Crandall, Lynne

English

Biodiversity Informatics

Column Copyright Corner Lynne Crandall University of Michigan Check it Out! There are many organized efforts, on many fronts of people Vol. 28, No. 2 trying to clarify and understand how technology and copy-right can co-exist- how the needs of the academic commu-nity and content proprietors can be balanced. The National Information Infrastructure Task Force (Nil), headed by Bruce Lehman, is expected to release its "White Paper" report in August. The report examines intellectual property rights in a networked society. Tlte Multimedia Lnw Handbook by Dianne Brinson and Mark F. Radcliffe, is an impressive book! The appendices alone make it a worthwhile purchase, including form contracts, clearing-houses, content sources, and organizations. The book provides a detailed look at the process of creating a multimed ia prod-uct, from an intellectual property perspective. It addresses all areas of intellectual property (IP) Jaw (copyright, patent, trademark, trad e secret) and provides a look at contract law, libel, and the rights of privacy and publicity. The authors ex-amine the rela tionships between primary creators and other participants, provide valuable information about licensing copyrighted materials, and review distribution issues. The book does not purport to make the process of creating a legal multimedia work look or feel "easy," but it does provide a thorough and well-organized resource to help you on the way. The WWW Multimedia Law page, created by Sandy Jane Wong, M.P.A., is an excellent stop on your Internet search for information on IP law. Wong, a self-styled Internet expedite, has tried to create a site that provides one stop shopping for all the people involved in multimedia licensing. The web site evolved from Wong's work with the law firm Fenwick and West to enhance their visibility by providing them with an Internet presence. The site is organized by section and in-cludes: • Multimedia Law Firms • Multimedia Law Publications • Multimedia Law Repositories and Sites: Other Links 69 Lynne Crandall The Duration of Copyright and the Public Domain (and I thought rocket science was complicated!) 70 • Mu ltimedia Association • Copyright, Patent and Trademark Cases: Statistics • On-line Services and Standards Each section contains a wealth of information and numer-ous links to an incredible array of copyright information sources. An example of its richness is the "Multimedia Law Publications" section, where several excellent papers appear such as "Multimedia and the Superhighway: Rapid Accelera-tion or Foot on the Brake?" by Fred Greguras (law firm of Fenwick and West) and Sandy J. Wong. The paper presents an excellent summary of the rights and permissions situa tion for multimedia, and the information is applicable to all copyright situations. The front portion and first four chapters from The Multimedia Law Handbook by J. Dianne Brinson and Mark F. Radcliffe are also accessible. Links from the "Multi-media Law Repositories and Sites: Other Links" section con-nect you with the Coali tion for Networked Information server and Nil documents, where one migh t spend hours of pro-ductive study. I highly recommend browsing this site! Wong accepts items from other people, and updates the site weekly, or when a new paper s received from her clients. Her favorite link is the "Hot News of the Week" section where she posts items of U.S. and international interest. She says, "By collecting these new pieces of information and putting them up, I am also educating myself about today's d evelop-ments." When asked for her viewpoint on the future of copy-right in light of the Internet and digital technology in general, she replied, "When it comes to copyright I think there will be mechanisms. These mechanisms are taking shape. The same types of laws will work but it just takes time." Wong says software programmer and friend, Henry McGilton, gave her this advice, "Whenever there is a new medium people use, the rest of society has to adapt to that medium. Remember the days when you had telephone and radio there are laws that are different when you se radio to broadcast as opposed to telephone. Now we have the Net and people will have to adapt to this new medium of communication. Whenever a new medium comes into p lay, society will have to adjust." There are several ways a work can enter the public domain, such as if it is a work of the United States government or its creator places the work in the public domain and abandons its copyright. Most works, however, are eligible for copyright protection and the creators choose to retain some of all the rights afforded through copyright. Due to numerous revisions in the U.S. Copyright Law since 1909, determining when a IALL journal of Language Learning Technologies Vol. 28, No. 2 Copyright Corner work will lose its copyright protection and enter the public domain can be difficult. (It's important to note that although copyright protection may not be applicable, other rights, such as privacy, publicity or trademark may still apply!) The dura-tion of copyright depends on when the work was originally created or published, by whom (single author or joint authors), in what context (an individual work or a work for hire), and w hich version of the copyright law governs its term. Laura Gasaway, Director of the Law Library and Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina has created a chart that will help you to determine when a work passes into the pub-lic domain: 71 Lynne Crandall When Works Pass Into the Public Domain Date of Work Protected From Created 1-1-78 or after When work is fixed in tan-gible medium of expression Published between When published with notice 1964 -77 Published between 75 When published with notice years ago and 1963 Published more than 75 Now in public domain years ago Created before 1-1-79 but not published Created before 1-1-78 but published between then and 12-31-2002 1-1-78, the effective d ate of the 1976 Act w hich elimi-nated common law copy-right 1-1-78, the effective date of the Act w hich eliminated common law copyright Copyright 1995 Laura Gasaway Term Life + 50 yea rs (or, if work of corporate au-thorship, 75 years from publication, or 100 years from creation, whichever is first) 28 years for first term; now automatic extension of 47 years for second term 28 years + could be re-newed for 47 years; if not so renewed, now in pub-lic domain None Life+ 50 years. All works that remain unpublihed as of 12-31-2002 will pass into public domain on that date Passes into public do-main 12-31-2027 Bruce Bertram has placed copies of the chart in his ftp directory at ftp: I I ftp.netcom.coml publbmlbmb. This site is a busy one, but be persistent! The addresses are: Mac: Word Perfect PubDomain.wp.sit.hqx Microsoft Word PubDomain.wp.sit.hqx PC: Word Perfect PubDomain.wp.zip 72 !ALL Journal of Language Learning Technologies User Perspectives on Fair Use Vol. 28, No. 2 Copyright Corner I hope to cover the things in this column that you want to discuss. Fair use has been a hot topic recently. Christopher Jones, Director of the Language Learning Resource Center at Carnegie Mellon University and Jan Marston, Director of the Foreign Language Learning Center at Southern Meth-odist University agreed to give a spontaneous response to a few questions about fair use. What would your answers have been? Questio11: What do you think fair use is? Jones: My understanding is the fair use is essentially an educational exception to the copyright law. Marston: This must be the hardest question! We make a fairly narrow and conservative definition of fair use, and follow what is done in our Center for Media and Instructional Technology (CMIT). We don't make archival copies of the videos we have. Or tapes are available for check out to professors, and when a tape is out, it's out, and if it's lost, it's lost. We don't copy anything without copyright per-mission. It's been a policy that's been very hard to institute. We stay within the 45-day guidelines (Guidelines for Off-Air Taping), and it's not a problem. For me, the next issue is copy-right on the Internet: how do you properly attribute and cite, and when is something published? Question: Have you ever made a fair use "call"? Jones: Oh, yes. I'm involved in a lot of materials develop-ment. I had a colleague who was involved in a CD-ROM project; he wanted to digitize textual materials and images from a slide set. This was intended for commercial distribu-tion. recommended he apply for copyright clearance before continuing. Marston: Within the above guidelines, yes. Because of the way we control our media, "yes" means we'll follow the rules. Spontaneous needs may be relevant at some point, but it's different from long term needs. We're supposed to acknowl-edge intellectual property and if we don't respect it we are not setting a good example. I recognize that I can't control everyone but if they do not conform to this copyright policy, then it is their neck. As a representative of an institutional entity I need to protect my university. And, I feel very strongly about intellectual property. Question: Do you, or someone else within your institution make fair use decisions on a regular basis? From whom do you ask advice or support? Jones: I only give advice if someone asks me. I have no le-gal or professional responsibility for making those decisions among my peers. People are personally responsible for their 73 Lynne Crandall actions; the difference is I may have a little more exposure. There is a lawyer who reviews copyright issues and a tech-nology transfer "office" that oversees commercialization-the moving of products beyond the university wall- and they are responsible for making those determinations. They are not very accessible to the general community, only for those people who a re focused and aggressive. Marston: The person in charge of CMIT has to make those decisions for the library, and he is very accessible to me. If I have any qualms he supports my d ecisions. The institution's lawyers don' t always work and play well with others. Question: Anything to add? ]ones: I attended a Netscape workshop and the leader said there are all sorts of copyright free materials on the Internet and if it's not marked as copyrighted, it's freely usable. This was someone giving instruction! My experience has been just the opposite-anything you don' t know explicitly that you can use is copyrighted . As projects get more involved they need greater funding to obtain copyright clearances. We are creating many of our own materials rather than trying to ob-tain permissions for existing materials. For various p rojects I am currently involved in, we are shooting original video, making new audio recordings, and writing glossaries from scratch because we want to be able to, at least, locally distrib-ute our own ma terials. Marston: I would like to have a clear statement or standard, that IALL might set, saying this is what we see as a point of reference. It would be really useful to those of us who have to make these decisions on a regular basis . This is an important issue. Lefs Hear From You! Do you have a copyright success (or horror) s tory you'd 74 like to share? Do you have a topic you would like to see ex-plored in this column? Please send your suggestions to me a lynne@lark.lrc.lsa. umich.ed u. • Lyne Crandall is n Media Consultant nt the Language Re-source Center, University of Michiga n, Ann Arbor. IALL journal of Language Learning Technologies 

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