Copyright and DMCA

The Section 108 Study Group is a select committee of copyright experts charged with updating for the digital world the Copyright Act's balance between the rights of creators and copyright owners and the needs of libraries and archives. The Study Group was convened as an independent group by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation program of the Library of Congress and by the U.S. Copyright Office. The recommendations, conclusions, and other outcomes of the Study Group's Report are its own and do not reflect the opinions of the Library of Congress or the U.S. Copyright Office.

Copyright continues to be a core interest of the higher education and academic library communities. This briefing will focus on eight critical legislative and legal arenas where the United States will be working on copyright: orphan works, digital fair use, broadcast flag, Section 1201 anti-circumvention rulemaking, electronic reserves, peer-to-peer file sharing, open access to government-funded research, and the report of the Section 108 Study Group on exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives. The work of the study group will be highlighted, including its primary findings and recommendations. In addition, two important recent studies will be described and their importance for libraries will be cited. The advocacy and educational roles and responsibilities of librarians on copyright also will be outlined.

These are guidelines in the acquisition and use of images in non-profit educational visual resources collections, written by the Visual Resources Association.

The Society for Cinema and Media Studies ("SCMS") has created this Statement of Best Practices
for its membership to clarify some of the issues concerning the permissible use of media for teaching.

"There are few circumstances in which it’s legal to copy a DVD and screen it in its entirety to an audience without paying royalties. One of them is in the classroom."

Educational institutions should be actively rethinking how they are accessing and using copyrighted visual arts images, and they should be exploring an approach that seeks to address copyright owners’ interests, as well as users’ needs, in an environment that encourages increased, shared access to these images for teaching and study.

How can the university foster intellectual exploration and creativity, protect students' privacy, and educate responsible citizens of the networked world? Is it possible to support balanced copyright law and enforcement, without responding to every entertainment company's demands for internet filtering and "pre-litigation notices"?

"Copyright permeates our lives and yet, despite its impact on our lives, relatively few people, including lawyers, have sufficient knowledge or understanding of what copyright is. And far too many people, including lawyers, have major misconceptions concerning copyright. These misconceptions are causing a dangerous shift in copyright protection, a shift that threatens the advancement of knowledge and learning in this country."

"DRM technology represents an attempt to treat bits like atoms. "Watermarks" allow two otherwise identical collections of bits to be viewed as different objects. Biometric-based encryption can restrict access to only the current "holder" of the bits. Elaborate check-in/check-out schemes constrain a particular set of bits to "exist" in only one place at a time. Rather than rethinking their approach to copyright and developing new business models appropriate to the digital world, proponents of DRM technology are devoting their ingenuity and energy to trying to make bits behave like atoms in order to preserve the old ways. "