Kay Cunningham's List: Copyright

'am proud to share with you our 2015 State of the Commons report, our best effort to measure the immeasurable scope of the commons by looking at the CC licensed content, along with content marked as public domain, that comprise the slice of the commons powered by CC tools'.

'The word “incentive” appears ten times in the ruling issued last month by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in the Georgia State University (GSU) copyright infringement case, but it is slightly unclear in this rather odd opinion just who is the object of the incentive created by copyright. In seven of those ten instances, the incentive is clearly intended to benefit the author. But there are three sentences at the very end of the majority opinion (the other three uses of the word) where the court seems to interrupt its analysis to state that the incentive belongs to publishers, not authors. It is, I think, worth parsing this apparent contradiction in order to guess at how the trial court might think about incentives on remand.'

'This petition for rehearing is thus a long shot, and it reveals the stark opposition of these three publishers to fair use as it has traditionally been interpreted throughout the long history of U.S. copyright law. Let’s look at the three principles the publishers say that they want and that the appeals panel got wrong.'

'When somebody wants to silence speech, they often use the quickest method available. When the speech is hosted on a major online platform, that method is usually a copyright or trademark complaint. For many years, EFF has worked with people whose lawful speech has been unfairly targeted by these sorts of complaints. We've observed that some approaches tend to work better than others in preventing that sort of deliberate abuse, as well as the casual censorship that comes from haphazard and dragnet approaches to policing online infringement.'

'Creating access to digital images of historic documents, images, and maps is a vital service that many libraries and archives are providing for their patrons, local and international. And with most on-line collections, web visitors are able to see the items while using enhanced searching and browsing capabilities to find them. This capability expands the usability of the on-line collections in ways traditional finding aids and box lists cannot match. There is a wealth of interesting and helpful material in most libraries -- and as long as items are truly historic (19th Century and before) and without literary or copyright claims, the process of creating on-line collections is straightforward. Find the items, scan them, provide access: more primary resources on the web (though the process is a little more complicated than that). Creating an on-line resource for more recent historical documents (i.e., created or published less than 78 years ago) adds another large layer of difficulty to the task.'

This article is divided into six parts. You may link directly to each one of these parts using the chart directly below. In addition, for your reference, the article's complete Table of Contents appears in the first section of the article.

'Most programs have recognized as well that the restoration of US copyright in foreign works in 1996 has made it impossible for them to offer to the public the full text of most foreign works. What has been overlooked up to now is the difficulty that copyright restoration has created for anyone trying to determine if a work published in the United States is still protected by copyright. This paper discusses the impact that copyright restoration of foreign works has had on US copyright status investigations, and offers some new steps that users must follow in order to investigate the copyright status in the US of any work. It argues that copyright restoration has made it almost impossible to determine with certainty whether a book published in the United States after 1922 and before 1964 is in the public domain. '

'The collection and long-term preservation of digital content pose challenges to the intellectual property regime within which libraries and archives are accustomed to working. How to achieve an appropriate balance between copyright owners and users is a topic of ongoing debate in legal and policy circles. This paper describes copyright rights and exceptions and highlights issues potentially involved in the creation of a nonprofit digital archive. '

'Copyright Issues Relevant to Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Pre-1972 Commercial Sound Recordings by Libraries and Archives'

'Organized by respected associations, leading companies, standards bodies, scholars and industry experts, the PLUS Coalition is operated by and for all communities involved in creating, distributing, using and preserving images. Spanning more than seventy countries, these diverse stakeholders have collaborated to develop both the PLUS Registry and a system of industry standards that together make it easier to communicate, understand and manage images. '

Need permission to re-use content? Our search tool lets you see what can be copied, shared or re-used legally with a CLA licence.

Canadian copyright licensing

'IFRRO, the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations, is the main international network of collective management organisations and creators’ and publishers’ associations in the text and image spheres. We work to protect and enable easy legal access to copyright material.'

'BMI was founded in 1939 by forward-thinkers who wanted to represent songwriters in emerging genres, like jazz, blues and country, and protect the public performances of their music. Operating on a non-profit-making basis, BMI is now the largest music rights organization in the U.S. and is still nurturing new talent and new music.'

'We are the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), a membership association of more than 500,000 US composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers of every kind of music. Through agreements with affiliated international societies, we also represent hundreds of thousands of music creators worldwide. We are the only US performing rights organization created and controlled by composers, songwriters and music publishers, with a Board of Directors elected by and from our membership.'

Representing visual artists' copyrights worldwide

'Artists Rights Society (ARS) is the preeminent copyright, licensing, and monitoring organization for visual artists in the United States. Founded in 1987, ARS represents the intellectual property rights interests of over 60,000 visual artists and the estates of visual artists from around the world (painters, sculptors, architects, photographers and others). '

"a database with information about vanished publishing concerns, literary agencies, and similar firms."

'database of copyright contacts for writers, artists, and prominent figures in other creative fields.'

'The Digital Image Rights Computator (DIRC) program is intended to assist the user in assessing the intellectual property status of a specific image documenting a work of art, a designed object, or a portion of the built environment. Understanding the presence or absence of rights in the
various aspects of a given image will allow the user to make informed
decisions regarding the intended educational uses of that image.'