Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly; Internet Archive to Publishers: Drop ‘Needless’ Copyright Lawsuit and Work with Us
"During a 30-minute Zoom press conference on July 22, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle urged the four major publishers suing over the organization’s book scanning efforts to consider settling the dispute in the boardroom rather than the courtroom.
“Librarians, publishers, authors, all of us should be working together during this pandemic to help teachers, parents, and especially students,” Kahle implored. “I call on the executives of Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House to come together with us to help solve the challenging problems of access to knowledge during this pandemic, and to please drop this needless lawsuit.”
Kahle’s remarks came as part of a panel, which featured a range of speakers explaining and defending the practice of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), the legal theory under which the Internet Archive has scanned and is making available for borrowing a library of some 1.4 million mostly 20th century books."
Showing posts with label teachers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teachers. Show all posts
Friday, July 24, 2020
Monday, April 6, 2020
Online Teaching During Pandemic Raises Copyright Concerns; Bloomberg Law, April 3, 2020
Matthew Bultman, Bloomberg Law; Online Teaching During Pandemic Raises Copyright Concerns
"The sudden shift to online teaching is raising a host of copyright questions for educators...
Allaying Teacher Fears
Hoping to provide guidance, a group of copyright specialists at colleges, universities and other organizations last month wrote a statement on fair use that was signed or endorsed by more than 200 experts. It has circulated among grade school educators as well.
Making course materials available to students during the pandemic will “almost always be a fair use,” the group wrote in the statement. Showing full-length movies or television shows can be more tricky, and the group encouraged instructors to use video through licensed services whenever possible.
“One of the reasons that this statement was put together was to address and allay some of the fears that faculty, students, and librarians are facing when rapidly shifting to moving their courses online,” said Sara Benson, a copyright librarian and assistant professor at the University of Illinois.
The group also put together a list of video and other content that publishers have made available for free—called “Vendor Love In The Time Of Covid”—during the outbreak. Copyright specialists have also held informational “Virtual Copyright Office Hours” on Zoom.
“We want to make copyright the least of your concerns,” Courtney said. “Be worried about your students, their health, their welfare, because that’s most important.”"
Monday, August 14, 2017
How Did ‘Copyright Piracy’ Language Get Into ESSA, the K-12 Law?; EdWeek Market Brief, August 11, 2017
Sean Cavanagh, EDWeek Market Brief; How Did ‘Copyright Piracy’ Language Get Into ESSA, the K-12 Law?
"The Every Student Succeeds Act is meant to accomplish many things. Hold schools accountable for more than test scores. Unleash new strategies to fix struggling schools. Offer new, more flexible funding to districts.
But language included in the sweeping, 400-page-plus law also lays out another, less expected goal: informing students and parents about “the harms of copyright piracy.”
Wording that urges school officials and parents to explain the importance of preventing the illicit use of copyrighted material is improbably found in a couple sections of the law, alongside more predictable school policy language on literacy, professional development, and student achievement.
Which raises the obvious question: How did it get in there?"
"The Every Student Succeeds Act is meant to accomplish many things. Hold schools accountable for more than test scores. Unleash new strategies to fix struggling schools. Offer new, more flexible funding to districts.
But language included in the sweeping, 400-page-plus law also lays out another, less expected goal: informing students and parents about “the harms of copyright piracy.”
Wording that urges school officials and parents to explain the importance of preventing the illicit use of copyrighted material is improbably found in a couple sections of the law, alongside more predictable school policy language on literacy, professional development, and student achievement.
Which raises the obvious question: How did it get in there?"
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Library offers workshop ‘Copyright and Fair Use for Graduate Students’; University of Delaware, 9/28/16
UDaily Staff, University of Delaware; Library offers workshop ‘Copyright and Fair Use for Graduate Students’ :
"The University of Delaware Library is offering a Nov. 17 workshop on “Copyright and Fair Use for Graduate Students,” which will deal with the practical application of copyright law and its fair use provisions. Considering copyright at the beginning of the research process will simplify the completion of the degree requirements for graduate students. Attendees will learn why and when copyright is important to scholars – researchers, writers and teachers – and these important skills: • How to determine when permission is needed to use an excerpt or image; • How to obtain permission; what to do when permission to use an image or excerpt cannot be obtained; and • How to evaluate if fair use may be an appropriate defense for your use of material protected by copyright... The workshop is available at no charge is open to University of Delaware faculty, staff and students."
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
IP Offices Focus On Educating Younger Population About IP Protection; Intellectual Property Watch, 9/6/16
Catherine Saez and Alexandra Nightingale, Intellectual Property Watch; IP Offices Focus On Educating Younger Population About IP Protection:
"Intellectual property rights awareness campaigns are increasingly targeting the younger population, as early as primary school, according to several country presentations at the World Intellectual Property Organization enforcement committee this week. WIPO is also developing an Education Took Kit for teachers of children aged 5 to 18. However for some countries, this education should encompass a broader view on IP than only enforcing rights."
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Can we have fair use without fair use technology?; Ars Technica, 5/14/10
Matthew Lasar, Ars Technica; Can we have fair use without fair use technology?:
"Back in February of 2007, the Ars team was a bit miffed at what it saw as the half-hearted efforts of Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) to bolster fair use protections for consumers. Boucher had just introduced his Fair Use Act to the House, a bill that would provide additional protection for consumers following the Supreme Court's 2005 pile drive of the Grokster file-sharing service.
Boucher's legislation, cosponsored by John Doolittle (R-CA), offered a variety of new fair use exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These included making "a compilation of audiovisual works" for classroom use, transmitting files over a home network, and accessing various works "of substantial public interest solely for purposes of criticism, comment, news, reporting, scholarship, or research."
Unlike previous iterations of his proposed law, however, Boucher's latest version did not offer protections to the developers of tools designed to facilitate these salubrious activities.
"So if Boucher's legislation passed," Tim Lee lamented in a post published a day after the law's announcement, "a film studies professor would be permitted to use software such as Handbrake to circumvent the copy protection on DVDs and create an audiovisual presentation featuring scenes from various movies. However, developing or distributing Handbrake in the United States would still be a crime."
Now, three years later, the Public Knowledge advocacy group has a set of proposals that would address this strange shortcoming.
Substantial noninfringing use
PK has been especially busy with these matters of late, unveiling its proposed Copyright Reform Act in stages. Stage one urges an expansion of fair use concepts to the DMCA, including the incidental capture of images ("for example, capturing music playing over radio when filming a family moment") and "personal and noncommercial uses" that would have "little chance of harming copyright holders" (e.g., making a CD of your favorite cardio-pop tunes for the fitness center).
Now Public Knowledge's stage two addresses the "anticircumvention" trap embedded in Section 1201 of the DMCA, the first words of which read as so: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
PK would add a codicil to this text:
"It shall not be a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with access to, or the use of, a work if such circumvention is for the purpose of engaging in noninfringing use of a work."
Then the group's reforms address Section 1201 language forbidding anyone to make, offer or traffic any technology, product, or service that "is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" and "has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
To these sentences PK would append the following:
"It shall not be a violation of this section to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof capable of enabling substantial noninfringing use of a work protected under this title."
This, of course, lands us deep in the muck which is Supreme Court's Grokster decision, which ruled that the file-sharing service could find no safe harbor in the high court's 1984 Betamax standard. Betamax allowed that devices "capable of substantial noninfringing uses" could not be legally blamed for the infringing shenanigans of their users. But Grokster found that device distributors who sold services and technologies with the object of promoting their uses to infringe copyright were indeed liable for the consequences.
What we have in Public Knowledge's proposals, then, is a legislative attempt to address both the DMCA and Grokster's overreach, empowering devices capable of "enabling substantial noninfringing use of a work," while retaining the ruling's oversight over bad intent.
Teachers, regional DVDs, backups, time shares
Why does PK think that consumers need these reforms? Lots of reasons.
High on the group's first aid list are teachers who want to show films to their classes. They're hobbled by the law if they want to make film compilations from DVD media, a task that sometimes requires encryption circumvention technology. Thus, classroom instructors "must both worry about liability for the act of circumvention and manage in spite of the prohibition on tools that would allow them to circumvent," PK warns.
In other words, they have to navigate through a DVD's scene index, creating long and awkward breaks in their lectures. In 2006 the US Copyright Office granted a limited exemption on these restrictions for film and media studies professors, leaving historians, sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, and everybody else to fend for themselves.
Next, there are the roadblocks set up by the regional coding mechanisms stamped into many DVDs. On top of CSS used by most DVD makers, regional playback control is added, making their media usable only in a specific geographical area.
"Consumers' ability to make private use of legitimately purchased foreign DVDs on their DVD players in the United States is thus challenged regardless of whether they lawfully imported foreign DVDs themselves or legally purchased them from an overseas vendor," PK notes, "though both methods of acquisition are 'plainly legal' under copyright law."
Then there are the backup technologies that have been pummeled under the DMCA, such as RealDVD, a system that allowed consumers to store DVD content on their hard drives.
Eventually RealNetworks settled its fight with Hollywood, agreeing to fork over $4.5 million make the Motion Picture Association of America's infringement lawsuit go away.
But RealNetworks isn't always the defendant. Don't forget the time/format sharing Streambox VCR, which allowed users to record and play RealAudio streams. Real Networks sued Streambox for DMCA copyright infringement. Eventually the two companies settled.
Enacting these reforms "would remedy the unintended consequences caused by §1201's overbroad prohibitions while continuing to offer copyright owners extra protections for digital works guarded by TPMs [technology protection measures]," Public Knowledge's brief concludes.
Unfortunately, these suggestions are unlikely to ever darken the doors of Congress. Even Boucher's milquetoast fair use law didn't get very far; it was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, and then to the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property back in 2007. That was the last anyone heard of it."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/can-we-have-fair-use-without-fair-use-technology.ars
"Back in February of 2007, the Ars team was a bit miffed at what it saw as the half-hearted efforts of Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) to bolster fair use protections for consumers. Boucher had just introduced his Fair Use Act to the House, a bill that would provide additional protection for consumers following the Supreme Court's 2005 pile drive of the Grokster file-sharing service.
Boucher's legislation, cosponsored by John Doolittle (R-CA), offered a variety of new fair use exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These included making "a compilation of audiovisual works" for classroom use, transmitting files over a home network, and accessing various works "of substantial public interest solely for purposes of criticism, comment, news, reporting, scholarship, or research."
Unlike previous iterations of his proposed law, however, Boucher's latest version did not offer protections to the developers of tools designed to facilitate these salubrious activities.
"So if Boucher's legislation passed," Tim Lee lamented in a post published a day after the law's announcement, "a film studies professor would be permitted to use software such as Handbrake to circumvent the copy protection on DVDs and create an audiovisual presentation featuring scenes from various movies. However, developing or distributing Handbrake in the United States would still be a crime."
Now, three years later, the Public Knowledge advocacy group has a set of proposals that would address this strange shortcoming.
Substantial noninfringing use
PK has been especially busy with these matters of late, unveiling its proposed Copyright Reform Act in stages. Stage one urges an expansion of fair use concepts to the DMCA, including the incidental capture of images ("for example, capturing music playing over radio when filming a family moment") and "personal and noncommercial uses" that would have "little chance of harming copyright holders" (e.g., making a CD of your favorite cardio-pop tunes for the fitness center).
Now Public Knowledge's stage two addresses the "anticircumvention" trap embedded in Section 1201 of the DMCA, the first words of which read as so: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
PK would add a codicil to this text:
"It shall not be a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with access to, or the use of, a work if such circumvention is for the purpose of engaging in noninfringing use of a work."
Then the group's reforms address Section 1201 language forbidding anyone to make, offer or traffic any technology, product, or service that "is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" and "has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
To these sentences PK would append the following:
"It shall not be a violation of this section to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof capable of enabling substantial noninfringing use of a work protected under this title."
This, of course, lands us deep in the muck which is Supreme Court's Grokster decision, which ruled that the file-sharing service could find no safe harbor in the high court's 1984 Betamax standard. Betamax allowed that devices "capable of substantial noninfringing uses" could not be legally blamed for the infringing shenanigans of their users. But Grokster found that device distributors who sold services and technologies with the object of promoting their uses to infringe copyright were indeed liable for the consequences.
What we have in Public Knowledge's proposals, then, is a legislative attempt to address both the DMCA and Grokster's overreach, empowering devices capable of "enabling substantial noninfringing use of a work," while retaining the ruling's oversight over bad intent.
Teachers, regional DVDs, backups, time shares
Why does PK think that consumers need these reforms? Lots of reasons.
High on the group's first aid list are teachers who want to show films to their classes. They're hobbled by the law if they want to make film compilations from DVD media, a task that sometimes requires encryption circumvention technology. Thus, classroom instructors "must both worry about liability for the act of circumvention and manage in spite of the prohibition on tools that would allow them to circumvent," PK warns.
In other words, they have to navigate through a DVD's scene index, creating long and awkward breaks in their lectures. In 2006 the US Copyright Office granted a limited exemption on these restrictions for film and media studies professors, leaving historians, sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, and everybody else to fend for themselves.
Next, there are the roadblocks set up by the regional coding mechanisms stamped into many DVDs. On top of CSS used by most DVD makers, regional playback control is added, making their media usable only in a specific geographical area.
"Consumers' ability to make private use of legitimately purchased foreign DVDs on their DVD players in the United States is thus challenged regardless of whether they lawfully imported foreign DVDs themselves or legally purchased them from an overseas vendor," PK notes, "though both methods of acquisition are 'plainly legal' under copyright law."
Then there are the backup technologies that have been pummeled under the DMCA, such as RealDVD, a system that allowed consumers to store DVD content on their hard drives.
Eventually RealNetworks settled its fight with Hollywood, agreeing to fork over $4.5 million make the Motion Picture Association of America's infringement lawsuit go away.
But RealNetworks isn't always the defendant. Don't forget the time/format sharing Streambox VCR, which allowed users to record and play RealAudio streams. Real Networks sued Streambox for DMCA copyright infringement. Eventually the two companies settled.
Enacting these reforms "would remedy the unintended consequences caused by §1201's overbroad prohibitions while continuing to offer copyright owners extra protections for digital works guarded by TPMs [technology protection measures]," Public Knowledge's brief concludes.
Unfortunately, these suggestions are unlikely to ever darken the doors of Congress. Even Boucher's milquetoast fair use law didn't get very far; it was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, and then to the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property back in 2007. That was the last anyone heard of it."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/can-we-have-fair-use-without-fair-use-technology.ars
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education; Creative Commons, 5/26/09
Jane Park via Creative Commons; Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education:
"Now, the Media Education Lab at Temple University has produced excellent resources based on the original guide to help teachers teach about copyright and fair use in their classrooms...
To use these resources in your classroom or study group (or for simply personal edification), check them all out here."
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/14707
"Now, the Media Education Lab at Temple University has produced excellent resources based on the original guide to help teachers teach about copyright and fair use in their classrooms...
To use these resources in your classroom or study group (or for simply personal edification), check them all out here."
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/14707
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Panel Issues Guide to Using Copyrighted Material in the Classroom - Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/11/08
Via Chronicle of Higher Education: Panel Issues Guide to Using Copyrighted Material in the Classroom
"The guide, to be released today, is called "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media-Literacy Education." The center created the guide over the course of 10 meetings that involved more than 150 educators, and it was reviewed by a panel of lawyers who are experts in fair use—the doctrine that allows people to reproduce portions of copyrighted works for purposes like teaching or scholarship...
The guide argues that discussion of copyright in education has too often been shaped by copyright holders, "whose understandable concern about large-scale copyright piracy has caused them to equate any unlicensed use of copyright material with stealing." The authors say they hope their work will help professors understand their rights better under current law...
Will a misstep on copyright in the classroom get you sued? "That's very, very unlikely," says the new guide. "We don't know of any lawsuit actually brought by an American media company against an educator over the use of media in the educational process.""
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/11/7151n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
"The guide, to be released today, is called "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media-Literacy Education." The center created the guide over the course of 10 meetings that involved more than 150 educators, and it was reviewed by a panel of lawyers who are experts in fair use—the doctrine that allows people to reproduce portions of copyrighted works for purposes like teaching or scholarship...
The guide argues that discussion of copyright in education has too often been shaped by copyright holders, "whose understandable concern about large-scale copyright piracy has caused them to equate any unlicensed use of copyright material with stealing." The authors say they hope their work will help professors understand their rights better under current law...
Will a misstep on copyright in the classroom get you sued? "That's very, very unlikely," says the new guide. "We don't know of any lawsuit actually brought by an American media company against an educator over the use of media in the educational process.""
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/11/7151n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Monday, November 10, 2008
Copyright code developed to guide teachers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/10/08
Via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Copyright code developed to guide teachers
"Many educators, however, miss these opportunities because they don't know their rights under fair use, have been given bad information or lack administrators who will back them up, said a report last year by American and Temple universities. The report, "The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy," found that many teachers were censoring themselves.
Now American and Temple universities and several national associations have combined to try to remove the teachers' reluctance to use various sources including print, video, audio and the Internet -- in their media literacy lessons.
At the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia tomorrow, they will release the "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.""
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08315/926769-298.stm
"Many educators, however, miss these opportunities because they don't know their rights under fair use, have been given bad information or lack administrators who will back them up, said a report last year by American and Temple universities. The report, "The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy," found that many teachers were censoring themselves.
Now American and Temple universities and several national associations have combined to try to remove the teachers' reluctance to use various sources including print, video, audio and the Internet -- in their media literacy lessons.
At the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia tomorrow, they will release the "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.""
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08315/926769-298.stm
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