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Understanding 9/11View Post [edit]
| Poster: | garthus | Date: | Oct 4, 2009 8:00pm |
| Forum: | texts | Subject: | Copyright Law and Intellectual Delusions |
It is quite clear that even in the Library Community there exists a common delusion concerning Copyright protections and Public Domain materials. While it is very common for publishers (for example 'Dover') to reissue materials which have long since passed into the public domain and attach misleading copyright notices to these publications implying that the reprinted publication falls under their copyright protection as a derivative work; such practices seem to be endemic within the library community, particularly with respect to the proliferation of digital collections based upon a particular libraries possession of public domain materials donated to them by some benefactor (or in many cases anonymously). All sorts of mechanisms are often used such as watermarks, banding, fuzzification of images and various attempts to bastardize images so they cannot be used for other purposes. Such attempts to undermine and wreck the statutes governing Public Domain materials are unprofessional at best and ethically fall into behavior which could be considered as criminal.
The idea behind passing materials no longer (or never) in copyright, into the Public Domain, was to make them freely available to the public once their creators had enjoyed the benefits of the restrictive copyright period allowed within such legislation. Or in the case of materials released under the Creative Commons License (URL: ), everyone should have unrestricted access to such materials in addition to their public domain status. Even though derivative works can be made from both Public Domain and Copyrighted Materials, the statutes are very clear in describing exactly what a derivative work is:
“17 U.S.C. Section (103)(b):
… The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material. ”.
Both statute and case law are very clear in defining a 'derivative' work as one which substantially changes the content of the original work. And the new copyright protection then applies only to that part of the 'content' of original work which is changed. Merely reformatting the original work does not create a derivative work and thus cannot be considered as falling under the protection of the Copyright Statutes.
What this means is that the tens of thousands of items which libraries and universities are currently digitizing and placing in Digital Collections do not fall under the protection of the Copyright Statutes particularly if the works were originally within the Public Domain. Digitizing or reformatting materials do not fall under a creative act. They merely become republishing of the original material. If a description, meta-data set, introduction, or translation is involved, only those particular additions fall under the scope of copyright protection.
For example, if a library digitizes a postcard printed and mailed in 1903, and places it in a database; the meta-data and other descriptive materials can be copyrighted; but the actually image cannot and does not receive any copyright protections. The Meta-data and descriptive materials can be considered as a derivative part of the original material (the post card itself); but anyone is free to download that image and use it for whatever purpose they would like. Such proclamations, such as “not to be used for commercial purposes” or “contact the owner of this site for permission to use this image” cannot be legally enforced and are misleading at best, since they do not fall under the letter of the Copyright Statutes.
It is particularly galling to see commercial Database services attempt to place public domain materials under their copyright protections with such misleading proclamations. They do not own the images of public domain materials, even if they created them, just as they do not own the image of a copyrighted document which they may have been given permission to publish in their database. In both cases, ownership devolves back to the original owner; IE. The public in the case of public domain materials; and, the copyright holder in the case of copyrighted materials.
Librarians in particular should have an understanding of what the ethical and moral functions of librarianship are. Specifically their duties to the public, which has a reasonable expectation to the unfettered and unrestricted access to Public Domain materials, an expectation which was given to the Public both in the Proclamations of the founding Fathers of this country and within the Copyright Statutes themselves as passed by the Congress and established as law throughout the land. Public Domain means exactly what it implies; 'belonging to the public' not to some corporate or government entity which thinks that it has the right to monopolize and control ownership and access to Public Materials.
Garthus
Reply [edit]
| Poster: | Time Traveller | Date: | Oct 4, 2009 8:27pm |
| Forum: | texts | Subject: | Re: Copyright Law and Intellectual Delusions |
That meta-data enhances the value of the item. But the meta-data is worthless on its own, without the item it refers too.
Therefore, you are free to download the item, and if needed, add your own meta-data.
But to stay legal, you have to research and write up, you own meta-data file.
When Intel puts out a new CPU chip, it is illegal to make an exact copy in a Star Trek replicator or to reverse engineer it, to make a exact copy.
What they do (the competitors)is put engineers in two separate rooms, only connected by a phone line.
Room 1, has Intel's chip, the engineers there, verbally describes how the chip reacts to certain inputs, the engineers in room 2 write that down, then design a CPU that will react the same way to input, as the Intel CPU does.
And its not a pin by pin input=output, but the input, is software instructions such as Windows might use, the output of the CPU, is how Windows reacts.
And if they can prove in a court of law, that was the exact process used to make an equivalent to Intel CPU, Intel has not a hope in the world of stopping that copy of their CPU chip, going onto the market, at less cost than their own Intel CPU chip.
What I am saying is, a out of copyright text is free for all, provided you dont copy the associated meta-data.
BUT, no reason why you can not add your own value, by generating your OWN meta-data.
So, if downloading a copy of a out-of-copyright text from one digital library, to put onto another digital library, or the Internet Archive, you are copyright legal as long as you dont copy the meta-data, but write your own version.
