Elon Musk Says SpaceX Photos Are Now Fully Public Domain

from the thanks-elon dept

In early February, we put out an open letter to Elon Musk, asking him to put SpaceX’s photos into the public domain, noting that it was a shame that those photos would be locked up until long after we were all dead. NASA’s photos are all in the public domain. While I’m extremely excited about the things that private spaceflight can accomplish — it would be unfortunate if part of the deal was that we lost a great source of public domain imagery. Last week, the company started releasing its photos under a Creative Commons license, which was definitely a big step forward. However, we noted that we were still disappointed that it wasn’t a pure public domain dedication, and in fact had a “non-commercial” restriction. So we once again asked if Musk might consider going that one step further to the public domain.

Over the weekend, he did just that:

Extra kudos to Elon Musk for recognizing the issue and making the decision so quickly. Of course, the above is not entirely accurate. For reasons that are beyond me, Flickr does not offer a CC0 Public Domain dedication as an option on photos, so it looks like SpaceX has switched the photos to CC BY 2.0, basically removing the non-commercial restriction, but still requiring attribution. Still, given Musk’s public statement, it seems likely that the company has no intention to enforce even that restriction.

One separate note: I was a bit surprised by the number of comments on our last story that seemed to indicate that it was absolutely crazy of me to dare to suggest that a private company put photographic works into the public domain. This is unfortunate. It is depressing how much the myth that everything needs to be “owned” has become pervasive in society, often due to the false claims made by legacy industries. Freeing up works so that the public can benefit from them has tremendous global benefits, even for the private interests who put those works into the public domain. Elon Musk recognized this with Tesla’s patents, and he appears to be doing the same with SpaceX’s photos as well.

And, yes, freeing these photos likely will come back to benefit SpaceX as well. It will enable others to take those works and build off of them, perhaps doing research or publications that will increase the demand for SpaceX’s services in launching things (and, eventually, people) into space. And those benefits are likely to be much more valuable than whatever SpaceX might have gotten in a “license” deal for a few photos to some commercial source.

It’s astounding to me the short-term, narrow-visioned view of the world some people have, in which they think licensing is the answer to everything, not recognizing just how much innovation and freedom it naturally suppresses.

Oh, and since I can now do this without any worry, here are a couple of great SpaceX photos, that Musk says are in the public domain. Enjoy!

Filed Under: creative commons, elon musk, photos, public domain, space
Companies: spacex

SpaceX Photos Now Using Creative Commons License… But With Restrictions

from the almost,-but-not-quite dept

Last month, we noted how unfortunate it was that, unlike NASA photos which are automatically in the public domain, photos taken by private space company SpaceX, would be covered by copyright. We asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to declare SpaceX’s photos in the public domain. The company has not quite done so, but has now agreed to offer them up under a restrictive Creative Commons license, as reported by Jason Koebler at Vice’s Motherboard. SpaceX has put up a Flickr feed with the images, but is unfortunately using a CC BY-NC 2.0 license, meaning that it bars commercial use.

This is, certainly, better than nothing, and better than locking down the photos entirely. But, it is still problematic, in that barring commercial use could limit the ability of important analysis by companies. Yes, it also stops some company coming in and trying to publish a book or sell those photos, but is that really a big concern by SpaceX? Why should the company even be worried about that? It seems like this is a case where SpaceX would be better off using a CC0 public domain dedication to make it clear that the images are available however people want (or, at the very least dropping the “commercial” use restriction).

Again, Elon Musk has recognized the value of completely freeing Tesla’s patents, which are certainly a lot more central to Tesla’s business than SpaceX’s photos — so hopefully the company will continue to move towards freeing these images as well.

Filed Under: creative commons, elon musk, nasa, photos, public domain, space
Companies: spacex

Elsevier Appears To Be Slurping Up Open Access Research, And Charging People To Access It

from the because-elsevier-is-so-nice dept

Oh, Elsevier. The publishing giant has quite the reputation for its desire to stop people from sharing knowledge unless Elsevier can put up a toll booth. A huge number of academics have signed pledges to boycott Elsevier and not allow their works to be published by the company. Also, in the last few years, there’s been a rapid growth in open access and requirements that research be distributed for free (often under a Creative Commons license).

Almost exactly a year ago, we had a story about Elsevier charging for open access content, and apparently the company hasn’t gotten any better. Ross Mounce recently noticed that Elsevier appeared to be selling a paper on HIV infection for $31.50 + tax (after which you have just 24 hours to download it, or just kiss that money goodbye):

The problem, however, is that the paper was actually published by competing publisher Wiley under an open access Creative Commons license (and is available free of charge on its website). The key author on the paper, Didier Raolt told Mounce that he had no idea why Elsevier was selling his paper, and that he had not given permission. The paper is under a Creative Commons license, but it’s a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. And while I’m not a fan of NC/ND licenses, it’s pretty clear that this license does not allow someone to step in and start selling the paper.

When confronted about this, someone from Elsevier, Alicia Wise, tweeted a nonsensical response:

If you can’t read that, it says:

the journal is in transition from Wiley to Elsevier; will check on transition status

But that’s meaningless. If the paper is being published under an open access license, even if somehow that journal is being transferred, then Elsevier should still be publishing it under open access terms. And, considering that the document was just published recently, you’d think that the author on the paper would know something about this. Once again, it looks like Elsevier is just giving open access a giant middle finger.

Filed Under: copyright, creative commons, open access
Companies: elsevier, wiley

Ford Foundation Joins Hewlett Foundation And Gates Foundation In Requiring Research They Fund To Be Released Under CC BY Licenses

from the no-public-domain? dept

Over the last few months, a bunch of big foundations have officially stated that all research that they fund via their grants now has to be placed under an open Creative Commons license such as the CC BY license that says that the information can be freely shared and copied, even for commercial purposes, with the only restriction being that you have to attribute the content to the original authors. In September of last year, the Hewlett Foundation kicked it off when it announced that it was requiring CC BY licensing on all content that it funded, followed in November by the Gates Foundation making a similar announcement. And, this week, the Ford Foundation has done the same:

The Ford Foundation announced today that it is adopting an open licensing policy for all grant-funded projects and research to promote greater transparency and accessibility of materials. Effective February 1, grantees and consultants will be required to make foundation-funded materials subject to a Creative Commons license allowing others, free of charge and without requesting permission, the ability to copy, redistribute, and adapt existing materials, provided they give appropriate credit to the original author.

The Ford Foundation has long supported transparency?including open licensing, which is an alternative to the traditional ?all rights reserved? copyright and encourages sharing intellectual property in a digital global commons. By moving to broadly disseminate a large amount of educational and research materials resulting from its funding, the foundation hopes to make its work and the work of its grantees more accessible and ultimately, increase its impact.

This is absolutely awesome, and hopefully more Foundations will follow suit. It would be nice if these foundations also offered up the opportunity to use a CC0 public domain dedication as an alternative (which goes even further than the CC BY license), but that seems like nitpicking for the most part.

Frankly this is great for a few different reasons. First, we’ve discussed the importance of open access and information sharing as it relates to research — and it’s still depressing how much important research gets locked up behind paywalls and stringent copyright enforcement. Second, increasing the amount of work, in general, that is freely shareable can only lead to that work being much more useful to — and used by — others who are looking to build on that work and do great things with it. Third, just in getting more people to realize that — contrary to what some maximalists like to pitch in their propaganda — not everything needs to be locked up to be valuable.

Kudos to these foundations for taking a stand.

Filed Under: cc by, creative commons, foundations, funding, grants, open access, research
Companies: ford foundation, gates foundation, hewlett foundation

Flickr Plans To Sell Creative Commons Photos And That's Okay…

from the permissionless-culture-is-okay dept

There appear to be a lot of people up in arms over Flickr’s announced plans to sell wall art prints of various Creative Commons-licensed images on the site. The uproar is mostly because people who chose a license like Creative Commons’ attribution license, and not a “non-commercial” license are not going to see any money from any images that Flickr (owned by Yahoo) sells. And that leads to angry posts like this one arguing that selling the work is “cheesy, desperate and not at all fine with me.”

Except… the license that was chosen says that, yes, this is fine with you. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Flickr/Yahoo’s decision was smart. The way it’s being done appears to be upsetting lots of people, and upsetting the core people who make your service work is — generally speaking — not smart. But this leads to a bigger issue, one that is highlighted nicely in a post on all of this by Tom Lee, in which he notes that part of open licensing is giving up control so that others can benefit. And this is a key point that is missed by many, unfortunately:

Open licensing is about giving up control so that other people can benefit. That?s all it will cost you: control. Having control feels nice. But you should ask yourself what it really gets you. And you should think about what others might gain if you were able to let go.

Furthermore, he notes that what Flickr is doing here really will benefit lots of folks:

Flickr?s sale of prints does not deprive photographers of their work or money. Users have the same ability to use their work that they always had. The vast majority would never have taken the steps necessary to profit from their work, so print sales do not deprive them of money. When a user really expects to sell prints, they should avoid Creative Commons licensing, which, as I?ve mentioned, is easily done.

Flickr?s sale of prints provides benefits to other people. People who work for and own Flickr make money. The vendors producing and delivering the prints make money. And people who buy prints get to enjoy works of art.

Parker Higgins posted some further thoughts on Twitter that are worth noting as well. Many of the people who are upset about this are angry that Yahoo didn’t ask them about this first. But as Higgins notes, that’s just bringing back the idea of permission-based culture, rather than recognizing that a big part of the value of Creative Commons (or any other such open license system or public domain) is getting beyond permission culture and recognizing that in giving up control, there are lots of benefits.

Free culture licenses aren't supposed to flag that you're a cooperative player in permissions culture. They're supposed to do the opposite.

— Parker Higgins (@xor) December 1, 2014

Now, one could make a reasonable cultural argument that Yahoo/Flickr should have approached this situation with more caution — recognizing how some people would likely respond to this, no matter how reasonable or legal it is. If I were in charge of the program at Yahoo, that likely would have been my approach. But, the troubling end result of this is that it may just lead more people to slap a “non-commercial” license on their Creative Commons works, greatly limiting the kinds of benefits that are out there, without providing any real benefit to themselves. In some ways, this gets to the heart of the problems we’ve noted with Creative Commons in the past — especially the fact that many incorrectly assume that all CC-licensed material is only for non-commercial use. It’s also why we think there’s a strong argument that Creative Commons should either drop or totally rebrand the non-commercial offering, so that this branding confusion is dealt with. The anger in this situation is just a rehash of that branding confusion — and the end result is that it reinforces this idea of “permissions” culture, rather than highlighting the benefits of sharing culture without first needing permission — even if for commercial reasons.

Filed Under: attribution, copyright, creative commons, flickr, non-commercial, photos, sales
Companies: flickr, yahoo

Another Reason For Moving To Open Access: Encouraging Scientific Debates

from the it's-good-to-share dept

Techdirt has written often enough about how copyright is used to censor criticism. QuestionCopyright.org has an interesting post that offers a variation on that theme: copyright getting in the way of a scientific debate.

A band of researchers has been tirelessly trying to demonstrate that a body of scientific work which rests on a paper from over 10 years ago is completely wrong. The only problem is, their argument isn’t being allowed to stand or fall on its merits — instead, copyright restrictions are interfering with their ability to make their case at all.

The issue is that in order to make their case, the researchers need to re-use figures from one of the papers they are questioning. Unfortunately, fair use doesn’t necessarily help here, because the journal publishing their new paper, Public Library of Science (PLOS) ONE, uses the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license for all its material. Fair use cannot be used to change the license under which the images are released — only the copyright holders can do that, which means the latter are effectively able to block their republication in PLOS ONE:

[The publisher] Wiley has responded … saying that while they’ll allow re-use with no fee under standard copyright, they won’t simply relicense the images to be compatible with PLOS ONE’s non-restrictive distribution policy. (What Wiley actually says is that they are “unable to change [the images’] copyright status”, which is simply false.) It isn’t yet clear how this will be resolved. Offering the image at no fee for this one use is not a particularly helpful move on Wiley’s part: the restrictions would still be quite onerous, because Wiley’s one-off exception would not be passed along to PLOS ONE’s readers ? instead, they too would have to ask Wiley for permission if they wanted to use the figures in a scientific critique… and so on, ad infinitum.

But over on the Scholary Communications blog at Duke University, Kevin Smith doesn’t think that’s the case:

the claim that you cannot include material used as fair use in a CC-licensed article is bogus. In fact, it happens all the time. I simply do not believe that no one who publishes in PLoS journals ever quotes from the text of a prior publication; the ubiquitous academic quotation, of course, is the most common form of fair use, and I am sure PLoS publishes CC-licensed articles that rely on that form of fair use every day. The irony of this situation is that it points out that PLoS is applying a standard to imagery that it clearly does not apply to text. But that differential treatment is not called for by the law or by CC licenses; fair use is equally possible for figures, illustrations and text from prior work, and the CC licenses do not exclude reliance on such fair uses.

The solution, he suggests, is the following:

I think there is a way forward here, which is for PLoS to agree to publish the article with all of the borrowings under fair use or by permission clearly marked, just as they would do if those borrowings were all in the form of textual quotations.

Others — including PLOS — may disagree. In any case, what this episode highlights is that bridging the two worlds — journals published under traditional licenses, and those using ones from Creative Commons — is not straightforward. Relying on fair use as Smith suggests may not be an acceptable solution for some researchers wishing to publish in open access titles, since they might be unhappy about the lack of legal certainty. With open access, that’s simply not an issue, since the license is explicitly designed to allow sharing — and thus healthy scientific debate — as a matter of course.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: copyright, creative commons, debate, fair use, open access, science

Intellectual Property Casebook Now Available As A Free Download

from the check-it-out dept

About a month ago I wrote about James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of the Center of the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School releasing a free download of an Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement (which normally big publishers try to sell for around $50). As noted, this was a kickoff for an even bigger project, an open coursebook in intellectual property. That Open Intellectual Property Casebook is now available. You can download the whole thing for free. If you want a nice printed copy, it’ll currently run about $24 on Amazon — which is about $135 less than other IP case books. The entire book weighs in at nearly 800 pages, so there’s a lot in there if you felt like delving into a variety of topics around copyright, trademark and patent law — including specific efforts by Congress around those laws and the way that the courts have interpreted them.

As mentioned in our last post, Boyle and Jenkins are doing this, in part, because they recognize the insane prices that academic publishers have been getting away with charging for their books:

Partly, we do it because we think the price of legal casebooks and materials is obscene. Law students, who are already facing large debt burdens, are required to buy casebooks that cost $150?$200, and ?statutory supplements? that consist mainly of unedited, public domain, Federal statutes for $40 or $50. The total textbook bill for a year can be over $1500. This is not a criticism of casebook authors, but rather of the casebook publishing system. We know well that putting together a casebook is a lot of work and can represent considerable scholarship and pedagogic innovation. We just put together this one and we are proud of it. But we think that the cost is disproportionate and that the benefit flows disproportionately to conventional legal publishers. Some of those costs might have been more justifiable when we did not have mechanisms for free worldwide and almost costless distribution. Some might have been justifiable when we did not have fast, cheap and accurate print on demand services. Now we have both. Legal education is already expensive; we want to play a small part in diminishing the costs of the materials involved.

However, they also note that it’s not just about making the books cheaper, but better and more useful:

Our point is not only that the current casebook is vastly too expensive, it is also awkward, inflexible, lacking visual stimulus, incapable of customization and hard to preview and search on the open web. Casebooks do not respond well to the different needs of different professors. Students cannot easily be given free, searchable digital access to all the materials, on all their devices, anywhere, access that does not go away when the course?or the publisher?ends. We can do that.

There are also lots of people outside of law school, or outside this country, who would like to know more about American law?just as there are people outside of computer science who want to know about artificial intelligence. Free is a good price-point for them. Customizable is a good form. This book is merely a beta-test version, but it is an example of what can be done.

In case you’re wondering, while the statutory supplement was available on a CC: BY license (requires just attribution), this casebook is under a CC: BY-NC-SA license. The key differences: the former can be resold commercially while the latter has a block on commercial uses. It also has a “share alike” requirement. While I’m a huge fan of Creative Commons, I’ve been critical of its licenses that include the non-commercial restriction and believe there are strong reasons to remove them, in part because of a perception and branding problem that people have, which potentially do more harm than good to the Creative Commons brand. Many people believe that all CC licenses are “non-commercial” which has actually limited those who wish to use them to encourage commercial use. Separately, the definition of “non-commercial” can be pretty vague (though, to its credit, Creative Commons has worked hard to clarify).

While Boyle and Jenkins are using an NC license with the casebook, I’m happy that they at least put in a note defining their interpretation of commercial use:

Editor?s note: we interpret this to mean ?providing the material above cost.? Digital cost is zero. You are free to reproduce the material in paper form and charge a fee to cover copying costs, but nothing more. This applies both to commercial and non commercial entities.

I still think it would have been fine if they’d skipped the “NC” altogether, but it does not appear to be a huge issue here. On the whole this is great news for folks who want to learn more about copyright, patents and trademark law — whether you’re a law student or just an interested bystander…

Filed Under: casebook, copyright, creative commons, education, free, free download, intellectual property casebook, ip casebook, james boyle, jennifer jenkins, law school, patents, trademark

Duke Professors Looking To Make Legal Texts Affordable; Kicking Off With Intellectual Property Law

from the make-it-so dept

James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of the Center of the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School have recognized what many people have: the academic publishing world is insane. Textbook pricing is generally insane, in part because the people who make the decision (the professors) are not the people doing the buying (the students), meaning that the buyers have little to no choice in what they buy. That enables the publishers to jack up the prices to absolutely insane rates. This even includes legal “casebooks” and “statutory supplements,” which are often composed of mostly public domain material (or, legal filings where the person who put together the book had no authorship). So Boyle and Jenkins are working on an open coursebook for intellectual property, which looks like it’s going to be fantastic.

To kick it off, however, they’ve now released an Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement, which basically has the text of various relevant laws and international agreements concerning intellectual property in the United States. A somewhat equivalent book that many law schools use will run you over $50. But the Boyle/Jenkins statutory supplement is free to download, or available for print-on-demand at cost (around $10) for law students who need paper copies and can’t bring electronic copies into classrooms. As they note in the announcement about this project:

We are motivated in part by the outrageously steep cost of legal teaching materials, (and the increasing restrictions on those materials ? such as the removal of the right of first sale). This book is intended for use with our forthcoming Intellectual Property casebook (coming in the Fall) but can also be used as a free or low cost supplement for basic Intellectual Property courses ? at the college, law school or graduate school levels. Whether or not you buy it, the free download will at the very least gives you a statutory reference book for those times when internet access is unavailable, and you just need to scratch that intellectual property research itch. The book is also available at cost of production ? about $10.50 ? as a handsomely covered paperback. Most of the current Intellectual Property Statutory & Treaty Supplements are $45-$50.

As you may recall, just a few months ago, we wrote about some well-known publishers of legal casebooks trying to undermine first sale rights by requiring students to give back books they bought in exchange for access to a digital copy (which may or may not stay online). It’s good to see folks like Boyle and Jenkins step in and recognize that there’s more to be gained by sharing knowledge and information, rather than seeking to lock it up. I hope other professors will follow suit.

Oh, and as a bonus, you owe it to yourself to read their posting on Thomas Macaulay’s famed 1841 speech about the dangers of copyright maximalism. We’ve quoted from it at times, and the famous line from it is usually how “the effect of [the copyright] monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad.” However, the entire speech is worth reading, and here they highlight a warning against copyright maximalism, in which he notes that it will lead to less respect for the law. Remember, he was saying this in 1841. Fairly prescient, huh?

At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create.

Filed Under: academic publishing, casebooks, copyright, creative commons, intellectual property, intellectual property statutory supplement, james boyle, jennifer jenkins, legal case books, patents, public domain, textbooks

Film Distributor, Copyright Enforcement Company Join Forces To Kick Creative Commons-Licensed Film Off YouTube

from the would-rather-be-fast-than-be-correct dept

Infringement takedown notices: can’t live with them, rights holders won’t let your service live without them. YouTube once again is the flashpoint, with a Creative Commons-licensed film being taken down in response to a takedown notice. The Aaron Swartz documentary, “The Internet’s Own Boy,” was briefly knocked offline by a bogus copyright claim (that it was likely an error doesn’t make it any less bogus) filed by Remove Your Media, LLC.

Brian Knappenberger, the director and producer of the film (which is also available through paid streaming services, along with other non-paid outlets like the Internet Archive), confirmed that no one on his side of the film had anything to do with it.

“It wasn’t done by us,” Knappenberger told the Daily Dot. “I’m trying to figure out [who issued the claim].”

The Daily Dot contacted Remove Your Media, which refused to offer any insight on this bogus copyright claim.

A representative for Remove Your Media, Eric Greene, refused to name the client who hired him for the takedown, though he noted it was “a distributor outside the U.S.”

Greene then deployed the most unfortunate excuse anyone can offer post-World War II.

“We were just following orders,” Greene said.

Apparently, the documentary’s foreign distributor confused CC-licensing with regular old copyright, if it even bothered to check on the film’s US distribution rights before it issued the notice. (The Internet Archive’s upload is one of the few places foreign viewers won’t run into a “Sorry, but this content is not available in your country” message.)

A representative for one of the film’s U.S. distributors attributed the takedown to “miscommunication,” and expressed confidence it would be resolved soon.

And, what do you know, it actually was. As of this point, the film has already been restored to its fully playable glory, something of an anomaly in an era when even clearly erroneous takedowns take hours or days to be reinstated — if they ever are.

On one hand, with a platform of YouTube’s size, mistakes are inevitable. On the other hand, if the DMCA provided for a notice-and-notice system, minor debacles like this could be easily averted. Instead, it’s a notice-and-takedown system that makes it all too easy to pull the trigger and let those at the other end deal with the damage. Companies attempting to protect their content are all too willing to move quickly, rather than move carefully, resulting in a lot of collateral damage — sometimes including to their own assets.

Fortunately, this was fixed quickly, and even if it wasn’t, several viewing options remain. But this is yet another indication that the ease of YouTube’s takedown system is only making things progressively worse, rather than reaching some sort of balance between YouTube users and rights holders.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, brian knappenberger, censorship, copyright, creative commons, dmca, internet's own boy, takedown
Companies: remove your media

Hypocritical Authors Guild Photocopies Author's Book While Claiming That Scanning Works Is Infringement

from the oops dept

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the big win for fair use, as the appeals court ruled against the Authors Guild and said that libraries scanning books in their collection to make a searchable index is fair use. Hilariously, the Authors Guild is in complete denial about this ruling, putting out a statement claiming it was “not a total victory for either side” and that the ruling was “narrow.” Except, that’s not true. Yes, the Court sent back a tiny part of the case, but if it wasn’t a “complete” victory for libraries, book scanning and fair use, it was, at the very least a 95% victory.

Still, the eagle-eyed sleuths at 5 Useful Articles have spotted an absolutely hilarious exchange that happened during one of the depositions in the case. The deposition was of Peter Hirtle (full disclosure: I know Hirtle a bit, and he once invited me to speak at an event, though I was unable to go — though until now I had no idea he was even a part of this case in any way). Hirtle, who has spent many years as an archivist and policy advisor for the Cornell University Library, also happens to be an author. At one point, the lawyers for the Authors Guild apparently brought in a bunch of copies of Mr. Hirtle’s book. Photocopies. I think you can see where this is going.

If you can’t read that, well, I’m just going to have to transcript it out. Lawyers Goldman and Rosenthal represent the Authors Guild, while Potter and Roth represent the Hathitrust and Cornell respectively.

MR. ROTH: I see you’ve made multiple copies of Mr. Hirtle’s book.
MR. GOLDMAN: Yes.
Mr. ROTH: That is in copyright and for sale in bookstores.
MR. GOLDMAN: Okay. Yes.
MR. POTTER: You don’t think it raises any copyright concerns?
MR. ROSENTHAL: I don’t think this is an appropriate question.
MR. GOLDMAN: No, I think it’s also — I’m not even going to engage in that.
MR. ROTH: Note our objection. These books could have been purchased. And given the subject matter of the lawsuit, it’s quite ironic that you’d be using multiple copies of a book in copyright.
MR. GOLDMAN: It’s published under a creative commons license. It’s not attribution and noncommercial.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Why don’t we just destroy the copy that we gave Mr. Hirtle’s lawyer and to anybody else in the room who wants a copy other than the one we marked for the thing. If they really don’t want to have copies for purposes of fairness in the deposition, then we’ll just get rid of the extra copies. That’s fine. You want us to take back Mr. Potter’s copy and destroy it?
MR. ROTH: I’m not going to give you advice.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Okay. I’m going to take these — let the record show I’m taking these extra copies and I’m going to put them in our shredder which is in the next room. Anybody who wants to come watch me do it, may be welcome to come do it. And no one has even looked at those. So there you go.
MR. POTTER: I guess if no one else looks at something, it’s not infringement? That’s an interesting theory.

That last line is the real zinger — since a big part of the Authors Guild’s argument in the lawsuit was that even if no one looks at the scanned works, it’s still infringement merely because they made a copy. And, yes, the Creative Commons license around the book certainly suggests that the Authors Guild’s lawyers did not, in fact, infringe on Hirtle’s copyright, but it does show, yet again, how frequently it seems that copyright maximalists rush to easily copy something when it suits their needs.

I’m reminded, of course, of that time when the MPAA was caught making unauthorized copies of the film, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which skewered the MPAA and its practices. The MPAA, in that case, insisted that it could make such copies “because it had implications for our employees.” Yet, this was the same MPAA that insisted that “all forms of piracy are illegal and carry serious legal consequences.” It also was going around at the time telling school children “if you haven’t paid for it, you’ve stolen it.” And its former boss, Jack Valenti, once (incorrectly) insisted that fair use doesn’t exist.

There’s something deeper here. People copy stuff all the time, because it’s a natural and normal thing to do. People make copies because it’s convenient and it serves a purpose — and quite often they know that doing so causes no harm in those situations. This is an intrinsic understanding. It’s so intrinsic that folks at the MPAA and Authors Guild do it without even realizing it. But it’s part of what makes their hardline position so ridiculous.

Filed Under: book scanning, copies, copyright, creative commons, peter hirtle
Companies: authors guild, hathitrust