Open Track Presentation: Cutting Edge Copyright Programs in Libraries

Join Kyle K. Courtney as he discusses two relatively new copyright projects aimed at enhancing greater access to copyrighted materials in the modern technical and legal environments. First, Book scanning projects have made tremendous strides in bringing public domain literature online for the world's scholars and enthusiasts. Materials published after 1923, however, are still not widely available due to US copyright restrictions. The recently published "White Paper on Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books" describes a method for addressing this research gap. Through controlled digital lending, libraries can make twentieth-century scholarship available that is largely absent from their digital holdings in a way that respects the rights of authors and publishers. Publishers, too, can participate in controlled digital lending; projects between the Internet Archive, MIT Press, and other university presses are digitizing backlist and out-of-print books and making them available for controlled digital lending.

Second, the "Scholarly Communication in a Consumer-Licensed World" team is also working on understanding and reducing the legal risk of commercial platforms for popular media. In recent years access to music, film, television, and games has become mediated not just by database licenses, but by consumer-facing companies like Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, and Steam that simply will not offer libraries a license at any price. Without reliance on the traditional body of copyright exceptions or any opportunity to negotiate, academics are forced to puzzle through licensing language that is silent or misaligned with scholarly communication, and to risk violating the terms of the agreement if they want to teach, analyze, or archive. Raising the fear is penalties for copyright violations as high as $250,000, separate penalties for breach of contract, or potential violation the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provision. In light of these perceived dangers, text mining, archiving, and culturally-sustaining pedagogy can seem like they just aren't worth the risk. Hear about the work being done to counter these concerns in a new set of materials for offering guidance that helps users understand the real risk of engaging with consumer-licensed materials and platforms, as well as a strategy to advocate for a clearer, more open copyright system that supports, rather than undermines, academic values and practices.