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."

Comments

Section 108

[TechnoGuyRob]

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."

Re:Section 108

[deopmix]

any such copy or phonorecord that is reproduced in digital format is not otherwise distributed in that format and is not made available to the public in that format outside the premises of the library or archives.

This appears to be the part applicable to google. It seams rather clear that while google can scan in the books, they cannot make them available to the public.

Re:Section 108

[voice_of_all_reason]

Libraries can reproduce (copy) at most one instance of a copyrighted book

Yeah, that one-copy thing worked real well for the archivists at the Library of Alexandria.

I sent them this essay

[argoff]

Straight Talk About Copyrights

Hope the messg gets thru.

Ahh, Please stop, I'm dying!

[ackthpt]

"The Section 108 Study Group, a group of copyright experts, has been meeting to discuss Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law.

No, please no more April Fools jokes, Please! Arghgh!!!

DRM must go

[bigpat]

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.

Let's pay attention here

[NorbrookC]

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.

Re:No, Copyright is Good!

[Penguinoflight]

You misunderstood; The GPL is protected by Copyright, but that doesn't make the GPL unique. The GPL is unique for the rules set down in the GPL. Since code covered by the GPL can be considered software, the GPL is a license. If you dont want to follow the license, you can't use the code. Even without a copyright we could have a GPL, but if someone took it to court people would argue about whose was the code. This is still however a problem for most GPLd works (no registered copyright on many of them), and if there was no copyright protection then coders who avoided the GPL would only be worse off than those who used it.

In essense copyrights are supposed to protect those who bring content to others. Right now, 70% of copyright law does the opposite of that.