At “Show Me Money! Or Not?,” a June 23 panel at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C., speakers from academic institutions reviewed five examples of case law to dispel confusion around fair use, specifically focusing on the exception’s fourth factor. “I think the reason fair use is the exception librarians … Continue reading Figuring out the Fourth Factor
In 2017 we started the “Copyright for Creators” series aimed at graduate and undergraduate students and faculty in arts disciplines, as well as creators throughout the university, such as web designers and communicators. Like most VCU Libraries events, this series was free and open to the public, and the topics covered were relevant to this … Continue reading Copyright for Creators
Copyright: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Neil Weinstock Netanel, is intended for the general public and explores the various rationales for copyright. One goes back to the Statute of Anne—the first law to provide for copyright regulated by the government. Another is to compensate authors for the work of creating content. But even the … Continue reading Copyright Through the Ages
Passage of the MLSA would reauthorize the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), reinforcing the agency—and America’s libraries—as a priority for the federal government. The proposed MLSA mirrors the previous authorization, which expired in 2016. The new legislation authorizes IMLS through 2025 and contains improvements to enable more libraries on tribal lands to participate … Continue reading Lame-Duck Library Advocacy
On September 26, the US Senate held a hearing on the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act (S. 1010), which passed the House of Representatives in March 2018. One of the two witnesses at this hearing was our copyright counsel Jonathan Band, who also serves as counsel to the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA). This … Continue reading Keep Copyright Office in Library of Congress
Update: The Marrakesh Treaty Implementation Act was signed into law on October 9, 2018. The legislation, passed by the US Senate in June, provides a copyright exception for “authorized entities”—including libraries—to make materials available across borders to people with print disabilities whose countries have already ratified the treaty. In fact, 350,000 accessible titles are already … Continue reading Miracle in Marrakesh Makes It to US
Victoria Owen, chief librarian at the University of Toronto Scarborough, provided an overview of several guides on Marrakesh implementation—published by IFLA, Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), the World Blind Union (WBU), and other organizations—and their target audiences and purposes. Some guides are geared for libraries and librarians, while others are more suited for government decision … Continue reading Marrakesh and More
But much of that defense would not be possible if not for a person most librarians don’t even know: Jonathan Band, who for nearly 20 years has represented libraries on behalf of the American Library Association (ALA) and other library associations. Band is this year’s recipient of the L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award. Band wrote … Continue reading A Library Ally You Didn’t Know You Had
The Copyright Office’s future has sparked debate and controversy, specifically regarding the best location for the office. As librarians, we must seize this opportunity to advocate in favor of keeping the office within the Library of Congress (LC) and not, as some lawmakers would have it, as an independent agency under their purview. The framers of … Continue reading Keep Copyright in the Library
I had spent the week leading up to the conference with my colleagues Nate Hill (executive director, Metropolitan New York Library Council) and Matthew Kopel (research and development librarian, Central New York Library Resources Council) preparing our remarks on library, archive, and museum contributions to open image collections, the various options for Creative Commons licenses, and … Continue reading MozFest 2016: Comics, Zines, and Open Images
The end of the James H. Billington era has prompted an outpouring of advice from scholars and pundits on a new agenda for LC, from mass digitization of the library’s book collections and wholesale archiving of websites to relaxing copyright restrictions. Yet many of these prescriptions align poorly with the realities of the digital present … Continue reading Rethinking the National Library
Journal publisher Elsevier, which claimed it was losing hundreds to thousands of dollars for each of its articles pirated on the site, sued to have it shut down. For these reasons, Judge Robert W. Sweet of the Southern District of New York ordered Sci-Hub.org to cease operations in October 2015. But that’s not the end … Continue reading Sci-Hub: What It Is and Why It Matters
