EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Public Domain

Copyright Renewal, Copyright Restoration, and the Difficulty of Determining Copyright Status

ckeller — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:46:21 -0500

It has long been assumed that most of the works published from 1923 to 1964 in the US are currently in the public domain. Both non-profit and commercial digital libraries have dreamed of making this material available. Most programs have recognized as well that the restoration of US copyright in foreign works in 1996 has made it impossible for them to offer to the public the full text of most foreign works. What has been overlooked up to now is the difficulty that copyright restoration has created for anyone trying to determine if a work published in the United States is still protected by copyright. This paper discusses the impact that copyright restoration of foreign works has had on US copyright status investigations, and offers some new steps that users must follow in order to investigate the copyright status in the US of any work. It argues that copyright restoration has made it almost impossible to determine with certainty whether a book published in the United States after 1922 and before 1964 is in the public domain. Digital libraries that wish to offer books from this period do so at some risk.

Pooling Scholars’ Digital Resources

ckeller — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:11:46 -0600

George Mason U. and the Internet Archive are preparing a system that will let scholars upload documents to the public domain for sharing.

Researcher: Optimal copyright term is 14 years

ckeller — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:49:19 -0500

A Cambridge University PhD candidate recently suggested,using economics formulas, that copyright should last no longer than 14 years.

Yahoo To Digitize Public Domain Books

drupal — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 15:14:43 -0500

"Yahoo is launching a library-digitization project to rival Google's controversial program."

Fight for Public Domain Goes On

drupal — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 16:43:05 -0600

"Digital archivists aren't giving up on their efforts to free out-of-print books, movies and music from overreaching copyright laws, despite a recent setback in court."

When Works Pass Into the Public Domain in the United States: Copyright Term for Archivists and Librarians

drupal — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 11:08:39 -0500

A chart showing what copyright terms are for unpublished and published works passing into the public domain for use.

The dead poets society: The copyright term and the public domain

drupal — Wed, 01 Oct 2003 17:25:34 -0500

In a victory for corporate control of cultural heritage, the Supreme Court of the United States has rejected a constitutional challenge to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act 1998 (U.S.) by a majority of seven to two. This paper evaluates the litigation in terms of policy debate in a number of discourses — history, intellectual property law, constitutional law and freedom of speech, cultural heritage, economics and competition policy, and international trade. It argues that the extension of the copyright term will inhibit the dissemination of cultural works through the use of new technologies — such as Eric Eldred's Eldritch Press and Project Gutenberg. It concludes that there is a need to resist the attempts of copyright owners to establish the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act 1998 (U.S.) as an international model for other jurisdictions — such as Australia.

Mapping the Digital Public Domain: Threats and Opportunities

drupal — Tue, 17 Jun 2003 15:30:04 -0500

In this article, the author discusses a "map" of the public domain, and provides an in-depth examination of threats to it in the digital environment e.g., the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, the Collections of Information Anti-Piracy Act, the Copyright Term Extension Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act), and discusses ways to foster the "digital commons."