Kate Darling
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]]>Within education, uncertainty and misunderstanding of copyright and fair use can lead to less than optimal choices of educational “inserts”, which includes a full range of resources and material from third-party sources that educators may wish to incorporate into OER. The Code is meant to provide guidance within this environment, not with strict lists of specific guidelines for fair use as it relates to OED inserts, e.g., specific percentages or word counts, but rather as an “analytical framework” for its users. When educators use this framework, they may be less constrained from strictly using materials from commercial publishers, in turn creating more impactful resources, in a variety of formats, for their students.
Announcement: Launch of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources
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]]>The post New Legislation: The CASE Act appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
]]>What Is It?
The CASE Act creates a “Copyright Claims Board” (the Board) within the U.S. Copyright Office which can hand out awards for copyright infringement for those seeking damages of $30,000 or less. Of consternation to its critics, decisions by the Board are binding unless a party proactively opts-out of the claims process. Opt-ing out isn’t a one time thing, either. A person must do this every time a claim is filed against them. While the opt out system has not yet been put in place (the Copyright Office has until the end of 2021 to create it), once in place, if you receive a notice of infringement and do nothing, the assumption will be made that you have “opted-in” to the process. The Board’s decision will be binding and you will have limited recourse to appeal or overturn it. On the other hand, claims of infringement handled in court have multiple levels of appeal. Critics of the CASE Act fear that the law does not protect individuals from copyright trolls and “sophisticated actors”, such as large companies, especially if a person does not understand the opt-out process. Large copyright owners may also target those using materials under fair use.
You can find out more about the history of the CASE Act here.
Additional Resources
US copyright law comes under scrutiny as new legislation makes its way before Congress
The CASE Act Is Just the Beginning of the Next Copyright Battle
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]]>The post Celebrating the unfreezing of the public domain appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
]]>But an important note to remember amidst the rejoicing: the length of copyright has not shrunk back. We’ve just finally waited it out long enough for those 1923 works to join their brethren in the public domain. The works published in 1922 joined the public domain back twenty years ago. Hm.
Back at the party, the Internet Archive celebrated the Public Domain Day in style last Friday, with flappers from the 1920s, treats made from recipes in the 1920s and an impressive list of speakers (below). Cory Doctorow gave a rousing closing keynote, in which he spoke about grifters, who use paperwork to somehow shift your stuff to the grifter’s stuff, giving many examples in the world of intellectual property.
We tweeted the Larry Lessig portion of the event and he was joined many other speakers captured in the livestream:
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]]>The post Stanford Copyright & Fair Use – Key Overview Updates appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
]]>Q: Thank you for updating the copyright overview on this site. What are the most important changes that you want us to know?
A: Because the update reflects changes from 2014 through 2016 it includes a few decisions that readers may be familiar with such as the Google book scanning decision (Author’s Guild v. Hathitrust, discussed below), the sequel rights to Catcher in the Rye, (Salinger v. Colting), the use of news – including business news and video clips – for transformative purposes (Swatch Grp. Mgmt. Servs. Ltd. and Fox News v. TVEYES, Inc.), the use of pop culture references (the “Who’s on First” comedy routine) within a play (Fox News v. TVEYES, Inc), and the ability to parody a popular movie (Point Break). (Keeling v. Hars). I think the cumulative importance of these and other cases that are discussed, is the evolving liberalization of fair use standards.
Q: Do we have any more clarity on Fair Use with respect to academic or library uses?
A: In order to provide more clarity, I think academics and librarians would like to see courts or legislators adopt quantitative guidelines – for example, establishing what percentage of a book or article constituted fair use. That seems unlikely based on the Eleventh Circuit rejection of the “10% rule” in Cambridge University Press v. Patton. The District court had allowed copying of 10% of a work as recommended by the Code of Best Practices, a set of fair use guidelines established by a group of publishers and academics. But the Eleventh Circuit rejected that standard and instead emphasized the importance of a flexible case-by-case fair use analysis. The good news for the academics was that on remand the majority of copying at issue was permitted under fair use.
The other good news for academics was the ruling in Author’s Guild v. Hathitrust. Most of your readers are probably aware of this case, in which the Second Circuit ruled that digital scans of a book constituted a fair use when used for two purposes: a full-text search engine, and electronic access for disabled patrons who could not read the print versions. The Second Circuit remanded as to whether “preservation” constituted a third fair use purpose, but the parties settled in 2015 before the issue could be litigated.
Attorney at law, Nolo Legal Editor, Blogger — Dear Rich: Nolo’s Patent, Copyright and Trademark Blog, Author, Nolo
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]]>The post Future of Libraries – Need First Sale for ebooks appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
]]>Libraries rely on the right of first sale to lend print books, and need an analogous right in the world of ebooks and digital music. To that end, the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries and the Internet Archive filed a brief on Feb. 14, 2017 in support of Redigi, a company that sells used mp3 files to music customers. The brief argues that an evaluation of Fair Use should consider the rationale of the First Sale doctrine, and other specific exceptions. It argues that enabling the transfer of the right of possession should be favored under Fair Use.
It is essential to libraries, and the term existential would not be too great a term to use, to be able to own digital files, and care for them via preservation and library lends (e.g. to one person at a time) just as they do with print. Can readers count on books being available a year or two or five after publication? The existence of libraries has made this possible from their inception until now.
The flexibility of digital content allows for an endless array of licensing opportunities (e.g. multiple simultaneous users) which is mutually beneficial to both publishers and users. It is not practical to rely only on first sale for library delivery of econtent. The two modes for libraries to acquiring ebooks, licensing and first sale are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent.
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]]>The post protect your site from copyright lawsuits appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
]]>lawofthelevel.com/2016/11/articles/intellectual-property/dont-lose-dmca-safe-harbor-protection/
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]]>The post Happy Birthday – ruling plus full court docket filings appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
]]>The post Happy Birthday – ruling plus full court docket filings appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
]]>The post How much of a photo do you need to alter to avoid copyright infringement? Hint: Cheshire Cat appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
]]>The court looked to the Cariou v Prince decision, but complained that its approach to appropriation art looked only at whether a work is “transformative” and doesn’t fully address a copyright owner’s derivative rights under 17 U.S.C. Sect. 106(2). This court analyzes the market effect, looking to see if the contested use is a complement to the protected work (allowed) rather than a substitute for it (prohibited).
The photographer in this case did not claim that the t-shirt was a disruption to his own plans to license the photo for t-shirts or tank tops. He did not argue that demand for the original work was reduced.
And as for Fair Use factor three, the amount and substantiality of the portion used … the court wrote “Defendants removed so much of the original that, as with the Cheshire Cat, only the smile remains.” The original background is gone, its colors and shading are gone, the expression in the eyes can no longer be read, and the effect of the lighting is “almost extinguished.” “What is left, besides a hint of Soglin’s smile, is the outline of his face, which can’t be copyrighted.”
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]]>The post IP Without IP? A Study of the Online Adult Entertainment Industry appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
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Existing copyright policy is based largely on the utilitarian theory of incentivizing creative works. This Article looks at content production incentives in the online adult entertainment industry. A recent trend of industry-specific studies tries to better understand the relationship between intellectual property (IP) and creation incentives in practice. This Article makes a contribution to the literature by analyzing a major entertainment content industry where copyright protection has been considerably weakened in recent years. Because copyright infringement is widespread and prohibitively difficult to prevent, producers have been effectively unable to rely on the economic benefits that copyright is intended to provide.
Qualitative interviews with industry specialists and content producers support the hypothesis that copyright enforcement is not cost effective. As a result, many producers have developed alternative strategies to recoup their investment costs. Similar to the findings of other scholarly work on low-IP industries, this research finds a shift toward the production of experience goods. It also finds that some incentives to produce traditional content remain. The sustainability of providing convenience and experience goods while continuing content production relies partially on general, but also on industry-specific factors, such as consumer privacy preferences, consumption habits, low production costs, and high demand. While not all of these attributes translate to other industries, determining such factors and their limits brings us toward a better understanding of innovation mechanisms.
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]]>The post Guidance on websites and copyright registration from the U.S. Copyright Office appeared first on Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center.
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