you’re a librarian, help him out!

I heart idealists, what can I say? When someone says to me ” We want to infect you with the dream that anyone can become part of a new movement with the potential to change the world of education: A movement that can redefine forever how knowledge is created and used.” I sit up and listen and get inspired. Read this very sweet article from the San Francisco Chronicle on the Open Education Movement that Jimmy Wales and Rich Baraniuk are pushing forward.. While you’re at it, watch this TED video on the same subject.

Stanford professor and copyright maven Larry Lessig gets TED-goers all excited about the future of copyright and creativity with this presentation of “three stories and an argument.” The internet’s “most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. ” Then, because he’s a film lover and believer in fair use, he throws in some excellent remixes. Love this! You must watch the video here

From Ars Technica

Heres how bad it is: not a single teacher interviewed for a recent study on copyright reported receiving any training on fair use.

Copyright confusion is running rampant in American schools, and not just among the students. The teachers dont know what the hell is going on, either, and media literacy is now being “compromised by unnecessary copyright restrictions and lack of understanding about copyright law.”

Thats the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Social Media at American University. Researchers wanted to know if confusion over using copyrighted material in the classroom was affecting teachers attempts to train students to be critical of media. The answer was an unequivocal “yes.”

One teacher, for example, has his students create mashups that mix pop music and news clips to comment on the world around them. Unfortunately for the students, (more…)

So a week ago I posted on this great letter that some folks had sent to the Register of US Copyrights.. Look what happened!!

Posted by Cory Doctorow, September 30, 2007
Carl sez, “A couple of weeks ago, we wrote to Marybeth Peters, the Register of U.S. Copyrights, to ask why the copyright database had a copyright, and why it cost $86,000. On Friday, the Library of Congress blogged the issue, and dismissed the whole thing as a ”blogospheric brouhaha.” Well, the Library of Commerce can diss our distinguished signatories all they want, but lucky thing is these are all public records, and we”re making all 21 million of them available for download.” Link (Thanks, Carl!)

Nate Anderson | Published: September 28, 2007

Wendy Seltzer, the founder of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse and a former EFF staff attorney, gave a talk yesterday at Cornell (RealPlayer required) on “Protecting the University from Copyright Bullies.” The bullies in question are the RIAA, and the issue is the recording industry”s current campaign of both litigation and political pressure. Should universities assist the music industry in identifying the “pirates,” or should they do everything in their power to resist?

The title of Seltzer”s talk gives the game away. She believes that the mission of the university is to promote academic freedom, research, the testing of boundaries, and the learning of personal responsibility by students and researchers. An open network facilitates such things; one that is filtered and used to watch the activities of its users does not, in her view, produced the sorts of effects that universities want.

(more…)

This from Cory Doctorow via Boing Boing

Carl Malamud sez, “In an act of unintended irony, the U.S. Copyright Office sells the database of copyrights for $86,625. The Library of Congress even asserts that the database is copyrighted ”outside the United States”, which would of course make it hard for somebody to put the database on an anonymous FTP server for anybody to get. And, why would we restrict access to a database that was specifically called out in the U.S. Constitution?
“In a letter to Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyright, librarians from universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Pennsylvania, and the Internet Archive all ask the Copyright Office to free this data.” (more…)

September 12, 2007
WASHINGTON – Today, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) released a report concluding that fair use and other copyright exemptions that libraries utilize are a major contributor to economic growth in the United States.

Long a central issue for libraries, fair use allows for the lawful usage of copyrighted works without the prior permission of the rights holder, under certain conditions. This study confirms the economic benefits of fields like librarianship that rely on fair use.

“Copyright is a balance between fair use and intellectual property rights,” said ALA President Loriene Roy. “And this study shows that the balance is working for the economic growth of this country.”

Libraries need the ability to preserve, store, provide access and search-and-retrieve information addressed by copyright exemptions and limitations like fair use, first sale, preservation and replacement, and interlibrary loan. In turn, libraries” use of Internet search engines, software and other networked information spur the growth of telecommunications, software and Internet Service Providers and webportal industries.

“One of the most important aspects of fair use is that it promotes and provides for the advancement of learning, which is the constitutional purpose of copyright,” Roy continued. “Without these exemptions, libraries and educational institutions categorized in the study as ”core fair use industries” would not function, because the use of copyrighted material and the sharing of ideas is essential to research and learning.”

For more information on the study, please visit http://www.ccianet.org.

From the ALA Website

Lawrence Lessig blogs this rather complex, but potentially significant decision here

[begin excerpt; the blog post contains links to relevant legal material]

The 10th Circuit decided our appeal in Golan v. Gonzales today. In a unanimous
vote, the Court held that the “traditional contours of copyright protection”
described in Eldred as the trigger for First Amendment review extend beyond the
two “traditional First Amendment safeguards” mentioned by the Court in that
case. It thus remanded the case to the District Court to evaluate section 514 of
the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”) under the First Amendment, which
removed material from the public domain.
This is a very big victory. The government had argued in this case, and in
related cases, that the only First Amendment review of a copyright act possible (more…)