ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 182 / C&RL News ■ March 2002 CONFERENCE CIRCUIT Copyright town meeting Intellectual property and multimedia in the Digital Age by Francis Poole I n the past few years q uestions have arisen concerning the legality o f digi­ tizing items in academ ic library video and multimedia collections and making them accessible via the Internet for teaching or research purposes. This is an area in which media librarians and other information pro­ viders will be increasingly involved as fac­ ulty and students begin to request Web access to such materials. Many o f us involved with moving im­ age collections wish there w ere easy an ­ swers to the tangle o f copyright infringe­ m ent co n cern s resulting from the rapid growth o f com puter technology. Cases are widely reported in the news o f Internet users downloading unauthorized cop ies of digital audio and video files. Napster and DivX com e to mind as exam ples of the col­ lision b etw een “freedom o f a cce ss ” to the Internet and the rights of information pro­ ducers to protect their work. Most Web users are familiar with the little Q uicktim e or Windows Media Player b o x e s that enable viewing o f video files. Although in many cases image quality is poor and items are slow to download, lim­ ited in duration, and jerky in playback, progress towards improving video stream­ ing will continue. With new com pression formats, such as MPEG-4, being developed, it will b eco m e faster and easier to stream high-quality video. The result is a greater need for libraries and the p eop le in them w ho deal with multimedia formats to un­ derstand copyright questions involving the digitization and streaming o f moving im­ ages. So it was nice to learn that the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heri­ tage (NINCH) was sponsoring the Copy­ right Town Meeting on Intellectual Prop­ erty and Multimedia in the Digital Age. I registered w eeks b efore for the Septem ber 24 m eeting was to be held in the Celeste Bartos Forum o f the New York Public Li­ brary. O f course, the Septem ber 11 attacks on the World Trade Center changed a lot o f things, and I exp ected to find that the copyright town m eeting in New York City would be cancelled or at least rescheduled. That was not the case. After a few days of back and forth exchanges o f e-mails, the NINCH organizers decided to go on with the m eeting as planned. Security was tight at the New York Pub­ lic Library, with attendees required to pass through metal detectors and undergo a bag search b efore entering the Celeste Bartos Forum. Paul LeClerc, president o f the New A b o u t t h e a u t h o r Francis Poole is librarian/coordinator o f media services at the University o f Delaware, e-mail: fpoole@udel.edu mailto:fpoole@udel.edu C&RL News ■ March 2002 / 183 York Public Library, welcomed the 150 or so attendees (out of some 350 who had prereg­ istered) and thanked those from out o f town for coming to New York in the wake of the September 11 tragedy. Among the attendees was ALA Past-President Nancy Kranich from New York University. In te lle c tu a l p r o p e r ty r ig h t s The main issues of discussion at the Septem­ ber town meeting involved the assets and intellectual property rights o f multimedia materials. The program was divided into two sessions: a morning panel to discuss rights of intellectual property owners in the digital environment and an afternoon panel on in­ tellectual property users in the digital envi­ ronment. Peter Kaszi, professor in the Wash­ ington College of Law at American University, gave the morning keynote address. Panelists were Ryan Craig of Warburg Pincus; Adam Eisgrau, principal and director of the Wexler Group; and Don Waters, program officer at the A. Mellon Foundation. Linda Tadic, manager of the digital library at HBO and past-president of the Association o f Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), gave the afternoon keynote address. The panelists were, Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Wis­ consin at Madison; Howard Besser, associate professor at UCLA; and E. Jane White, direc­ tor of the International Children’s Digital Li­ brary. The panel representing the interests of intellectual property owners primarily tried to make a case for protecting the rights o f the owners of copyrighted materials against un­ authorized use of works which might nega­ tively affect their clients’ ability to obtain prof­ its from such use. Digitizing multimedia ma­ terials and making them accessible on the Internet without compensation for such use obviously was a concern for them, as well as for the owners of rights and assets of such materials. The panel explained the difference between physical ownership of a copyrighted item and the intellectual property rights in­ herent in the contents of the item. These pan­ elists, some of whom are attorneys, repre­ sented the copyright owners lobby in Wash­ ington, D.C. The afternoon panel, representing the in­ terests of intellectual property users, tried to make a case for reasonable access to multi­ media materials in diverse collections through digitization and network applications. Tadic gave a broad overview of the com­ plicated nature of multimedia materials when trying to determine the various assets that may be protected by copyright. For example, as­ sets in a film or video may include the book or play on which it is based, the script or screenplay, music and other audio, text, ani­ mation and special effects, and in the case of CD-ROMs, CD-Videos, or DVDs, any interac­ tive components. Identifying who owns an asset can be very difficult as there are no co p y rig h t cle a rin g h o u s e s fo r film and video. Copyright search services can cost hundreds o f dollars per hour. T h u s far, n o a g r e e m e n t h as b e e n reached betw een producers and users as to what constitutes fair use of multimedia m aterials. For exam ple, there has b een debate and discussion about how m uch of a film or video could be digitized and used without perm ission in a teaching situation via the Web without infringing on copy­ right; the lengths debated ranged from 30 seconds to 3 minutes o f an entire program. Unfortunately, librarians, educators, and other intellectual property users are left with the fact that this is still a touchy issue and has yet to be resolved to anyone’s sat­ isfaction. L e g i s l a t i v e is s u e s There was a discussion o f the Digital Mil­ lennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 and how it has made things more confusing and restrictive for intellectual property us­ ers. Though, in principle, the DMCA e n ­ dorsed the fair use exem ption and its co n ­ tinuation in the digital age, it com plicated the issue in other ways, such as with s e c ­ tion 1201, know n as the “thou shalt not hack ” anticircumvention provision. Another problematic piece o f legislation is the Sonny B o n o Copyright Term Exten­ sion Act o f 1998, which severely limited the public domain by extending the term o f copyright protection (in most cases to life plus 70 years). The intellectual prop­ erty users’ panel expressed the hope that the DMCA would soon be replaced by new law. Other legislative issues still current in­ clude the Uniform Computer Information 184 / C&RL News ■ March 2002 Transactions Act (UCITA). UCITA is a p ro­ posed state contract law developed to regu­ late transactions in intangible goods, such as computer software, online databases, multi- media products, computer data and databases, online information, and other information products in digital form. It was designed to create uniform commercial contract law for these products and calls itself “a cyberspace commercial statute.” According to ALA, UCITA would, in ef­ fect, intersect federal copyright law. Its ratifi­ cation could make it much more difficult for libraries to negotiate licenses that allow for the broadest use rights possible, including the right to lend, preserve, and make fair use of a work. UCITA is strongly opposed by the library community. The Copyright and Fair Use Town Meet­ ing on Intellectual Property and Multimedia in the Digital Age was a very useful and in­ structive forum. It is obvious that there is still a great deal of confusion, ignorance even, about the very basics o f copyright and fair use and o f how the Internet is likely to change and complicate them even further. A special thanks should go to the New York Public Library for its wonderful show o f hos­ pitality during a difficult time. More inform ation on NINCH and the Copyright Town Meetings is on the Web at http:// www.ninch.org. ■ ( “In tern et R eso u r c es” c o n tin u e d f r o m p a g e 179) covered elsewhere. Access: http://www.sci.fi/ -phinn web/links/philosophy. html. • P o st W orld W ar II A m erican Litera­ tu re an d C ulture D atabase: G enres. Spon­ sored by the University o f California, Berke­ ley, English Department, this site includes sections on bibliographies, postmodernism, feminism, multiculturalism, queer, and popu­ lar culture. The bibliography section of this site is searchable. This resource is particu­ larly useful for its links to theoretical studies o f contemporary American authors. A ccess: h ttp :/ / e n g lis h .b e r k e le y .e d u / P o s tw a r / genres.html. • Sites o f Significance fo r Sem iotics. This site provides access to essays, glossa­ ries, and online resources related to semiotics. A ccess: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/ as-sa/EngSeml.html. Also useful for this topic is David Chandler’s Semiotics for Beginners at http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/ S4B/semiotic. html. • Studies R esou rces: Fem in ist T heory. Compiled and edited by Karla Tonella at the University of Iowa, this extensive resource site offers access to articles, bibliographies, and societies, as well as reviews of feminist theory books and images of women philoso­ phers. A ccess: http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/ wstudies/theory. html. E le c t r o n ic jo u r n a ls • CT T h eory. This weekly online peri­ odical, an international journal of theory, tech­ nology, and culture, provides articles, inter­ views, and book reviews in contemporary discourse. Past articles o f the journal are searchable and readers can make a request to receive each issue automatically. A ccess: http://www.ctheory.com/. • C ultural Logic: An E le ctro n ic J o u r ­ n a l o f M arxist T h e o ry an d P ra ctice . This full-text online journal offers articles on Marx­ ist theory and practice, as well as feature ar­ ticles, poetry, and b o o k reviews. A ccess: http://eserver.org/clogic/. • O th er Voices: T he (e )Jo u rn a l o f Cul­ tu ral Criticism . A full-text publication issued free by the University of Pennsylvania, Other Voices publishes essays, interviews, round­ table discussions, lecture transcriptions, mul­ timedia projects, translations, and reviews devoted to cultural criticism in the arts and humanities. A ccess: http://www.othervoices. org/. • P o s tm o d e rn C u ltu re. Issued since 1990, this e n tirely W eb-b ased scholarly journal presents an interdisciplinary ap­ proach to contem porary culture, theory, and the humanities. The current issue and previous issues, w hich include essays and b o o k review s, can b e accessed in a free text-only archive, but the complete search­ able text with graphics is also available on P ro je c t M use. A c c e s s : h ttp :/ / je ffe rs o n . village.virginia.edu/pmc/. ■ http://www.ninch.org http://www.sci.fi/ http://english.berkeley.edu/Postwar/ http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/ http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/ http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/ http://www.ctheory.com/ http://eserver.org/clogic/ http://www.othervoices http://jefferson