Fair use

Abstract: From the Publisher: Who owns your genetic information? Might it be the doctors who, in the course of removing your spleen, decode a few cells and turn them into a patented product? In 1990 the Supreme Court of California said yes, marking another milestone on the information superhighway. This extraordinary case is one of the many that James Boyle takes up in Shamans, Software, and Spleens, a timely look at the infinitely tricky problems posed by the information society. Discussing topics ranging from blackmail and insider trading to artificial intelligence (with good-humored stops in microeconomics, intellectual property, and cultural studies along the way), he has produced a penetrating social theory of the information age. Now more than ever, information is power, and questions about who owns it, who controls it, and who gets to use it carry powerful implications. Boyle finds that our ideas about intellectual property rights rest on the notion of the Romantic author - a notion that Boyle maintains is not only outmoded, but actually counterproductive, restricting debate, slowing innovation, and widening the gap between rich and poor nations. What emerges from this lively discussion is a compelling argument for relaxing the initial protection of authors' works and expanding the concept of the fair use of information.

Abstract: ONE Of the more controversial questions in copyright law today concerns the proper scope of protection for unpublished works, such as letters, diaries, journals, reports, or drafts that the copyright owner may publish in the future. The question is not whether such works are copyrightable, for they surely are. Rather, it is whether such works should be given, as they are today, stronger copyright protection than published or widely disseminated works. Interest in this area of copyright law is the result of several recent and widely discussed cases. In Harper & Row v. Nation Interprises,' an unnamed source provided the Nation magazine with galleys of the soon-to-be published memoirs of Gerald Ford. Paraphrasing and quoting from the memoirs, the Nation rushed into print what it believed to be a "hot" article on Ford's decision to pardon Richard Nixon. Harper & Row had earlier sold prepublication rights to Time magazine for $25,000, but, after the Nation's article appeared, Time canceled its contract to publish excerpts from the forthcoming memoirs. In ruling against the Nation, the Supreme Court held that the unpublished nature of the work was a key factor negating a defense of fair use. Two more recent cases involved the rights of biographers to quote

Abstract: Random distribution has dealt me a generous share of copyright suits involving claims of fair use. The court of appeals' disagreement with two of my decisions' provoked some rethinking, which revealed that my own decisions had not adhered to a consistent theory, and, more importantly, that throughout the development of the fair use doctrine, courts had failed to fashion a set of governing principles or values. Is this because no rational defining values exist, or is it rather that judges, like me, have repeatedly adjudicated upon ad hoc perceptions of justice without a permanent framework? This commentary suggests that a cogent set of governing principles exists and is soundly rooted in the objectives of the copyright law. Not long after the creation of the copyright by the Statute of Anne of I709,2 courts recognized that certain instances of unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted material, first described as \"fair abridgment ,\" later \"fair use,\" would not infringe the author's rights. 3 In the United States, the doctrine was received and eventually incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976, which provides that \"the fair use of a copyrighted work. .. is not an infringement of copyright.\" 4 What is most curious about this doctrine is that neither the decisions that have applied it for nearly 300 years, nor its eventual statutory formulation, undertook to define or explain its contours or objectives. In Folsom v. Marsh, 5 in 1841, Justice Story articulated an often-cited summary of how to approach a question of fair use: \"In short, we must often. .. look to the nature and objects of the selections made, the quantity and value of the materials used, and the degree in which the use may prejudice the sale, or diminish the profits, or supersede the objects, of the original work.\" 6 The 1976 Copyright Act largely adopted his summary. 7 These formulations,

Abstract: Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web provides for the first time a plainspoken and thorough introduction to the web for historians-teachers and students, archivists and museum curators, professors as well as amateur enthusiasts-who wish to produce online historical work or to build upon and improve the projects they have already started in this important new medium. The book takes the reader step by step through planning a project, understanding the technologies involved and how to choose the appropriate ones, designing a site that is both easy to use and scholarly, digitizing materials in a way that makes them web-friendly while preserving their historical integrity, and reaching and responding to an intended audience effectively. It also explores the repercussions of copyright law and fair use for scholars in a digital age and examines more cutting-edge web techniques involving interactivity, such as sites that use the medium to solicit and collect historical artifacts. Finally, the book provides basic guidance for ensuring that the digital history the reader creates will not disappear in a few years. Throughout, Digital History maintains a realistic sense of the advantages and disadvantages of putting historical documents, interpretations, and discussions online. The authors write in a tone that makes Digital History accessible to those with little knowledge of computers, while including a host of details that more technically savvy readers will find helpful. And although the book focuses particularly on historians, those working in related fields in the humanities and social sciences will also find this to be a useful introduction. Digital History builds upon more than a decade of experience and expertise in creating pioneering and award-winning work by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.