Holy cow...licensing!

I realize that I was absent from my blog last week, but no worries, I have plenty to cover today. Last spring's policy course (Information Ethics) was fascinating and overwhelming at the same time - a book a week, a crash course in copyright...overall a lot of information to take in. Now that I've been in e-resource management for four weeks, I realize how specialized and detailed all of the fields in copyright are.

Last week (9/17/10), we focused on the ProCD vs. Zeidenberg case. After reading the case, I was left somewhat confused, but had gathered the main points of the case. But it was only after hearing Anuj Desai talk about the case that the truly complicated nature of the case emerged. The buzzword of the ProCD vs. Zeidenberg case? PREEMPTION. Federal law trumps state law and state trumps local. But here is where the case gets jumbled (or one of the places): licensing agreements, or contracts, preempt copyright law. Throw in the concept of "public domain" and we have ourselves a messy case.

Here are a few of my notes from Anuj's talk and my reading:

- OVERALL, there was a conflict between the copyright statute and the licensing agreement

- Zeidenberg's point: this information is in the public domain (in absence of a contract)

- arbitrage possibilities

1. the only people who bring cases are the copyright holders

2. takes fair use out of the game

3. Obviousness of the terms of use (it must be obvious to the user, not just the library)

4. in general, licensing pricing is correlated with use

CONTU (t=technology) and CONFU (fair use)

We spent some additional time, this week and last week, going over CONTU and CONFU and examining the conference goals and outcomes. We covered several different areas in class, but my group focused on the distance learning portion of CONFU. Portions of the document didn't make much sense to me - there is difficulty in defining and creating restrictions (I guess this applies to most things when it comes to information technology). Here is what I noticed in the reading:

1. The rhetoric is designed around non-profit institutions - how does this all change once it gets into the "for-profit" area of education?

2. no asynchronous distance learning

3. must take place in a classroom (which now defeats the reason why many people choose on-line courses)

4. there was an attempt to separate dramatic from non-dramatic, but I could never figure out what that was

5. subsequent performances must have permission

and my favorite point...

6. This should be revisited in 3 - 5 years.

And now onto Licensing Day! Yay!

(quick note: this class has really made me realize that after I graduate and leave UW-Madison, I will most likely never again have access to so much information and so many databases. I'm not sure people realize how much we have until their access has been denied.)

Here are a few of the points I found most interesting about licensing:

- libraries spend an average of 250 hours per year on licensing

- the majority of legal issues that arise in licensing are with corporate and legal libraries (19%).

I don't want to spend too much time going over the minutiae of licensing, but I must admit that I found it quite dry but interesting (can I say that without sounding too contradicting?). The boring points written in fine print ultimately define the level of access. Before looking at a few example licenses, I assumed that all licenses fit a specific layout and order, but not necessarily. I often had to search under various headings to find the most important points, like usage rights, user control, enforcement clauses, etc. Some points were also split up under two different headings. Reading and interpreting these documents really do take time and certain eye for detail. There will be more on this in my licensing assignment on JSTOR...

Last spring semester, I wrote a paper on the Obama Hope poster copyright debacle (otherwise known as the Fairey v Associated Press case). I often referred to Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright book as a quick reference for copyright and the DMCA. I'm happy to be returning to the Litman book, because she flushes out the complicated nature of copyright in a way that is understandable for all of us non-copyright attorneys out there.

During class, we covered the most important points from the first 6 chapters. Here are a few of my favorites/the points that furthered clarified copyright law:

1. Benefits of copyright law should be split between creators and the public ("If creators can't gain some benefit from their creations, they may not bother to make new works" (15)).
- I like reading/thinking about the progression of copyright law. In the Copyright manual, we read about the Statute of Anne and how it was put in place to ultimately give the government some control over what was published, as a means of censorship. 200 years later, copyright morphed into the American law that supposedly encouraged creativity. Does the incentive provided by copyright still encourage creativity? After looking at its complicated nature, changes, interpretations, etc, it seems as though it may do the opposite. If we look at elements of copyright like the Moral Rights Act, and the overall idea of property rights, I believe copyright law may stifle the creation of new works because it maintains an old work for decades at a time.

2. Four metaphors (ordered from "old way" of copyright to the "new way"):
a. Balance
b. Bargain: Public gives limited exclusive rights in order to encourage production.
c. Incentive: greater protection and increased limitations increase incentives (in other words, every time we expand copyright law, its limitations and exceptions are further narrowed).
d. Property rights: intellectual property ought to be treated like other property rights

3. Additionally, we discussed exactly why copyright law is so complicated - it's due to everything from the lawmakers' approach when creating the laws to the application of the law to the constantly shifting area of technology. Is it possible to create a law (and apply it) to highly fluid and subjective topic? Well, yes, but it needs a lot of work and everyone needs a lot of help. Thanks (I think) for the attorneys who specialize in copyright.

Electronic Resources Management and Licensing - The Start

After completing the Information Ethics and Policy course last semester, I felt I had a strong understanding of copyright and policy surrounding information resources. Now, I get the chance to gain a specialized knowledge of policy in the electronic resources management arena.

Here are a few things I want to focus on from the Unit 1 readings:

Electronic Resources and Academic Libraries: 1980 - 2000

- One issue in the 1980s and 1990s (among others): the serials crisis. Libraries struggled with the access vs. ownership debate and purchasing for reasons of "just in time" or "just in case." This library debacle still exists - how many resources do libraries acquire or decide to keep in off-site storage, just in case someone may need it? Are our libraries (including the UW libraries) avoiding or maintaining the notion of the library as a storage space instead of a research facility? I suppose it depends - the School of Business Library maintains a small collection of old reference books, but has mostly done away with outdated print material, opting for current business databases. However, the Mills Music Library frequently struggles with managing the large storage room and cage of ancient 78s and music education material from the 1960s and 70s.

- "The question then, is how to determine which resources to provide by immediate full-text access, delayed full-text, or as citations, and most importantly, how to pay for all of these" (3).

Especially in the academic setting, students and faculty want instant gratification when it comes to doc delivery and access to on-line articles. When libraries (like Mills Music Library) decides to keep massive print collections in an off-site space where the patron may not browse material, the library's catalog must maintain a high standard of information about each print item. Otherwise, the materials lose their value. In order to be useful to patrons (especially those who are accustomed to instant access to information) on-line catalogs must strive to reach the same standard of accessibility as many commercial, full-text databases.

Class discussion from 9/3 and "History of Traditional and Electronic Scientific Journal Publishing": Here are just a few notes I took from this article and some of the points that were brought up in class.

- NSF wound down research and funding for libraries until the Digital Libraries Initiative (late 90s)

- Early 1990s: massive increase in the number of computers in the U.S., increase in the number of e-journals (deal with the access vs ownership issue)

- use of on-line resources and the CD-ROM in the 1990s

- Libraries had to figure out how to convert the articles to a common digital format - this resulted in extra staffing and overhead costs

- Red Sage: early work with e-publishing

- Overall, there has been (and continues to be) growth in the amount of e-resources produced

- Instead of relying on publishers, a direct link from the author to the reader occurred.

- Researchers now find articles through a 3rd party (intermediaries and aggregators). The difference between these two parties is still not entirely clear to me.

I must admit that despite my work in Information Ethics and Policy, I remained somewhat clueless about this area of research. I use on-line databases everyday, but never realized the complexity and controversy surrounding electronic resource management. I'm ready to dive in.