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The 11th Annual Kraemer Copyright Conference

The Future is Now: Navigating the Intersection of Copyright, AI, and Libraries
 

Join us for the 11th Annual Kraemer Copyright Conference at the Ent Center for the Arts, located on the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus from June 11 (12:00pm - 5:00pm), June 12 (8:30 - 5:00pm), and June 13 (8:30 - 1:00pm). 

Conference registration is now open!

Register for the Conference

The Kraemer Copyright Conference is a dynamic and enriching free annual conference that offers academic, public, special, and school librarians the opportunity to learn about U.S. Copyright Law, recent updates to the law, and how it impacts the services we offer our library users. This conference provides an opportunity for professionals at every level and across libraries to discuss the importance of copyright in libraries.

Keynote Speakers

Kyle Courtney
Director of Copyright and Information Policy for Harvard Library

Solving the eBook Conundrum: Libraries, Legislation, and Advocacy in the States
Most publishers force libraries to acquire eBooks with licensing terms rendering it impossible for libraries to meet their access and preservation mission. These licenses are destroying the core access, acquisition, collection development, and preservation functions in libraries. While nearly all the major publishers charge libraries higher licensing fees than the consumer prices for the same material, they also place strict limitations on how the licensed content can be used, shared, or loaned. Worse, each license does not confer any ownership under the law – these acquisitions are, at best, temporary rentals. This directly impacts an organization’s ability to serve their communities. As a result, many communities lack meaningful access to materials needed for education, research, entertainment, and general learning.  

Several legislative efforts have attempted to rectify this problem. States like Maryland had previously tried enacting laws forcing publishers to license eBooks to libraries under reasonable terms. However, these previous attempts were declared unconstitutional by courts because the state law was preempted by federal copyright law. However, there is a new successful strategic approach used by the eBooks Study Group that addresses the flaws in these original efforts. States such as CT, HI, IL, MA, and RI are using the eBook Study Group model eBook law to offer new hopeful front in the licensing problem: state contract and consumer protection laws. These new laws are more reflective of the library’s mission and help preserve the significant legal and fiscal value in library collections. The goal is to use the law to help libraries continue to provide open, non-discriminatory, access to materials. Join Kyle K. Courtney as he reveals how these new laws may be shifting the tide, weaponizing the very tool that has been wielded against libraries for decades: licenses. 
 

Kenneth D. Crews, JD, PhD
Attorney, author, professor, and international copyright consultant

Sandra Aya Enimil, JD, MLIS
Program Director, Scholarly Communication and Information Policy, Yale University Library

Dave Hansen
Executive Director of Authors Alliance

Why libraries Have a Central Role in AI and Why Copyright Law is on their Side
In the last two years, "artificial intelligence' has sucked the air out of nearly every conversation on the future of knowledge production and access to information. As companies like Microsoft and OpenAI face down copyright lawsuits over their AI tools, libraries have not been immune from the AI boom nor from concerns about copyright-related risks. This talk will focus on how libraries are actually poised to play a key public-interest role in the AI ecosystem, addressing the major open copyright questions posed by AI for libraries (including fair use of library collections as training data), and the challenges libraries face in supporting AI research stemming from licensing and contractual override of fair use. 

Pia Hunter, JD, MLIS
Associate Director for Research and Instruction, Teaching Associate Professor, University of Illinois, Law Library

AI Authorship and Digital Storytelling: Who Owns the Rights When AI Tells the Tale?
According to the United States Copyright Office, some AI-generated content may be eligible for copyright protection if the work is “basically one of human authorship” and is in some way “original and unique.” However, the question of originality becomes complicated when some or all the work is created by Generative AI software that extracts content from the Internet without acknowledging the original source or its authors. This session discusses cases about Generative AI and how they might redefine the intellectual property rights of content creators and copyright holders.
 

Katie Zimmerman, MLIS, JD
Director of Copyright Strategy, MIT Libraries

AI and Library Content
AI is hungry, and libraries have content.  What should libraries consider about their collections being used to train generative AI? Topics covered will include use of content that libraries control, such as archival and repository content, as well as issues faced with content licensed from publishers and vendors. 

 

Ent Center for the Arts

The beautiful Ent Center for the Arts will be hosting the Kraemer Copyright Conference.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about the conference, please contact the Kraemer Copyright Committee at kcc@uccs.edu.