Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Study Group Seeks Comments
jeh0bu writes "The Section 108 Study Group, a group of copyright experts, has been meeting to discuss Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is focusing on preservation of websites and access to digital copies of library materials. Representatives of Internet Archive, including Brewster Kahle, went to the group's public roundtable sessions in March. Google did not register to attend the roundtable sessions even though the findings of the Section 108 Study Group may impact Google's Library Project. The Section 108 Study Group seeks written comments through April 17, 2006, according to this Federal Register notice."
Feel free to use "IANACL" for I am not a copyright lawyer...
Copyright sucks. That is all.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
For those of you who are too lazy to read Section 108, basically it says the following:
1. Libraries can reproduce (copy) at most one instance of a copyrighted book if they promise to acknowledge copyright and not make money off it.
2. Copyrighted books/sources can be copied up to 3 times only for archival, preservation and research purposes; digital format archives/copies may not be distributed.
3. Copies of lost/damaged/obsolete material can be made up to 3 times if no actual manufacturer copy can be obtained and the copies are not made available to the public.
4. If a user requests an interlibrary loan or wants a material that cannot be obtained at a reasonable price, they may make a copy of a small section of the material, if the material becomes property of the user (e.g., too much late fees), and the library displays a copyright warning.
5. The library may not reproduce, display, or distribute work that is in its last 20 years of copyright if the work is still commercially circulated, a copy can be obtained at a reasonable price, or the copyright owner makes a special notice.
Keep in mind this only applies to text: "The rights of reproduction and distribution under this section do not apply to a musical work, a pictorial, graphic or sculptural work, or a motion picture or other audiovisual work other than an audiovisual work dealing with news."
Straight Talk About Copyrights
Hope the messg gets thru.
No, please no more April Fools jokes, Please! Arghgh!!!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's the implementation of it that Sucks.
For an author to write a book and a company to print the book and recover costs and provide some income for the writer, that's a good thing. Extending it for eternity is evil.
cthulhu would be so proud
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Judging by all the responses posted so far, it seems noone wants to talk about it as if it even existed.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
For our boys and girls in the UK, don't forget that the Gowers review is still accepting responses to their call for evidence, and covers (inter alia) the same sort of questions.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Wow, that picture says a lot. Copyright dorks are even worse than us.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
For the legitimate interests of fair use, including archiving in libraries, DRM must be circumvented. DRM must be considered incompatible with copyright protection.
In order for a DRM'd work to receive legal copyright protection it must be required to submit a non-DRM'd copy to the Library of Congress and 2 other public Libraries. Otherwise the whole concept of time limited copyright goes out the window, frankly. Unrestrained DRM is unconstitutional for that reason.
Dude, that's not "study" food, that's "staying in the bathroom all night with the runs" food.
Yuk.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?
It's easy to blow this off as "another bunch of lawyers bulls^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussing copyright law." Read the questions in the Federal Register!
I've seen enough "copyright=bad" or "copyright!=bad, implementation=bad", etc. posts on Slashdot over the years. Well, this is your chance to actually comment to people who are making the regulations and laws!
Here are some of the issues they're looking at:
Should non-physical or ''virtual'' libraries or archives be included within the ambit of section 108?
Access to Digital Copies Made under Subsections 108(b) and (c). Are there conditions under which electronic access to digital preservation or replacement copies should be permitted under subsections 108 (b) or (c) outside the premises of libraries or archives (e.g., via e-mail or the Internet or lending of a CD or DVD)? If so, what conditions or restrictions should apply?
They talk about archiving web pages, and this is a key question: Should ''no archive'' meta-tags, robot.txt files, or similar technologies that block sites or pages from being crawled be respected?
There are a lot more, and they touch on almost all the issues that have provoked a lot of discussion and outright flame wars around the Internet. I'm still reading through it, but the key point is that we need to pay attention to this. This is at the point where they are considering things which may end up in regulation and law, and silence or ignoring it is going to cause a lot of problems down the line.
I'd give them my comments but they are copyrighted.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
In the same vein, I think Slashdot editors ought to collect up the usual 10-15 of the top modded comments and send them off as a collective parcel to this group. ...they did ask for comments, after all. =D
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
Because Google does not meet the critiria to take advantage of Section 108. Section 108 applies to libraries and archives that are made without direct or indirect commercial advantage and has collections that are open to the public/researchers. Whether Google is or is not a library itself is debatable, and I suspect we'll have definitions after the Section 108 group is through, since right now one of the issues is that libraries and archives are undefinded. It doesn't matter, though, since Google right now doesn't act without direct or indirect commercial advantage.
People are interpreting the parent a bit differently than the law's intent. The parent notes that libraries can't make copies for various reasons if the work is still "commercially circulated, a copy can be obtained at a reasonable price, or the copyright owner makes a special notice" in the last 20 years of the work's protection. If none of those apply, libraries can make copies.
Prior to this rule, libraries couldn't make copies at all, even if those provisions didn't apply. What this rule does is let libraries make some copies in the last 20 years of copyright protection. Given how long copyright protection it, it's really of small solace, but institutions do take advantage of it when they can.
Would you like a little food with your salt an acid?
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.