Campus Copyright

Connect to Copyright from Columbia University!

The Copyright Advisory Office of Columbia University in the City of New York has launched a fully revised and updated website of copyright issues and information. The new site is publicly accessible at http://copyright.columbia.edu, and offers expanded pages on copyright ownership, fair use, publication agreements, the Google Books settlement, and much more.

A principal mission of the Copyright Advisory Office (CAO), under the directorship of Dr. Kenneth Crews, is to provide copyright information and guidance for the academic community. The CAO website focuses on questions of ownership and publication of scholarly works, fair use in the context of scholarship and teaching, and the creation of digital libraries and preservation initiatives at university libraries.

Materials available immediately on the CAO website include:

• A “QuickGuide” outlining succinctly the basics of copyright law.
• Guidance for understanding and applying fair use, including the popular “Checklist for Fair Use” conceived by Dr. Crews and now utilized at a wide range of educational institutions.
• Explanations and tools addressing library copying for research, preservation, and more.
• Details about identifying materials in the public domain and understanding the rules of copyright duration.
• Instructions for requesting and securing permissions from copyright owners.
• Pointers and tips for authors about publication agreements and the importance of negotiating and retaining records.
• A blog of postings from the CAO on Google Books and many other issues.
• Extensive links to a wealth of copyright information.

New materials will be posted to the site on a continuing basis. The website was developed and designed in partnership with Columbia’s Center for Digital Research and Scholarship and its Scholarly Communication Program. Visit the website of the Copyright Advisory Office: http://copyright.columbia.edu.

For more information, contact the CAO at phone number (212) 851-0757 or by email: copyright@columbia.edu.

Google Books

All Google books prior to 1/5/2009 will be involved in a newly created service similar to the Copyright Clearance Center called the Books Rights Registry (BRR) beginning October 28, 2009.  Users will have some access either as a preview, purchase, subscription or general full public access. If the book is in the public domain, you will be able to see 100% of it. If the book is in copyright and not available (not in print) you will be able to se 20% of it.  If the book is in copyright you will be able to obtain a bibliography and option to purchase in the price range of $0 - $30.  With the purchase you will have full text perpetual access.  ALL services will accommodate visually impaired.  The institutional subscription can allow the purchase of all books in the library catalog/database and make available to authorized users. The institution will be allowed to print up to 20 pages.  The institution, depending on its size will be able to provide access of 1 terminal per library.  A community college can provide 1 terminal per 4,000 FTE's and a university can provide 1 terminal for every 10,000 FTE's.  All Google participating libraries get a digital copy and are released from terms of the BRR. The University of Michigan is a participating library in the Google books project.  They opted out of some of the agreement and will be selling as many as 400,000 titles scanned from their collection via Amazon.  Institutional subscribers will also receive a significant discount.

 

There are potential for new collaborative levels for quality, productivity and innovation but the Google books case will also create new classes of libraries which may lead to new classes of library users. New classes of libraries:

Fully participating libraries - provide free access to Google Books scanned Cooperating libraries - Some public access will be available Public Domain libraries - subscription based access For Sale libraries - direct sales of eBooks Opt Out libraries - users will be on their own to obtain access

Other concerns are with the monopoly of eBooks Google may acquire plus the amount of advertising which may be splashed on the screen.  Google has also been found to monitor activity of users and their book selections and searches.  Part of the revenue plan is tracking customer behavior.  Thus, there is a host of potential problems not the least is with copyright.  If you have a book you purchased via Google books, can you lend it?  User privacy, intellectual freedom, increasing the digital divide, and monopolistic/antitrust issues remain.

Google estimates there are 120 million titles with 165 manifestations. (U.S. books is slightly less than half of this number based on counts from the MARC 260 field only).

Decision deadline is 9/4/2009.  Fear is if Google loses the case, then Fair Use may be damaged in the settlement.  There will also be hearing beginning October 7,2009.

Court Contends Coping Can't Copy Catcher

J.D. Salinger Wins Copyright Battle

NEW YORK, NY (AUTHORLINK NEWS, July 9, 2009)—Literary icon J.D. Salinger won his law suit July 1 against the unauthorized publication of a sequel to his famous novel, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. In an example of a growing court focus on the marketability of a copy protected work, Judge Deborah Batts ruled Fredrik Colting’s 60 Years Later would damage the market for “sequels and other derivative works” by Salinger. The Judge barred publication of Colting’s book in the U. S. marketplace, but it will go on sale in Europe sometime next week.   

Swedish author Fredrik Colting, age 33, writes under the pen name John David California will file an appeal. Colting contends his work should be protected under parody and fair use laws. But the court disagreed.

CATCHER, the classic coming-of-age story of Holden Caulfield, has sold 35 million copies since it was released in 1951.  Salinger reportedly has two more finished novels which have never been published. Through the years, he has fiercely protects CATCHER, declining TV and film offers, even from Steven Spielberg.

Regional Hamburg Hot on RapidShare Host

 

The Hamburg Regional Court of Germany has ruled against German-owned file hosting website RapidShare this past Tuesday. It found the site guilty of violation of German copyright law and set damages at about €24 million ($33.4 million).

In what could prove a key precedent, the court found Rapidshare, and by extension similar file-sharing sites, bear principle responsibility for ensuring copyright-protected material is not illegally posted on their servers.

The ruling was a major victory for German royalty collection agency GEMA, which had brought the suit against Rapidshare for allowing some 5,000 protected music titles to be posted on their site.

“The judgment states that the hosting service itself is now responsible for making sure that none of the music tracks concerned are distributed via its platform in the future,” said GEMA. “This means that the copyright holder is no longer required to perform the ongoing and complex checks.”

“The judgment of the Regional Court of Hamburg marks a milestone in GEMA’s efforts to combat the illegal use of music works on the Internet,” said Dr. Harald Heker, CEO of GEMA, in a statement. “GEMA will continue to do everything it can to shield its members from online piracy. We are confident that in this way we will be able to reduce the illegal use of the GEMA repertoire on the Internet to a negligible level.”

Bobby Chang, COO of RapidShare AG, played down the significance of the verdict.

“Our experience is that the courts of appeal tend to restrict the scope of the decisions made by the lower courts. For this reason, we think that it would make more sense to work together to provide music fans with the right services at the right price and to open up a new source of income for music-markets on the Internet.”

RapidShare’s been under assault by copyright holders for a while now, it’s most recent attacker being German book publishers who wanted the site placed on the ISP’s blacklist of blocked sites.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism. Surprising to learn a new less severe definition of plagiarism is emerging which covers a broader spectrum of intellectual curiosity and discipline.  Ignore what the official definition of plagiarism is for a moment and consider a medical student who has the difficulty on quoting an article which cites another study.  The article mentions a single study which supports ABC treatment may be a cure to XYZ.  The student paraphrases the article and states ABC cures XYZ but only cites the article, not the original study which more accurately explains the conclusion.  Under the new interpretation of plagiarism, the student exercised weak scholarship and also weak intellectual curiosity.  The student’s failure to acknowledge the appropriate source and laziness to not accurately describe the meaning derived from the source was seen as inexperience and lack of training on some academic rigor.

Many faculty find students using ‘filler’ material to complete assignments.  Students blame faculty for stated requirements such as, ‘The paper must be five pages in length.’  Conclusion was made that faculty need to take a portion of their instruction to students to make sure they understand about intellectual curiosity, scholarship and caring about what they are writing.  Particularly in required courses, faculty found students often ‘don’t care’.  The extension of the definition of plagiarism is meant to include dedication to the field of selected study, recognizing appropriate sources, stating conclusions accurately from the sources found, and portraying scholarship from the works as originally intended.

Suit Doesnt Suit Students

From Chronicle of Higher Education.  Wired Campus, April 20, 2009 by Marc Parry

The Turnitin service does not violate the copyright of students, even though it stores digital copies of their essays in the database used to check works for academic dishonesty.

Last year’s decision was seen as carrying wider implications for other digital services, such as Google’s effort to scan books in major libraries and add them to its index for search purposes.

The legal battle began in 2007, when four high-school students sued iParadigms, the company that runs Turnitin, arguing that the company took their papers against their will and profited from using them. The students’ high schools required papers to be checked for plagiarism using Turnitin. The service adds scanned papers to its database.

U.S. District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton had found scanning student papers to detect plagiarism is a “highly transformative” use under the fair-use provision of copyright law. Mr. Hilton ruled the company “makes no use of any work’s particular expressive or creative content beyond the limited use of comparison with other works,” and that the new use “provides a substantial public benefit.”

Steven J. McDonald, general counsel at the Rhode Island School of Design, reacted to the latest development in the case by calling the fair-use analysis unsurprising “but welcome.” Mr. McDonald wrote in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Monday, “it underscores that the copyright owner’s rights are simply not absolute and that ‘transformative’ uses deserve protection themselves.”

More than 450,000 educators and millions of high school and college students use Turnitin, according to a company fact sheet.

Last week’s opinion also reversed and sent back for further consideration the lower court’s decision on counterclaims made by iParadigms. The company had put forward a claim against one of the plaintiffs under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA. iParadigms said it was forced to launch an investigation — spending numerous man-hours in the process — after the student allegedly gained unauthorized access to Turnitin.

The E-Commerce and Tech Law blog called attention to the reversal, saying it “could leave Web users open to getting smacked with a large CFAA award whenever a company suspects someone has gained improper access to its Web site.”

Robert A. Vanderhye, the plaintiffs’ pro bono lawyer, acknowledged the bulk of the opinion was a “stinging defeat.” But the lawyer has not surrendered yet. He plans to petition for a rehearing.

He argued the court did not decide the issue of Turnitin sharing papers with third parties. If a student’s paper is flagged as unoriginal based on an earlier paper, he said, the company will turn over the earlier paper to an instructor upon request.

“This is not a complete, total defeat on the copyright issue,” he argued. “That issue is still outstanding,” he said, referring to the question of whether Turnitin infringes a copyright if it sends a complete paper to a third party. “They didn’t decide that issue.” —Marc Parry

Pirates Launch Virtual Private Network

The VPN, called IPREDator, will launch at the same time a controversial new anti-piracy law takes hold in Sweden. The law is called the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED). It’s highly contested because it means that ISPs will have to hand over even more personal customer data to copyright holders.

DMCA on MySpace Violates Copyright Owner's Own Music

Various record labels have pushed sites like MySpace to institute aggressive filters to try to stomp out the ability of people to upload others' music.  Emily Bezar had her account tagged as a violator of copyright for posting songs from her own self-produced CD.

Warner Music Videos Going Down the YouTubes!

Due to the ongoing copyright dispute between Warner Music Group and YouTube, tens of thousands of amateur videos have been removed from the site. User-created videos, rather just their audio tracks, are once again being pulled from YouTube.  Users believe their videos fall under the category of "Fair Use", but failed negotiations between YouTube and Warner Music have resulted in all content being affected.

Public Access as Important as Fair Use

Last week, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (Rep. John Conyers, D-MI) re-introduced a bill that would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy and make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place. The legislation is H.R. 801: the “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” (http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.111hr801).

All supporters of public access – researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others – are asked to please contact your Representative no later than February 28, 2009 to express your support for public access to taxpayer-funded research and ask that he or she oppose H.R.801. Draft letter text is included below. As always, it’s important to let us know what action you’re able to take, via http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/log.html. 

H.R. 801 is designed to amend current copyright law and create a new category of copyrighted works (Section 201, Title 17). In effect, it would:

1.    Prohibit all U.S. federal agencies from conditioning funding agreements to require that works resulting from federal support be made publicly available if those works are either: a) funded in part by sources other than a U.S. agency, or b) the result of "meaningful added value" to the work from an entity that is not party to the agreement.

2.    Prohibit U.S. agencies from obtaining a license to publicly distribute, perform, or display such work by, for example, placing it on the Internet. 

3.    Stifle access to a broad range of federally funded works, overturning the crucially important NIH Public Access Policy and preventing other agencies from implementing similar policies.

4.    Because it is so broadly framed, the proposed bill would require an overhaul of the well-established procurement rules in effect for all federal agencies, and could disrupt day-to-day procurement practices across the federal government.

5.    Repeal the longstanding "federal purpose" doctrine, under which all federal agencies that fund the creation of a copyrighted work reserve the "royalty-free, nonexclusive right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work" for any federal purpose. This will severely limit the ability of U.S. federal agencies to use works that they have funded to support and fulfill agency missions and to communicate with and educate the public.

Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information through the PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.

All supporters of public access -- researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others -- are asked to contact their Representatives to let them know you support public access to federally funded research and oppose H.R. 801. Again, the proposed legislation would effectively reverse the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place.