Copyright policy is looking up for libraries. Really. True enough—Washington can take on a dark outlook (sometimes very dark) when a big success can be construed as keeping the federal government open. But we’ve made some good progress in the last few years, with last month’s Google Books ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit as the latest installment. Long live fair use!
The stimulus for this piece, however, is the copyright policy conference on November 17 hosted by the Re:Create Coalition. You may recall that the American Library Association (ALA) is a founding member of this new coalition that was born in spring 2015, which includes a range of important, influential, and ideologically diverse players such as the Consumer Technology Association (just renamed from the Consumer Electronics Association), Electronic Frontier Foundation, and R Street Institute. This first-ever public event of the coalition is a major milestone for heightened national advocacy for a balanced copyright regime in the digital era.
The conference begins with opening remarks from Re:Create founding members Gene Kimmelman and Eli Lehrer. Kimmelman and Lehrer are the presidents of Public Knowledge and R Street, two policy organizations from rather different political perspectives, who align on a balanced copyright regime. There are panels on new creators and balanced copyright, modernizing the US Copyright Office, and future directions for copyright policy. Libraries are explicitly well represented on a panel by Jonathan Band, the counsel for the Library Copyright Alliance whose members include ALA, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). And we have some good library symbolism to boot as this event is being held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.
The advent of the Re:Create Coalition has caused me to think about—well, how to think about—copyright and libraries. Many library interests are closely related to those of the education community and other organizations that advance lifelong learning and provide direct information services to people. A second thrust for copyright focuses on economic motivations, such as those articulated by the content industries (think movies, music, etc.). Finally, there are the interests of public institutions generally, cultural organizations, and other related entities. These three categories are overlapping, and it is a serious mistake to make silos out of them—though we see that happening routinely. By contrast it is the job of policymakers to understand this ecosystem and make decisions that have the greatest total social benefit, not optimizing one category.
With Re:Create, we have a new, powerful path forward for these important issues of digital content, copyright, and licensing, with a broad array of influential and collegial allies. This new engagement is not accidental, but library involvement is one of the products of the Policy Revolution! initiative and its focus on external policy outreach and collaboration at the national level. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s conference and the many other forthcoming activities of the coalition and the ALA work that it complements.