Academy struggles with complex copywright issues
BY Ajay Singh
Today staff writer
Quick, take this quiz: The primary purpose of copyright is to (a) protect ideas; (b) make money; (c) promote learning.
If you answered (a) or (b) you’re in for a surprise: Copyright law is aimed at encouraging learning and creativity — giving authors control over their work is simply a means to that end.
In fact, copyright issues are “incredibly counterintuitive,” said James Hilton, associate provost for Academic, Information, and Instructional Technology Affairs at the University of Michigan.
Hilton addressed some 125 faculty and staff at a Nov. 18 sympo sium titled “Managing Intellec-tual Property: What Faculty Need to Know to Publish and Teach in the Digital Age.” The event at the Faculty Center was presented by the UCLA Library, the Academic Senate and the Office of Infor-mation Technology, among others.
Covering copyright myths and realities, Hilton’s keynote address was full of surprising revelations and keen insights about complex copyright trends in light of the Internet’s dramatic impact on regulatory laws.
“What we are witnessing is nothing short of a fundamental redefining of the entire landscape of the academy, which is premised on the free exchange of ideas,” Hilton said.
Copyright laws evolved in the United States in the late 18th century as a way of balancing “the limited rights of the owner and the long-term rights of the public,” he explained. But by 1976, as the result of an epic court battle between Universal Studios and Sony Corp., the balance shifted “aggressively in the direction of protecting owners and away from promoting access and learning.”
That’s when the “fair use” provision was introduced to the Copyright Act as a statutory attempt to reset the balance, Hilton said. Universities rely heavily on the provision, which enables faculty and students to make multiple copies of printed material for classroom use, provided they keep four factors in mind.
First, works of fiction are granted greater protection than fact-based ones. Second, it’s harder to make a fair-use case if the copied material is used to make a profit. Third, the more material you copy, the less you can rely on making a fair-use case.
Finally, be aware of any impact you might be inadvertently creating on the copyright owner’s market — “courts typically treat this factor as the most important,” said Hilton, adding: “The bad news is that the only way to determine definitively whether your use is a ‘fair use’ is to stand before a judge and ask for a verdict.”
Digital technology has made reproduction and distribution of material so cheap and easy that the issue of multiple copies for classroom use is “going to go by the wayside before much longer,” Hilton predicted. In recent years, the regulatory emphasis has shifted from efforts to control copying to controlling access through such federal measures as the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which imposes penalties of up to $25,000 per infringement.
The symposium also offered a discussion on how academic authors can manage their copyright. While retaining copyright has its advantages, that is “no guarantee on its own if you have signed other rights away,” said Molly S. Van Houweling, acting professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and a board member of Creative Commons, a nonprofit group that offers copyright licenses.
When one attendee asked how he should protect his copyright for his first book, published in the 1970s under archaic copyright laws, Van Houweling suggested he consult www.copyright.gov, the official Web site of the U.S. Copyright Office.
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