This week featured a presentation about copyright and fair use from GSU Library’s Digital Projects Coordinator, Kathryn Michaelis followed by a lively discussion about ownership and access of digital resources on the Web.  Kathryn’s presentation may be downloaded here: Copyright presentation

I am also providing a copyright licensing template for use with the Atlanta Rail Corridor Archive Omkea project here: Atlanta Rail Corridor Archive Copyright License Agreement

Below, please find detailed notes on Kathryn’s presentation and the class discussion.

4:30 p.m.  5:00- p.m.

• Presentation by Kathryn Michaelis about Copyright and Digital Cultural Heritage
  • Copyright can be byzantine and confusing — hence the lawyers
  • But you don’t need to know everything
  • What is copyright: creator has right to determine how ip is used for a specific period of time.
  • Who owns copyright?
    • Creator
    • Descendants of deceased creator
    • Repository where materials are held, in some cases
  • What can be copyrighted?
    • Original works of authorship fixed in a tangible form whether published or unpublished.
      • Pretty loose rules.
      • Doesn’t have to be published to get copyright.
      • Doesn’t need copyright symbol.
  • What can’t be copyrighted?
    • Ideas, facts, names, titles, extemporaneous expressions, works in the public domain
  • Public Domain (U.S.)
    • Works published before 1923
    • Unpublished works: author’s life plus 70 years (Anonymous works or death date unknown: 120 years from creation)
      • Illegal to digitize orphaned works, but there is a fight going on right now about it.
    • Most works produced by U.S. federal government agencies (but not state/local governments)
    • Works published without copyright notice, or with notice but without renewal, during certain time periods
    • See http://librarycopyright.net/resources/digitalslider/ for determining rights to a particular item.
  • Fair Use
    • Is a legal doctrine that provides an exception to the exclusive right granted to the owner of a copyrighted work
    • Is not always straightforward or easy to assess
    • Four factors:
      • Purpose and character of the intended use
        • Commercial or scholarly/educational
        • Derivative vs. transformative
          • Derivative is not fair
            • 60 Years Later
          • Transformative creates something new
            • Scrapbook
      • Nature of the copyrighted work
        • Fictional vs. factual
        • Unpublished harder to use
      • Amount and substantiality of the work used
        • Reproducing a paragraph vs. a chapter,  but no set standard
          • Kelly vs. Arriba Soft Corporation — you can use thumbnails, not large-form images
      • Effect on market value of copyrighted work
        • Twin Peaks vs. Publications International
          • Twin Peaks has right to produce its own guide
  • Licensing
    • A license is an agreement between rights holder and licensee that holder won’t sue licensee if they abide by the terms
      • City of Atlanta granted Planning Atlanta non-exclusive right to digitize and share content
    • Creative Commons
      • Enables rights holders to allow certain types of uses without granting them to specific licensees
      • Four provisions that can be mixed and matched
        • Attribution
        • Non-derivatives
        • Share-alike
        • Non-commercial
  • Good faith effort matters!
    • Very rare for libraries/archives to be legally challenged over digitizing copyrighted archival material
    • Take-down statements
      • “If you are the copyright holder and you don’t want it online, contact us and we will discuss taking it down.”
    • Document, document, document
      • Include explicit rights statements in metadata
      • Orphaned works
        • UNC Chapel Hill study
          • 3000 copyright holders tried to identify and copyright
          • Found only 3
          • Becoming more accepted now to digitize and include a takedown statement
  • Add statement about contacting the rights holder if not using for explicitly educational use— we are not responsible for how you use it.

5:00 -5:30 p.m.

• Discussion
  • State and Local Records
    • Often end up on .gov websites
    • Kathryn will share contacts.
• Creating a licensing agreement:
  • GSU letterhead
    • Name of licensor/copyright holder
    • Licensee’s name (us)
      • Georgia State University
    • Description of material being licensed
    • Description of uses permitted by licensee
      • Educational website
    • Description of rights retained by licensor
  • Kathryn will see what she can find in terms of examples of formal documents from GSU.
    • We don’t need to send things by GSU’s legal council.
    • Ethos of flexibility

5:30 – 5:40 p.m.

• Break

5:40 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

• Topics discussion
  • Beltline GIS map
  • Zotero groups
    • Will create groups for everyone’s individual projects.
  • State Farmer’s Market
    • Leslie will check on national register nomination

• Reading discussion
  • Who owns the past?
    • What factors affect the evolution of copyright law?
      • Profit motive, concerns about stealing
      • There is a push toward “in perpetuity” but that was never the intent…
      • Depends on the legislature– lobbying and politics
      • Who has the resources, time and money to bring court cases…
      • Libraries do band together to promote fair use…
      • Getty stock archive decided to release this material to Tumblr– with Getty watermark…
    • What alternatives exist to “all rights reserved?”
      • Attribution
      • Derivatives
        • Essential the original work is to the existence of the new work.
      • Share-alike
      • Non-commercial
    • How should digital historians act as “rights holders?”
      • Feeling torn— democratizationg while still being able to live in this economy…
      • Maybe it’s not an either/or question.
      • Stipulations— keeping things fair.
      • Collaboration, relationship with institutions
    • How should digital historians act as content distributors and “rights seekers?”
      • Try to get the rights
      • Depends on the situation
        • making money to feed an institution– about what you use it for
        • Not everyone can physically reproduce a beautiful image of what they want.
    • Why do you think that Rosenzweig and Cohen are so adamant in their promotion and defense of the public domain?
      • You increasingly see proliferation of gateways and commercialization— if you restrict sources, then the internet can’t realize its potential as a democratic commons.
      • Negotiation tactic— push as far as you can, so you might be able to get certain consessions?
      • Also recognize synergy that can exist if you do have a commons.
      • Culture of intellectual engagement, access to up-to-date historiography
      • Small institutions can’t afford these subscription…
      • How does Luke Tredinnick claim that image distribution through the public domain creates history?
        • Creation of anticipation with Mona Lisa— reality doesn’t live up to expectations…
        • History requires a gap— space between the occurrence and the writing of history…
        • Acceleration of history writing is bad for perspective…
        • But flip-side— recording of raw emotional responses is very good for historians to document changing perspectives…
        • Good to gather source-material right away, but maybe you should wait to frame it in a wider context…
      • Who’s responsibility is it to gather the material?
        • Libraries and archives— but historians should be aware of this phenomenon…
    • Should scholarship be free?
      • What factors promote free scholarship?
        • Collaboration among institutions, libraries, users
        • Reducing costs?
      • What factors hinder it?
        • Journal revenues
  • Internet origins and outcomes?
    • What arguments can be made in favor of the internet emerging from military alliances and a Cold War mentality?
      • Money spent on technology
      • Hardware R&D
      • Closed system of control— organization and location of people.
      • “Electronic panopticon”
      • Sharing private information— convenience
    • What arguments can be made in favor of the internet emerging from 1960s counter-culture?
      • Freeware movement, open-source, Linux, code not owned by an entity
      • First time in U.S. history that people weren’t willing to just get info from the government.
    • What is “techno-libertarianism” and what effect has the mentality had on the development of the internet?
      • Idea that nobody should control the apparatus but that you should be able to make money off of people…
  • Preservation and access
    • Rosenzweig argues that there are three main types of content-distributors on the Web: public, private/gated, and commercial. What are the characteristics and business models of each?
      • Public
        • government or collectively funded producer and distributor of content
      • Private
        • Funded through subscriptions and direct access
      • Commercial
        • Ad revenue

• An exercise in comparative search:
  • Emma Goldman

• Google
  • 1,710,000 results
  • Wikipedia is at the top
  • Emma Goldman papers is #5, right below PBS American Experience (one of those higher-funded public entities)
• Alta Vista (now yahoo)
  • Not sure number of results
  • Mostly encyclopedias at the top
  • Papers come up on the 3rd page of results

Andrew Carnegie

• 26,100,000 results
• Wikipedia still at the top
• Biography.com and History.com get pretty prominent hits
• Carnegie Corporation of New York is #5
• Then Google has an “in-depth articles” feature
• And Library of Congress’s “America’s Story” site has coverage at the bottom of the first page of search results

Dust Bowl

• Lori Ann Wark’s Discovery Channel Dust Bowl production, “The Day of the Black Blizzard” is missing from the internet today
  • This demonstrates the tenuousness of the commercial History Web that Rosenzweig noted with concern in Clio Wired.
  • A site that was so impressive in 1996 is now gone.
  • A search for this page now only brings up hits to Rosenzweig’s “Brave New World” article!
  • Even the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine doesn’t seem to have it!
• Google gives 16,300,000 hits
• Wikipedia at the top, History Channel is #2 with a 3-minute video
  • http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl
  • http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/black-blizzard

• Net Neutrality
  • This Thursday, February 5, 2015, the FCC is expected to declare the internet to be a public utility, imposing tight regulations on broadband providers the same way they do on telecommunications firms. http://www.wsj.com/articles/fcc-to-propose-strong-net-neutrality-rules-1422911055
  • Keeping broadband providers from speeding up or slowing down content in exchange for fees would maintain the ability for public sector and small startup websites to function in an increasingly commercialized Web space.
  • What are arguments in favor of and against Net neutrality?
  • What does it mean for digital history?