Librarians to the Rescue

Duke Machesne writes "Citing concerns over materials being distributed to American students by the BSA, MPAA, and RIAA's evil minions, the American Library Association will begin distributing its own, more balanced material this winter. The material will deal with insignificant and oft-overlooked details like fair use. More information on Wired News."

Comments

Go librarians!

[Elpacoloco]

Apparently, publishers don't like libraries. It decreases sales of their book.

However, it massively accelerates research. Clearly a good thing.

(Mod me down, this post is stupid.)

Re:Go librarians!

[wfberg]

Apparently, publishers don't like libraries. It decreases sales of their book.

On the other hand, it massively decreases incentives to set up efficient second hand marketplaces for books. After all, first doctrine means the publisher never gets money for "used" books getting read by their new owners anyway.
And if a library doesn't offer the latest Stephen King, romance novel or in a nutshell, a lot of people end up buying a new copy..

Having said that, they're always working their evil little ways to get libraries to pay for lending out books or having copying machines.. When you have a dead poet's estate prohibiting a poetry festival from "performing" his poems, you know the system's gone mad.

Re:Go librarians!

[Sparr0]

i tend to use resources on the web to write my papers. then ill go to the library to find the books the web site cites and cite them.

well

[Anonymous Coward]

don't get too excited slashbots... balance in this case is 80% closer to the RIAA and MPAA side than what you think balanced is. Use your computer for something useful, like reading up on copyright laws, and why we have copyrights.

Re:well

[tomhudson]

either that or...

our children will grow up with no capability for creative thought, as that will violate some copyright somewhere somehow, and we know what that leads to.

I seem to recall a recent sci-fi short story along those lines in one of the monthy anthologies. Stuff taught from textbooks with all sorts of copyright notices, and you could only be taught material that was he clear property of some copyright holder somewhere, for fear of "submarine lawsuits" for copyright infringement.

Let's hope this is one case where sci-fi is more to provoke thought than to predict the future.

Re:well

[Alsee]

Wow, a strawman attack and you didn't even need to waste time setting up a strawman argument to attack! What a time saver!

balance in this case is 80% closer to the RIAA and MPAA side than what you think balanced is

Are you talking about balance as in giving a fair and honest explanation of existing copyright law, or balanced as in what balanced law should be? Not that it matters because the RIAA/MPAA/BSA fail on both accounts. Their "educational program" is pure propaganda to push an agenda. They have no interest in giving an accurate and balanced picture of copyright law. They ignore or misrepresent any aspect of copyright law which does not support their agenda, and they simplify and overgeneralize any portion of copyright law which does support their agenda.

Oh yes, those eeeevil librarians are dong this to spread disinformation and lies to undercut the MPAA/RIAA/BSA's fair and balanced message. It's all part of the eeeevil librarians' plot to brainwash our children and conquer the world! Muahahahaha!

As for what balance law should be, well things would be a lot closer to balanced if we simply repealed a couple of rotten laws the copyright lobby has bought in the last few years. The DMCA, NET, Sony Bono, AHRA, and one or two others. If we were to include state laws I think there were a few statyes stupid enough to pass Super-DMCA bills, and two that bought into the UCITA.

But of cource that makes me some some evil anti-copyright nutjob because I want good old traditional copyright. A-yup. I'm an evil anachist for wanting the perfectly good laws we used to have.

And actually there's a rather unlikely item I'd like to add to the list of bad copyright law, though I have to stretch waaaaay back to 1976. And what item would that be? TITLE 17 CHAPTER 1 Sec. 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use.

Yes, that's right, I want the Fair Use clause stripped out of US law.

Why? Because it's redundant and it has led to widespread missunderstanding of fair use. You could strike that clause from the law and fair use would not change one wit! If you check the cogressional record when it was first passed they stated it was intended to reflect existing fair use, and that it was not intended to expand, restrict, or alter existing fair use in any way whatsoever!

Since Section 107 of the law describes fair use, many people have the mistaken impression that that law somehow grants, defines, and restricts fair use. They have the mistaken impression that fair use can be altered/restricted/eliminated simply by rewriting that law. That is incorrect. Fair use existed before that law existed, therefore it cannot be that law which created fair use.

You you actually read that clause carefully, it does not place any limitations on fair use at all! In fact what it says is that fair use is whatever the courts say it is. It merely lists examples of fair use, and gives a minimum list of factors to consider in determining fair use.

If you read the history of copyright law, fair use was established by the courts on constitutional grounds from the very beginning. It was repeatedly found that copyright law would be unconstitutional if it actually attempted to impose the sweeping restrictions it claims to impose. Rather than striking down copyright law as invalid, the court bent over backwards to assume that copyright law implicitly never even attempts to apply in cases of fair use. That copyright willingly flees in the face of fair use.

It is not copyright law which grants and defines and restricts fair use. It is fair use which rescues copyright law from being struck down as unconstitutional.

Where fair use treads copyright is entirely swept away.

The fact that fair use was written into law in 1976 in section 107 has led many people to false beliefes about fair use. Rather than acknowledging and protecting fair use rights as intended, section 1

Another "Yay Go Librarians" Article

[LordStrange]

...by Kurt Vonnegut I Love You, Madame Librarian

Re:Another "Yay Go Librarians" Article

[jburroug]

You're not familar with Vonnegut are you? He was, in his own imcomparable way, being sarcastic and satirical in that essay. He didn't compare all christians to Nazis either, he did point out that Bush calls himself a christian just as Hitler did, with the implication that just because one calls himself a good christian person doesn't make it so. Nor did he compare the actions of the US Army to those of the Wehrmacht or the SS, he's comparing the way people in the world today feel about American forces to how people felt about the Nazi's during/before WWII.

And Vonnegut knows a thing or two about Nazis and of war. He's a WWII veteran and was a POW in Dresden during the firebombing raids. His novel, Slaughter House Five is an account of that experience.

Vonnegut's style is to use extreme, often absurd and bizarre examples, as well as satire, to present his theme. Granted it's more effective in novel form than in essay form, unless you're already familar with his work and know what to expect. To the uninitiated this essay, if not read carefully, could come across as the liberal equivilant of an Ann Coulture essay, but trust me there's far more substance there. I would personally suggest picking up a copy of Mother Night or The Sirens of Titan (his first book) as good starting points if you want to read any of his books. Slaughter House Five is very personal and quite painful at times, so I woudln't recomend reading that until you've tackeled a couple of his other novels.

Micheal Moore is a chump compared to Vonnegut.

Finally, some good news.

[sexybomber]

What a refreshing break from "Your rights are being diminished." "Bush is on the warpath." "SCO is being generally evil."

A Canadian Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Soviet Canuckistan, we have the right to borrow a CD from a friend, make a copy for ourselves, and then return the CD.

Does the same apply with libraries? And what about DVDs? (IE, am I in the clear if I go to my university library, take out a whole slew of Woody Allen movies, and then rip them to my computer before I return them?)

Not even needed at most schools

[ShatteredDream]

At many schools the attitude is already decidedly against those groups. At my university, James Madison University in Virginia, AudioGalaxy usage was so high that we almost had our own self-contained AG system because that's how many local users had that many mp3s to share. The university only eventually busted users for bandwidth abuse when it got to the point that people in certain dorms couldn't even really use basic online university services like webmail.

Our CS program is also basically MS free and we're starting to get some real recognition by the NSA and DoHS for our information security work. Most of the CS and many of the other classes I've seen outside the department also are pretty hostile toward the views of these groups.

Good work, thanks libraries. However, the situation is much better on most campuses than many would believe.

Go ALA

[wrathcretin]

Not quite familiar with the ALA, but up here in Canada, my library rents out books. It has a couple of small shelves of hardcover new stuff that you'd get for roughly 2-3$ a week. Pretty fair. I'm sure they're paying whatever legal duties or price for those books to rent them out and you can legally read the new Steve King book without shelling out an arm and a leg. That said, I happen to find it bloody interesting that the ALA is getting involved in the whole online/copyrighted scheme of things. This is a public organization, supported by public money (ie your tax dollars) that acquires a broad amount of copyrighted material (and at my local library it extends to music cd's, film, magazines etc) intended for free public consumption. I'm liking the idea of a public library using public money to now make that content available over the internet. The ends will justify the means. Imagine how culturally enriched we could be as a society if every young person (or at least those online - which in 15 years will be all of them) who would never set foot into a library, (come on, the place is flat out boring) could actually access the entire catalogue of available material from their computer when they got bored of ebaum's world. The business world, MPAA, RIAA, BSA etc can rape us of fair use and any use of our purchased items, but I love the idea of the ALA getting involved in this, because the more the average Joe can equate the concepts of copyright with that place where you can pay 3$ for a membership and take out whatever the hell you want and pay $0.05 a day late fees, the more the general public concensus will sway towards maintaining fair use and maintaining copyright for its originally intended purposes.

Re:Bah, parents aren't doing their jobs!

[Fancia]

Religion doesn't *have* to be that, you know. There are religions which suggest critical thinking. Go back to St. Augustine in Christianity, and you'll find his *recommendation* to read non-Christian works. He was absolutely against a proclamation that banned the reading of non-Christian books by Christians.

Schools and indoctrination

[0x0d0a]

And it's even worse than that. Many of those parents knowingly hand over their children to "schools", which are institutions that also attempt to teach the children that they should share.

Schools are an interesting system -- they both indoctrinate and inform. Control of the schools is one of the most powerful long-term institutions to control.

It's not even that I dislike the BSA/RIAA/MPAA that much -- I just don't want *any* corporate marketing taking place in schools. If the BSA/RIAA/MPAA wants to fund a marketing campaign, they can certainly do so, and there are many channels that will let them target children -- but not in the schools, dammit. If schools are filled with marketing drivel, how can children trust anyone? It's not that I'm saying that people shouldn't question what they're taught in schools, but some things have to be at least accepted in the short term in order to operate, while we learn enough to find inconsistencies in arguments -- the stuff in schools is normally less trusted than than in 30 second spots between advertisements.

If the Weekly Reader wants to sell a section of their space to the BSA, I'd at least like to see them have to donate equal space to groups like the ALA and the EFF, to present kids with both sides of an issue and let them think their own way through the issues involved.

Re:I'm not enlisting in this "war"

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>I've never pirated music or software

Have you ever sung "Happy Birthday" in a restaurant?

It's still under copyright, by Summy-Birchard.

If you've performed it in a public place without paying ASCAP, you are a pirate in the eyes of the RIAA.

>it seems to me the corporations are getting much more than a fair shake.

I agree with the folks who modded your post insightful.

Re:Not suprising.

[tunabomber]

Heh, whatever. Laura Bush is a librarian. Although I guess its possible she has completely different political beliefs than her husband, but keeps her mouth shut about them in public like a good Christian housewife.

Re:The BSA?

[Alsee]

Well, almost the same thing as before. However this time with the BSA (Boy Scouts of America) - They sit around campfires singing copyrighted software without first getting written permission from the copyright owners and paying the license fees.

-

4th graders probably won't even matter

[ShatteredDream]

I remember the "don't copy that floppy" bullshit which was a lot more imaginative than the new campaign they're trying. It didn't work then, it won' work now. The ones they tried to indoctrinate last time became the "file sharing generation" for God's sake.

Re:hey, teacher, leave those kids alone

[dangermouse]

Uh, public education has ALWAYS been nothing but a tedious exercise in corporate indoctrination.

Really? That's funny, I somehow came out of public grade school (in the late 90s) both literate and reasonably well read; with a pretty good background in history; with knowledge of the basics in chemistry, biology, and physics; with mathematics through some elementary calculus; and most importantly, with a desire to learn more and knowledge of how to do so. I was neither "bored" nor "bewildered" (per your buddy Gatto) when I graduated, and somehow I doubt McDonald's gives a shit about any of the things I learned.

There's some bad shit going down in the public school system, but the root cause is not that public schools were built to fulfill some evil corporate agenda-- it's underfunding, plain and simple. People talk a good game about reforming the schools, but always look for solutions that don't involve paying anything, even if they have to solve the wrong problems to do so.

I've just read the site you linked, and sorry pal, but the Gatto's a grade A conspiracy nut.

What better way to habituate kids to abandoning trust in their peers (and themselves) than to create an atmosphere of constant low-level stress and danger, relief from which is only available by appeal to authority? And many times not even then!

I there's some evidence in his book, but I've read my fair share of UFO and conspiracy magazines, so I know this pattern and I have a pretty good idea of the kind of evidence I'm likely to see. This is exactly the same spiel as "the government is keeping us scared so they can impose martial law", or "the UN secretly instigates wars so it can stay in power". It's paranoid bullshit, and it obscures real problems in need of real solutions. I'm sorry if your schooling (public or otherwise) didn't prepare you to discern sensation from insight... mine did.

Kill the copyright weasel

[makhnolives]

As an anarchist librarian, it's good to hear that my association is going to launch an aggressive campaign about fair use and the problems with copyrights. I've been advocating against copyrights and intellectual property laws for over ten years, so it's really exciting that more and more people are seeing through the stupidity of IP laws. This swing will continue as the greedy corporations continue to engage in stupid things against the public domain and idea sharing.

Hey Disney, you didn't invent Sleeping Beauty!