[Foundation-l] new survey of digital collection copyrights

[phoebe ayers]

Relevant to the NPG et al discussion:
"Unless Otherwise Indicated: A Survey of Copyright Statements on
Digital Library Collections", by Melanie Schlosser. published in
"College and Research Libraries", v.70(4), pp371-385 (July 2009).
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Unfortunately it's not freely available online, but if you have access
to a good university library you should be able to get it. Here's the
abstract and some excerpts:

Abstract: "This study examines the copyright statements attached to
digital collections created by members of the Digital Library
Federation. A total of 786 collections at twenty-nine institutions
were examined for the presence of statements and their content
evaluated for common themes. Particular attention was paid to whether
the institutions in question are meeting their obligation to educate
users about their rights by including information about fair use and
the public domain. Approximately half the collections surveyed had
copyright statements, and those statements were often difficult to
distinguish from terms of use and were frequently vague or
misleading."
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Snippets of interest to our discussions: Of the collections examined,
41% consisted entirely of public domain items; 51% of these had a
copyright statement, but only 10% of the institutions mentioned public
domain implicitly or explicitly in their statement. 86%, however,
mentioned personal or educational use (which is not relevant to public
domain items). Of the collections of copyrighted items, 48% had some
sort of statement; 8% mentioned fair use explicitly while 53%
mentioned personal or educational use. In general, the copyright
status of a collection did not affect whether or not a copyright
statement was present -- only half of the collections had statements
overall, and no institution was consistent in its labeling.

And: "Quite a few public domain and mixed [copyright status]
collections had Creative Commons licenses or specific or vague
ownership statements, implying that the contents are copyrighted in
some way. It was especially common for statements to acknowledge that
the institution does not hold the copyright to the original item
(either because it had passed into the public domain or because the
copyright was held by a third party) but to assert copyright over the
digital image."

Schlosser notes that "The definition of a 'copyright statement' used
by this study was somewhat arbitrary. Many of the statements examined
were buried in collection descriptions or looked more like terms of
use statements than copyright statements." She concludes that "It
seems unlikely that libraries are purposely deceiving users with false
or misleading claims of copyright ownership (copyfraud). However, this
study presents evidence that, far from educating users about copyright
or promoting the public
domain, many libraries engaged in digitization projects are omitting a
key tool for copyright education or using it in ways that undermine
users’ needs for accurate copyright information. Once again, it is
outside the scope of this paper to examine the reasons. It is possible
that working knowledge of copyright law in many libraries is not
sufficient for grappling with the complexities involved or that the
issue has simply slipped through the cracks as libraries embark on
difficult and resource-intensive digitization projects."

Note this article is U.S. institution and law-centric, but gives some
nice background on copyright changes and the actions and position of
libraries. As Schlosser says, "While users push for more content and
functionality at less cost, and copyright holders demand greater
technological and legal protection for their works, libraries are
often caught in the middle."

-- phoebe