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



On Sat, 24 Jun 2000, David A. Wallace wrote:

> > 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.

I think David raises a very important point here, though I read the above
paragraph differently than he did. I read "publication of the discussion
posted on the List ..." to mean publication of whole discussions and not
publication of quotations from the same. I would agree, however, that it
would be good for Council to acknowledge fair use overtly by stating that
quotation from List discussions under the guidelines for 'fair use' in
Title 17 of the United States Code is encouraged.

I also agree with David's other point that it would be a huge stretch to
construe as a potential copyright violation, for example, the forwarding
of the complete text of a listserv message to subscribers of another
listserv to whom the content might be of interest. Until some court
actually does, I don't think SAA should be on record as supporting a
narrowing of fair use. I applaud and support David's encouragment to
Council to reconsider the wording of portions of the following excerpt:

[From Mark Greene's original message]
> As a profession directly associated with protecting the intellectual
> property rights of authors whose works are in our custody, participants are
> encouraged to set a high standard of respect for copyright.

Yes, but couldn't we also, as David points out, take a stand here as
setting this high standard while concurrently actively advocating fair use
of copyrighted information?

> > 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.

The above seems to me to be highly alarmist and chilling to the free flow
of information between professionals on the A&A list. "Assuming ...
material ... to be protected by copyright" does not in any way mean that
it can't be forwarded to and from various professional listservs. As David
points out, the wording of the previous paragraph seems unnecessarily to
discourage such forwarding and seems to be a very constricted
interpretation of the four fair use tests.

> >
> > 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.
> >

The above seems like a fine note of caution to me, though perhaps the
"beyond brief quotations" bow to fair use could be expanded.

Kudos to the Council committee for attempting to put all of this in
writing. Concerns about the copyright section aside, this is a useful
document!

--
Bill Landis__________________________|_____________________blandis@uci.edu
Manuscripts Librarian                |                   The UCI Libraries
Department of Special Collections    |            University of California
949 824.3113                         |                      P.O. Box 19557
949 824.2472 FAX                     |              Irvine, CA  92623-9557

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