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Re: Draft Terms of Participation for the A&A List



Hi all - I have a concern over the extract below re: copyright -- Isn't
this unduly deferential to aggressive copyright protection and quite
limiting to the legal rights of users under the four-prong test for fair
use, especially in the first and last extracted paragraph included
below? Fair use is one of the best tools users have for using copyrighted
materials and I would not want to see us distance ourselves away from it
unecessarily, especially given our line of work -- see more specific
comments below

David A. Wallace
School of Information
University of Michigan
davwal@umich.edu

On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Mark Greene wrote:

> ##########################################################################
>
> ARCHIVES AND ARCHIVISTS
> TERMS OF PARTICIPATION
> (Draft, 6/23/00)
>
> COPYRIGHT
> Participants retain copyright to their individual postings to the list and
> control all rights to the use of those postings.  Publication of the
> discussion posted on the List requires the permission of the the individuals
> who own copyright to the postings.
>.....

COMMENT: Is this really true? We cite quotations from books and articles
all the time in our professional literature without obtaining the
permission of the original author. Scholarship and freedom of expression
would whither if authors had to clear their use of quotations for each
usage.

> Participants forwarding messages written by others should recognize that
> they are effectively publishing those messages.  Participants should assume
> that any material not authored personally to be protected by copyright. As
> such, the participant should consider the possibility that they are
> violating the original author's copyright and that they are opening
> themselves to the possibility of litigation.
>
> Simply put, copyrighted material beyond brief quotations should not be
> posted to the List without appropriate permissions.  Participants wishing to
> direct others to copyrighted text are encouraged to post a link to the
> copyrighted materials on the web as long as: a) such links do not circumvent
> any fees charged by the site; b) the URL is not to a site which is itself in
> violation of copyright.
>

COMMENT: again I would cite that appropriate fair use can accommodate some
of the above concerns re: copyright violation. Fair use provides a four
prong test and **each of the four** must be considered in tandem
in rendering a judgment re: copyright infringement. I only am responding
to the above clauses in this document as I have come to believe that over
the past 5 or so years that the rhetoric on "copyright protection" is
increasingly used as a potential mechanism for censorship. I am not
saying, of course, that this is what this document is attempting. Rather,
I think it is something we need to be sensitive towards and that we
should, as a profession, be aggressive fair use advocates. Best regards --
David.

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