Copyright For Librarians

An abbreviation of the “Conference on Fair Use.”

The Conference on Fair Use was a series of meetings held in the United States in the mid to late 1990s. The purpose of CONFU was to have a meaningful discussion about “fair use” in an increasingly digital age, especially for academics and librarians. However, due in large part to fundamental disagreements among the various represented interest groups, the meetings failed to achieve any meaningful consensus.

See also:

• Fair Use

Other resources:

• Text of CONFU report
• CONFU page from University of Texas’ copyright guidelines. (English, US)
• University of Texas guidelines about use of images
• Association of Research libraries resource on CONFU

The set of rights granted to the author of a creative work that govern certain third party uses of the work.

These rights vary from country to country, although there is substantial international harmonization. They can typically be divided into economic rights and so-called “moral” rights.

With respect to the economic rights, they essentially represent a temporary monopoly over the creative work in question. In theory, this monopoly control is supposed to incentivize and reward creator, convincing them to create more. However, when the term of copyright ends, the work belongs to the public. The public’s gains from the creation of new works is thought to compensate for the inefficiencies that a monopoly represents. Economic rights are truly “property” in that they can be sold, assigned, inherited, divided up, and more.

With respect to “moral” rights, these belong to the author at the moment of creation, and cannot usually be transferred to anyone else.

See also:

• Rights

Other resources:

• US Government’s copyright website
• EU’s copyright website
• EU internal markets copyright website
• Canadian Intellectual Property Office website
• Private website devoted to EU copyright law
• Copy of Chinese copyright law (English)
• Copy of Japan’s copyright law (English)

Counterfeiting is the practice of making illegal copies of something and then attempting to pass the copies off as the real thing.

Almost anything can be copied, whether currency, material goods, or intellectual property. A counterfeiter hopes to take advantage of any positive reputation that the original enjoys without having to invest time and resources in creating it. Counterfeits damage the original by competing with it in the marketplace and by hurting the original’s reputation.

Other resources:

• IP Law organization analysis of French court ruling about counterfeiting

A collection of documents put together by a teacher as a resource for students in a particular course or class.

Often, teachers with a specific curriculum in mind will wish to assemble their own materials rather than teach from a particular textbook. As a corollary to this, a teacher creating a curriculum drawing on a wide range of resources may wish to simply provide her students with only the materials they need, rather than requiring them to purchase many books, often at great cost, each of which will contain only a small piece of the curriculum, and the majority of the contents of which will be superfluous.

Of course, creating such a “course pack” necessitates the copying of the relevant works, implicating copyright law. Such copying may or may not fall under fair use, fair dealing, or other exceptions to copyright, depending on the circumstances and the jurisdiction. There have been two seminal cases in the United States dealing with course packs and copyright, both of which were resolved against the universities in question. It is noteworthy, though, that each of those cases involved a for-profit copying service.

Other resources:

• Stanford Fair Use Center on course packs
• Text of Princeton Univ. v. Michigan Document Servs., 99 F.3d 1381 (6th Cir. 1996).)
• Text of Basic Books Inc. v. Kinko's Graphics Corp., 758 F.Supp. 1522 (S.D. N.Y. 1991).)
• Professional course pack service
• Article on course packs.
• Article on course packs from American Assoc. of University Publishers
• A distance learning organization’s course pack request form
• Canadian article on using course packs online

“Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.”

The above definition comes from the Creative Commons website. The organization was founded in 2001 by, among others, Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig. Its goal was to provide simple, easy to understand and use copyright licenses that would allow creators to share their work with the world under terms they were comfortable with, so people can share, remix, and/or use them commercially, rather than the default terms offered by statute. Currently, Creative Commons offers 6 different licenses (in 50 countries and counting), whose features vary according to their permissiveness, and the uses they allow. The existence and terms of these special licenses are communicated to users by employing both the Creative Commons name and a series of icons that suggest the specific terms of the license.

A 2008 U.S. case, Jacobsen v. Katzer, concerning later usage of software licensed under a license similar in style and intent to those offered by Creative Commons held that the license was a valid one, and that violating it terms constituted copyright infringement. The ruling greatly strengthened the enforceability of such agreements, helping their use to be perceived as more mainstream and legitimate.

Other resources:

• Creative Commons’ website
• Stanford Fair Use site on the Jacobsen v. Katzer case above
• US law firm analyzes legal implications of Jacobsen v. Katzer