[Foundation-l] new survey of digital collection copyrights

[Brian]

Preprint:
http://www.ala.org/ala//mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crljournal/preprints/Schlosser.pdf

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 10:55 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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).
> --------
> 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."
> --------
> 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
>
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