[Asis-l] C&RL News: Creative Commons For Librarians / Faculty / Students

[gerrymck]

Colleagues/

Hot Off The Press … / How Timely  …

Thanks, Molly !!

/Gerry

 "The beauty of "Some Rights Reserved": Introducing Creative Commons
to librarians, faculty, and students"
C&RL News /  November 2008 / Vol. 69, No. 10 /  Molly Kleinman

[ http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crlnews/2008/nov/beautyofsrr.cfm
]

Must Listen --- Author Podcast (13:45)

 [ http://www.acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/2008/11/06/acrl-podcast-the-beauty-of-some-rights-reserved/
]

These are difficult times when it comes to copyright on campus. Big
music companies are suing fans, publishers are suing librarians, and
the principle of "fair use" is under siege everywhere.
Litigation-happy content holders have fostered a climate of fear in
which every student is a music pirate and every professor a book
thief. While I don't doubt that there is some copyright infringement
happening on university campuses, the bigger problem by far is the
chilling effect of all these lawsuits and "copyright awareness
campaigns."

Scholars and students are afraid to do the one thing that copyright
law has intended from the beginning: "Promote the Progress of Science
and the Useful Arts"1 by creating new works and building on the works
of those who came before. Every academic librarian knows at least one
sad story about a professor who couldn't include necessary
illustrations in her book because her publisher was worried about a
copyright lawsuit, or a digitization project that couldn't get
approved because the copyright status of the materials was uncertain.

Additional problems result from major changes to copyright law over
the last 40 years. Until recently, creators had to register their
copyrights to receive protection and mark their works with a properly
formatted copyright notice or the work entered automatically into the
public domain, where anybody was free to reuse it however they wished.

That all changed in 1978, when the United States dropped the
registration requirement; since then, copyright automatically occurs
the moment a work is "fixed in a tangible medium of expression." Now,
every new work is copyrighted—lecture notes, e-mails, snapshots,
doodles, presentation slides. And where once copyright lasted for 14
years, with the option to renew for another 14, now copyright lasts
for the lifetime of the author, plus an additional 70 years after the
author's death, for an average duration of more than a century. That's
a very long time, and it leaves thousands of works orphaned: under
copyright but without a locatable copyright holder. Between the fear
and the orphans, life is hard for an ordinary academic who just wants
some pictures to liven up her classroom presentations, or the student
who would like to add a soundtrack to his final project.

Enter Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that created a set of
simple, easy-to-understand copyright licenses. These licenses do two
things: They allow creators to share their work easily, and they allow
everyone to find work that is free to use without permission. The
value of those two things is enormous. Before Creative Commons
licenses, there was no easy way a creator could say, "Hey world! Go
ahead and use my photographs, as long as you give me attribution."

Similarly, there was no place for members of the public to go to find
new works that they were free to reuse and remix without paying fees.
Creative Commons changed all that. As it says on its Web site,
"Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full
copyright—all rights reserved— and the public domain—no rights
reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting
certain uses of your work—a 'some rights reserved' copyright."

[MORE]

Happy Monday!

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu

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