Colleagues/ Hot Off The Press ... / How Timely ... Thanks, Molly !! /Gerry "The beauty of "Some Rights Reserved": Introducing Creative Commons to librarians, faculty, and students" C&RL News / November 2008 / Vol. 69, No. 10 / Molly Kleinman [ http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crlnews/2008/nov/be autyofsrr.cfm <http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crlnews/2008/nov/b eautyofsrr.cfm> ] Must Listen --- Author Podcast <http://www.acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/2008/11/06/acrl-podcast-the-beauty- of-some-rights-reserved/> (13:45) [ http://www.acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/2008/11/06/acrl-podcast-the-beauty-o f-some-rights-reserved/ ] These are difficult times when it comes to copyright on campus. Big music companies are suing fans, publishers are suing librarians, and the principle of "fair use" is under siege everywhere. Litigation-happy content holders have fostered a climate of fear in which every student is a music pirate and every professor a book thief. While I don't doubt that there is some copyright infringement happening on university campuses, the bigger problem by far is the chilling effect of all these lawsuits and "copyright awareness campaigns." Scholars and students are afraid to do the one thing that copyright law has intended from the beginning: "Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts"1 by creating new works and building on the works of those who came before. Every academic librarian knows at least one sad story about a professor who couldn't include necessary illustrations in her book because her publisher was worried about a copyright lawsuit, or a digitization project that couldn't get approved because the copyright status of the materials was uncertain. Additional problems result from major changes to copyright law over the last 40 years. Until recently, creators had to register their copyrights to receive protection and mark their works with a properly formatted copyright notice or the work entered automatically into the public domain, where anybody was free to reuse it however they wished. That all changed in 1978, when the United States dropped the registration requirement; since then, copyright automatically occurs the moment a work is "fixed in a tangible medium of expression." Now, every new work is copyrighted-lecture notes, e-mails, snapshots, doodles, presentation slides. And where once copyright lasted for 14 years, with the option to renew for another 14, now copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author, plus an additional 70 years after the author's death, for an average duration of more than a century. That's a very long time, and it leaves thousands of works orphaned: under copyright but without a locatable copyright holder. Between the fear and the orphans, life is hard for an ordinary academic who just wants some pictures to liven up her classroom presentations, or the student who would like to add a soundtrack to his final project. Enter Creative Commons Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that created a set of simple, easy-to-understand copyright licenses. These licenses do two things: They allow creators to share their work easily, and they allow everyone to find work that is free to use without permission. The value of those two things is enormous. Before Creative Commons licenses, there was no easy way a creator could say, "Hey world! Go ahead and use my photographs, as long as you give me attribution." Similarly, there was no place for members of the public to go to find new works that they were free to reuse and remix without paying fees. Creative Commons changed all that. As it says on its Web site, "Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright-all rights reserved- and the public domain-no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work-a 'some rights reserved' copyright."2 [MORE] Happy Monday! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor Science and Technology Librarian Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 gerrymck@iastate.edu There is Nothing More Powerful Than An Idea Whose Time Has Come / Victor Hugo [ http://www.blogger.com/profile/09093368136660604490 ] Iowa: Where the Tall Corn Flows and the (North)West Wind Blows [ http://alternativeenergyblogs.blogspot.com/ ]