Tag Archives: digitization

A win is a win – HathiTrust, libraries and fair use

Posted on October 15, 2012 by | 1 Comment

If you haven’t yet heard, on October 10, 2012, U.S. District Court Southern District of New York Judge Baer ruled in the Authors’ Guild, Inc, et al. v. HathiTrust, et al.  At the heart of the case was the Authors’ Guild’s (AG) assertion that the HathiTrust Digital Library’s (HDL) scanning and digitizing of works from several universities for inclusion into a digital library that allowed full-text searches, preservation of digitized works, and access for people with print disabilities violated copyright law.

The cliff notes version of the judge’s ruling is he flat-out disagrees with the Authors’ Guild.   Yep, you read right.  Libraries’ scanning and digitizing works to make them available via the HDL is fair use.  Searching the full-text of works is fair use. Preserving the digitized works is fair use.  Providing access to digitized works via the HDL to people with print disabilities is fair use.  Jonathan Band, the American Library Association’s (ALA) and Library Copyright Alliance’s (LCA) legal consultant and copyright expert, has written an excellent statement in response to the judge’s ruling.

In addition, many others have weighed in on the judge’s ruling including, but not limited to:

And, so what about those orphaned works anyway? The plaintiffs made a big hubbub about the potential for orphans (those works whose copyright holder can’t be identified or found) to be included in the HDL.  Ultimately, the judge’s ruling has no real effect – as he notes in his opinion under section D. Ripeness of the Orphan Works Project,

The Complaint requests a declaration that the “distribution and display of copyrighted works through the HathiTrust Orphan Works Project [OWP] will infringe the copyrights of Plaintiffs and others likely to be affected” and an injunction that prohibits the OWP…Plaintiffs seek a ruling on the OWP as it will exist, and not specifically as it existed at the moment that the initial complaint was filed….Adjudication as to the OWP is not ripe for judicial review.

However, that didn’t stop the Authors’ Guild from focusing on orphans in their public response to the judge’s ruling.

So, where does this ruling leave us – meaning libraries and the public? In very good form! Three cheers for fair use!

About Corey Williams

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Library associations, EFF file friend of the court brief in Authors Guild v. Google, Inc.

Posted on August 2, 2012 by | Leave a comment

On August 1, 2012, members of the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) (the American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries and Association of College and Research Libraries), together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), filed a friend of the court brief (pdf) in Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., a lawsuit in which authors allege that Google violated copyright by scanning books to create Google Book Search (GBS), a search tool similar to its Internet search engine. The LCA/EFF brief defends GBS as permissible under the doctrine of fair use, a flexible right that allows copying without payment or permission where the public benefit strongly outweighs the harm to individual rightsholders.

The LCA/EFF brief argues the following main points: that Google Book Search is tremendously beneficial to the public, that this public benefit tilts the analysis firmly in favor of fair use, that a legislative “fix” is both unnecessary and unworkable, and that the Authors Guild should not be permitted to shut down Google Book Search after encouraging public reliance on the tool for years.

In addition to these general arguments, the LCA/EFF brief incorporates stories contributed by librarians of all types demonstrating the ways in which GBS is an essential tool for librarians, enables new forms of research, and even benefits authors.

The members of LCA have long had a commitment to supporting libraries’ interest in the Google Book Search settlement agreement. For more, including past guides to understanding the settlement, see the ALA Washington Office GBS blog at http://wo.ala.org/gbs/ and the ARL Google Books resource page at http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/google/index.shtml.

Corey Williams
Associate Director, Office of Government Relations
American Library Association

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Posted in Copyright, Washington Office News

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Library Copyright Alliance Files Second Amicus Brief in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust

Posted on July 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

On July 6, 2012, members of the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) (the American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries and Association of College and Research Libraries), together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), filed a friend of the court brief (pdf) in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, urging a federal court to find that the fair use doctrine permitted the creation of a valuable digital library. The brief argues four main points: that the HathiTrust Digital Library (HDL) is serving the public interest, that its tremendous public benefit tilts the analysis firmly in favor of fair use, that a legislative “fix” is both unnecessary and unworkable, and that the plaintiffs helped foster public reliance on the HathiTrust project, which the public should not be deprived of now.

For several years, the HathiTrust and its member libraries have worked to index and preserve digitized works from library collections to foster research, teaching, and learning. In their lawsuit, the Authors Guild, together with a few other author groups and individual authors, propose an extremely narrow view of the rights of libraries to engage in preservation and other core library functions. In their motion for judgment on the pleadings, the plaintiffs have asked the federal court to “mothball” HDL until Congress takes action. LCA members  have filed in this case to defend the rights of all libraries, as well as the extraordinary value of the HathiTrust collection. This amicus brief follows a previous (pdf) one submitted by members of the LCA on April 20, 2012.

 

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Posted in Copyright, Higher Education

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Library as Publisher: Your Feedback Needed

Posted on May 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

As part of the work of ALA’s Digital Content and Libraries Working Group of ALA (which is tackling our many ebook-related issues), we are seeking some focused feedback before the 2012 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim next month. If you are experimenting with in the creation, publication, and preservation of digital content, we need to hear from you by June 1. Please read on for details, then respond to dcwg-input@ala.org.

What we’re trying to find out
We’re NOT looking for a comprehensive list of every digitization effort in libraries. We ARE looking for experiments that can help ALA recommend policies, address issues, or promote information exchange about this emerging area.

Read more on American Libraries.

About Jacob Roberts

Jacob Roberts is the communications specialist for the ALA Washington Office.

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Posted in Telecommunications

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…and the food was good

Posted on April 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment


Maybe it was the sea air. Maybe it was because I got out of town, all (well most) expenses paid. Maybe it was because the topic was NOT ebooks. In any case, the 16th Annual Berkeley Center for Law and Technology/Berkeley Technology Law Journal Symposium on Orphan Works and Mass Digitization: Obstacles & Opportunities was an engaging and successful event. For me, it was fun. There was relatively little controversy because people were not lobbying for advantage, but discussing the public policy implications of legislative and other solutions to the orphan works problem. Okay, maybe a little bit of head shaking and eye rolling, but evenhanded overall.

It was a little weird to enter the meeting room and see over 200 copyright geeks assembled. Over half were librarians, along with archivists, rights holders, users of information and copyright scholars. The presentations were compelling and provocative. I came away more convinced than ever that an orphan works legislative solution is unwarranted.

The orphan works “problem” often is not a problem at all, at least not under U.S. copyright law. Fair use allows us to use orphan works in ways that are not infringing for a host of reasons just by the very nature of the orphan work itself – obscure, not commercially viable, ripe for care and preservation. Moreover, the inability to find rights holders and pay a fee is the quintessential example of market failure, one of the reasons we have copyright exceptions in the first place.

So my policy solution to the orphan works problem is “leave well enough alone.” Those that want certainty through legislation and other fixes, reconsider the value of vagueness. With bright line solutions, we risk giving up flexibility in the law, and are likely to go down the collective licensing highway where fair users pay permission fees to licensing agents rather than to the true rights holder – who, after all, cannot be found.

David Hansen, Digital Library Fellow for Berkeley’s Digital Library Project wrote three instructive papers that prepared attendees for the symposium discussions. They are very good – read them.

The Berkeley Center of Law and Technology will provide video of the symposium in the next two weeks. Teasers — the photographers are in a dilemma, orphans are re-named hostages, and sometimes “who cares who has the rights?” is a rational question.

Carrie Russell
Director, Program on Public Access to Information
American Library Association

About Carrie Russell

Carrie Russell is the director for OITP's Program on Public Access to Information. Since 1999, Carrie has developed copyright education programs and related services to help ALA members understand the latest trends regarding copyright law and its impact on libraries.

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Posted in Copyright, OITP, Washington Office News

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