Weeks 12 & 13 - Copyright & Fair Use - A Fair(y) Use Tale
Overview
I will divide the class into two teams, a plaintiff and defense, and everyone will take on roles. Scheduling logistics will be difficult but not impossible. As you see on this trial guide, there will be "speaking" roles for five people on each side. Those who do not have speaking roles will serve on the jury. Everyone will also have a written assignment.
During Weeks 12 and 13, we will focus on learning the material needed to know for the trial. We will also figure out logistics.
Copyright & Fair Use: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Both copyright and fair use are rights. Writers have the right to protect their intellectual property, and users have the right to use that material fairly. Frequently, these rights compete.
Copyright is a principle established in the US Constitution and designed to balance the interests of innovation and individualism. It was thought that copyright would promote innovation by allowing creators to own their creations. And if one owns something, one can gain commercial and other benefits from it. On the other hand, if owners could permanently and exclusively own their creations, creativity would be limited. Thus, copyright law establishes time limits on ownership and permits the fair use of copyrighted materials.
The Issue of Open or Public Access
With the advent of the Internet, an important issue is open access. Open access was much different when print was the only medium available. Printing something required resources, and it may have seemed more clear that the investment of those resources required protecting. But now that the Internet enables access for essentially no cost, then the question is—what should be protected? What should be open?
The question of open access has particular relevance in the legal field because up until very recently, there was no way to access legal material – which is, after all, government activity – except through the expensive print and online publications produced by proprietary companies like West and Lexis. As I briefly touched on with the citation unit, we are in the midst of a transformation of the access model. Almost all jurisdictions are moving to an open access, venue-neutral form of publication. It is now possible to obtain virtually all legal materials through open access means. But the research materials available for free like Google Scholar are significantly less robust than those available from commercial vendors.
Intellectual property law is a specialty of law and somewhat complicated. So we’re just going to skim the surface in this unit. But I hope you’ll end up with a basic understanding as you go forward in your writing lives.
Fair Use
This infographic was developed by the Association for Research Librarians (ARL) for its 2016 Fair Use Week. Click on the images for a link to their site (page 1) or a pdf version (page 2).
Reading and Resources
1. Watch this video demonstrating a variety of use of copyrighted materials. You will need to watch this for the discussion this week.
2. Read and listen to the first four "Copyright in 90 Seconds" podcasts at Denison University's Copyright and Fair Use page
3. Watch this short video, "Fair Use in 7 Words":
4. Read and bookmark these pages:
- Copyright FAQ: https://www.teachingcopyright.org/handout/copyright-faq.html
- Fair Use FAQ: https://www.teachingcopyright.org/handout/fair-use-faq.html
- Public Domain FAQ: https://www.teachingcopyright.org/handout/public-domain-faq.html
[These FAQ pages are from the Teaching Copyright website, a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation]
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5. For further exploration: Copyright and Fair Use, at Stanford University Libraries. Check out the "Charts and Tools" page for many informative resources.
6. For further exploration: "Owning the Past," by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, on the Digital History website.
Activities
- Participate in a check-in Tuesday discussion in Bb.
- Participate in 12.1 discussion on use of copyrighted materials. Start by Thursday and complete by Sunday.