Campus Copyright

Campus Copyright Assistance

Copyright issues for faculty and students with focus on academic libraries. Comments are welcome. Please post comments or send an email to smarvin@wcupa.edu.

WCU Copyright home page 

WCU's Model Copyright Guidelines

Student IP Guide

The following videos were produced at WCU about copyright.   (20 - 25 minutes)

Mediasite Presentations - may require logging in with WCU ID/PW

Presentation on general Copyright,

More on Copyright

So, You Want to be an Author

Also video presentation with Heather Getsay of Slippery Rock University to the CCUMC

Exceptions support for WIPO treaties for disabilities and economies

The American Library Association supports a copyright exception to a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) international treaty to increase access to information for people with print disabilities – those who are blind, have low vision, are dyslexic, have a learning disability or other disability that prevents them from accessing print.

The exception would ask WIPO member nations to establish a national exception that authorizes the making of accessible copies. This exception would be similar to the Chafee Amendment  (17 USC §121) in US copyright law. In addition, the exception would allow countries to share accessible copies (Braille, large print, digital formats like accessible e-books) across borders. 

In addition, support is being sought by many associations for preferences to nations who are economically challenged and cannot dedicate funding toward copyright compliance and IP protections while their citizens are starving. Any funds available in distressed countries should be given priority to meet their more dire needs.

Luvdarts and Digipie

Case similar to use of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which is free from vicarious copyright / license infringements.

Its actually an old issue on whether a service which allows content to be posted and accessed is responsible for the content. See Marybeth Peters statement from 2004 talking about MGM Studios v. Grokster, In re Aimster, A&M Records v. Napster, and the Sony Betamax Case http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat072204.html

A party alleging a claim of vicarious copyright ability must be prepared to specifically identify in its complaint both the exact content infringed and allege a third party had the requisite level of supervision over the infringement.  On the other hand, third parties providing platforms where infringement may occur should be protected from vicarious liability if they do not affirmatively supervise infringing activities.

From  http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/238018/Copyright/Vicarious+Copyright+Infringement+Requires+A+Showing+Of+Supervision+Or+Control

United States: Vicarious Copyright Infringement Requires A Showing Of Supervision Or Control

Luvdarts, LLC et al. v. AT&T Mobility et al.

In an opinion that elaborates on the degree of third-party supervision required in order to attach vicarious copyright infringement liability, Luvdarts, LLC et al. v. AT&T Mobility et al., Case No. 11-55497 (9th Cir., Mar. 25, 2013) (O'Scannlain, J.).

The plaintiffs, Luvdarts and Digipie, are in the business of creating, publishing and selling commercial multimedia messaging content for distribution over a wireless network, including content such as greeting cards, advertisements, news, coupons and games.  Luvdarts attaches a notice to each piece of content it sells, indicating each message it sells can only be shared once.  Cell phone users ignored the notice, however, and widespread re-sharing of Luvdarts' content occurred over major wireless carrier networks.  Luvdarts', accordingly, brought a copyright action against AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile, alleging these carriers were liable for between $8 billion and $10 billion worth of damages under a theory of vicarious copyright infringement.

The 9th Circuit elaborated on the doctrine of vicarious liability under A&M Records v. Napster. 

 

Suggestion for Congress to Improve Copyright - DON'T!!

Lee, Timothy B. (Apr 26 2013). Five ways Congress should improve the copyright system. A powerful congressman wants a "comprehensive review." Here are our suggestions. Retrieved from http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/five-ways-congress-should-improve-the-copyright-system

First, whenever one suggests the Congress should improve the copyright system, JUST SAY NO!

Timothy Lee's article is a bit naive on suggestions but worthwhile reading to encourage the dialogue on Copyright changes.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) announced plans for a "comprehensive review" of copyright law. "I am announcing today that the House Judiciary Committee will hold a comprehensive series of hearings on US copyright law in the months ahead," Goodlatte said. "The goal of these hearings will be to determine whether the laws are still working in the digital age. I welcome all interested parties to submit their views and concerns to the Committee."

 Five suggestions for improving copyright law that Congress ought to consider.

 1 – Realistic Penalties

Single mother Jammie Thomas-Rasset has been fighting six-figure penalties for close to a decade in one of the few file-sharing cases to make it into a courtroom. She is accused of sharing just 24 songs, which have a retail value of around $24.

And the threat of astronomical damages has been a potent weapon in the hands of copyright trolls like Prenda Law. Prenda's Paul Duffy pointed to the $222,000 verdict against Thomas-Rasset as a cautionary tale in his communications with alleged infringers.

            2 – Forfeiting Assets due to Copyright

In January 2012, the federal government froze the worldwide assets of file-sharing site Megaupload and its founder, Kim Dotcom. The operation was made possible by the 2008 PRO-IP Act, which for the first time gave the government broad authority to use the power of civil asset forfeiture in copyright cases.  In 2010, the government seized a hip-hop blog called Dajaz1, holding it for almost a year before finally returning it. Evidently, the government didn't have a case against its owner. Dajaz1 was just one of hundreds of domain names seized by the government over the last three years as part of "Operation In Our Sites." While many of these sites do appear to have been engaged in illegal activities, it's troubling that the government has the power to shut them down before their owners have any opportunity to defend themselves.

Megaupload may be guilty of copyright infringement, but the firm should have had its day in court before having its assets seized and its site shut down. The operator of Dajaz1 should have had a chance to respond to the government's accusations before losing control of his site.

        3 - Reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Modern music software such as iTunes has long included a feature to rip your CD collection onto your computer. Yet almost two decades after DVDs were introduced, legal software to rip them is not available. Congress should narrow the DMCA's restrictions on circumvention, and should consider repealing the provisions altogether.

        4 - Reduce copyright terms

America's original copyright system granted authors 14 years of protection with the option to renew for an additional 14 years. Congress changed the term for new works to the life of the author plus 70 years.

        5 – Require Registration

For most of the 20th century, getting copyright protection for a work required marking it with a copyright notice and registering it with the Library of Congress. Starting in 1976, Congress eliminated these requirements, known as "formalities." Today, almost everything you write—your emails, your diary, and sketches you draw on cocktail napkins—are copyrighted, whether you want them to be or not. And that protection could last for more than a century with no renewal requirement.

The result has been a huge "orphan works" problem.

Congress should once again require registration as a pre-condition of copyright protection and periodic renewal to keep copyright protection in effect. Registration could be done online and the Librarian of Congress could charge a nominal fee such as $1. Renewal could be as simple as logging into the Librarian of Congress's website and updating an author's contact information—the Librarian of Congress could even send out helpful e-mail reminders when a work comes up for renewal.  People who wanted to use older works would either be able to use the database to identify a work's owners, or to verify that the work has fallen into the public domain and was free for anyone to copy.

State Copyright Rights Prevail

U.S. Supreme Court confirmed states may not allow access to public records who are not their own citizens.  Federal documents are free to use and not protected by copyright. Recent disputes are also pushing free and open federally funded research to the public domain. States, however, have always retained copyright protection.  State documents are protected by copyright and not open for public use without permission. 

Mark McBurney and Roger Hurlbert, had claimed restrictions violated a provision of the U.S. Constitution requiring states to treat non-residents the same as residents. McBurney, a former Virginia resident, was seeking documents relating to a family dispute with his ex-wife. Hurlbert runs a California-based business that seeks real estate tax records on behalf of private clients.

Justice Samuel Alito said the provision of the Constitution in question, known as the "privileges and immunities clause," does not extend a sweeping right to all the information made available via freedom of information laws. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli welcomed the ruling, saying in a statement that Virginia taxpayers should not have to subsidize out-of-state requests made using the state's Freedom of information Act (FOIA).

Retrieved from http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=107776

Article Level Metrics for Scholarship and Social Visibility

SPARC has developed a description for Article Level Metrics (ALMs). ALMs are rapidly emerging as important tools to quantify how individualarticles are being discussed, shared, and used. ALMs can be employed in conjunction with existing metrics, which have traditionally focused on the long

term impact of a collection of articles (i.e., a journal) based on the number of citations generated. This primer is designed to give campus leaders and other interested parties an overview of what ALMs are, why they matter, how they complement established utilities, and how they can be used in the tenure and promotion process.

Among this resource’s key takeaways are the following:

•

ALMs offer a new and effective way to disaggregate an individual article’s impact from the

publication in which it appears.

•

ALMs aggregate a variety of data points that collectively quantify not only the impact of an article, but also the extent to which it has been socialized and its immediacy.

•

ALMs pull from two distinct data streams: scholarly visibility and social visibility

Read more details from SPARC - http://www.sparc.arl.org/bm~doc/sparc-alm-primer.pdf

Access to Federally Funded Scientific Research Hearings

Register by April 30
The National Academy of Sciences is holding a series of public meetings to gain input about how to increase access to publications that use federally funded scientific research and to improve the management of research data. The meetings will be webcast for the public. On May 14-15, the focus of the meeting will be publications, and on May 16-17, the focus will be data.

Supported Research and Development Data and Publications

Meetings (will be webcast)are free and open to the public, but registration is required

to attend or view and/or to provide a verbal and/or written statement

PUBLICATIONS

14 May 2013, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

15 May 2013, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Auditorium, National Academy of Sciences

2101Constitution Avenue, NW

Washington DC 20418

Register before 30 of April

DATA

16 May 2013, 9 a.m.- 5 p.m.

17 May 2013, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Auditorium, National Academy of Sciences

2101 Constitution Avenue, NW

Washington DC 20418

Register before 30 Apri

Congress and Copyright? Nooooooo

A horrendous blunder could occur if recommendations are made to have Congress make a copyright law.  Reaction is from a Statement of Maria A. Pallante,Register of Copyrights, before the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Committee on the Judicary on March 20, 2013. http://www.copyright.gov/regstat/2013/regstat03202013.html

 "... I think it is time for Congress to think about the next great copyright act, which will need to be more forward thinking and flexible than before. Because the dissemination of content is so pervasive to life in the 21st century, the law also should be less technical and more helpful to those who need to navigate it. Certainly some guidance could be given through regulations and education. But my point is, if one needs an army of lawyers to understand the basic precepts of the law, then it is time for a new law..."

The Supreme Court in several copyright decisions recently sided with Fair Use, First Sale and other policies guaranteeing more latitude to use creative and useful arts.  Congress examples of SOPA, PIPA among others such as the DMCA, would only further curtail access or create more restrictions.

Modern Language Association Guide for Authors

http://www.mla.org/resources/documents/rep_it/web_guidelines.  These guidelines recommend best practices for authors and the minimal reference information that should be provided in digital resources intended for use by students, teachers, and scholars in the modern languages. This information will help authors create resources that can be easily discovered and used, fairly evaluated, and adequately cited. The guidelines include consideration on the following:

Authorship and Credit

Citations and Reuse

Accessibility

Metadata

Structure and Style

Privacy Statement, and

Security Issues

 

 

Copyright Alert System - 6 strikes

Copyright Alert System (aka the six strikes anti-piracy program) started this week. Created by the Center for Copyright Information with backing from the RIAA and other copyright organizations along with the major internet service providers: AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon, the group monitors peer-to-peer file transfers, and sends out email notices when it detects you're downloading copyrighted material. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows notification to take down content deemed unfair from the perspective of the copyright owner.  However, there are Safe Harbor provisions involving Fair Use which individuals can apply, for free, to return content which a company may have found objectionable. 'Rights owners' can file DMCA takedown notices at will and free of charge, but it costs the consumers $35 to conduct an 'independent' review process with the Copyright Alert System.

What the Copyright Alert System Does – alerts an internet user their account is used for downloading copyrighted content illegally using peer-to-peer file sharing. The first time, you receive an email letting you know and educating you on the laws of copyright. The second offense may be another email requiring you to acknowledge receipt, or an educational call from your ISP. The second level of warnings (third and fourth emails) require you to watch a video before getting online (or a redirect from certain web sites to an education video).

The final tier of warnings are for the fifth and sixth infraction. They range from throttling your bandwidth to redirection to a new landing page. Each ISP has a different policy with how they'll tackle each offense, but they haven't shared their plans yet. Mashable has the breakdown of how it'll work with Verizon, Time Warner, Comcast, and AT&T.

The system starts with content partners (the RIAA, MPAA, etc) snooping in on public peer-to-peer networks to find content they own being shared illegally. When they find a copy, they trace the IP number through the ISP, and forward that information to the ISP. Next, your ISP matches that information with your account, and sends you the warning.

What the Copyright Alert System Doesn't Do - is not a government program. Your ISP won't even give up your personal information to the content partners unless it's required by law through a subpoena or court order. The most annoying thing that'll happen if you get caught is that your bandwidth might be throttled. Only peer-to-peer traffic from public BitTorrent trackers are monitored. Basically, if you're not using BitTorrent you have nothing to worry about.

Basically, the Copyright Alert System is meant to teach people about the legality of peer-to-peer downloads. Comcast has been criticized for its actions since it appears Comcast shuts down ALL torrent traffic, individuals will need to use direct download, not a torrent. There are a lot of legal uses for bittorrent as well as illegal uses. No one knows how will they differentiate between them.

How to Get Around Any Issues with the System

Technically, the Copyright Alert System doesn't really have any direct legal ramifications, but if you don't like the idea of strangers watching what you download, it's easy to subvert. Anonymizing your BitTorrent traffic with a proxy is one way to go, and a virtual private network is arguably even better. A a private BitTorrent tracker is also a good idea. Blocklists like PeerBlock will not keep you safe, so don't even bother with them. Of course, if you want to ditch BitTorrent completely, Usenet is simple to set up and not tracked by the Copyright Alert System.

If you do get alerts from your ISP and you're not actually torrenting anything, then it's probably time to secure your wireless network. It only takes a couple of steps to up the security on your wireless network, and if you're seriously worried someone's in your network it's pretty easy to track them down. You can file for an independent review process to get the alert removed, but it costs $35.

Another alternative is a service called PeerBlock (http://www.peerblock.com/docs/faq). PeerBlock lets you control who your computer "talks to" on the Internet.  By selecting appropriate lists of "known bad" computers, you can block communication with advertising or spyware oriented servers, computers monitoring your p2p activities, computers which have been "hacked", even entire countries!  They can't get in to your computer, and your computer won't try to send them anything either. And best of all, it's free!

Thorin Klosowski, Thorin. ( 2013) The Copyright Alert System: How the New “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Program Works. Retrieved from http://lifehacker.com/5986961/the-copyright-alert-system-how-the-new-six-strikes-anti+piracy-program-works

 

Play Ball – Each Batter has Six Strikes / Only One Inning

Copyright Alert System went into effect this week. The movie, music and internet service industry came up with a system allowing notification to individual customers they were engaged in illegal peer-to-peer file sharing in violation of copyright laws. 

Under the new system, copyright owners will notify ISPs of suspected violations.  The first of the alleged six strikes is supposed to be an email from the ISP to the customer notifying the customer of the illegal act and providing the customer with information about illegal file sharing.

With each strike, the ISP’s action will increase from requiring the customer to acknowledge receipt of the inquiry to eventually temporarily slowing their connection or redirecting Internet traffic until they acknowledge they received a notice or review educational materials about copyright law.  Consumers who believe they are innocent can pay $35 to appeal the decision and recover the fee if they win.

Read more details from Travis Crabtree on the eMedia
Law Insider site - http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/six-strikes-and-youre-out-the-copyrigh-88286/?utm_source=JFB&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=IPlaw