Panel Discussion on Libraries and Best Practices in Fair Use Andrée J
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University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Technical Services Department Faculty Publications Technical Services 2012 Panel Discussion on Libraries and Best Practices in Fair Use Andrée J. Rathemacher University of Rhode Island, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/lib_ts_pubs Part of the Intellectual Property Law Commons, and the Library and Information Science Commons Citation/Publisher Attribution Rathemacher, Andrée J., "Panel Discussion on Libraries and Best Practices in Fair Use" (2012). Technical Services Department Faculty Publications. Paper 56. http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/lib_ts_pubs/56 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Technical Services at DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Technical Services Department Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Panel Discussion on Libraries and Best Practices in Fair Use Andrée J. Rathemacher Abstract This report covers a panel discussion on the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Librarie s, published in January 2012 by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) [1]. The panel was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on March 23, 2012 and was hosted by the MIT Libraries. Panelists were Patricia Aufderheide of the Center for Social Media at American University, Brandon Butler of ARL, Kyle Courtney of Harvard Law School, and Jay Wilcoxson of MIT. Fair Use and Research Librarians The panelists were introduced by MIT librarians Diane Geraci, Associate Director for Information Services, and Ellen Duranceau, Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing and Licensing, who explained that the co-facilitators of the Code are in the process of speaking to librarians around the country to discuss how its principles can help solve local challenges and improve policies dealing with copyright and fair use. Patricia Aufderheide spoke first. Aufderheide is University Professor in the School of Communication at American University and founder of the Center for Social Media there. She heads the Fair Use and Free Speech research project at the Center and is the co-author, with Peter Jaszi, of the book Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright, published last year. Aufderheide explained that creating codes of best practice for fair use [2] is important because judges take into account the common practices of a given community when deciding fair use cases. If embraced by the academic library community, the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Librarie s will help provide a solid legal foundation for many current library practices and give librarians more confidence in exercising their fair use rights. Aufderheide clarified that the purpose of copyright law as written and understood by legal scholars and judges is not to protect content creators (that is just a tactic), but to promote the creation of culture. Copyright law does this by rewarding creators with a limited monopoly while also encouraging new uses of existing culture. This balance is essential. Culture is the currency of a civilization, and all new culture references existing culture. If culture is locked up such that existing copyright owners become private censors, then creators can only make new culture that others let them make. Culture is social, collective, and collaborative, and it is the principle of fair use —the legal, unauthorized use of copyrighted material under some circumstances —that balances the interests of copyright owners and creators of new culture. If society allowed existing copyright holders to privately censor uses of their work in perpetuity, this would violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The exceptions and limitations of copyright as embodied in fair use are a core feature of copyright law, not a special favor. Brandon Butler, Director of Public Policy Initiatives at ARL, added that fair use is flexible. This flexibility opens up space for creativity not just by creators, but also by lawyers and judges. Fair use is neither black-and-white nor quantifiable. It is a space where a smart lawyer confronting a new situation can apply new ways of thinking. For over a century, fair use was not part of the written copyright law. The concept of fair use was created in the 1840s by a judge exercising his common law power to not enforce the law when it seemed unfair. Only in the 1976 revision of copyright law was fair use put into writing, and even then Congress made it explicit that judges would continue to have a wide degree of latitude in their interpretations of fair use. When ruling on a fair use case, judges consider four factors. The first factor is the reason for the use: Is someone simply trying to profit unfairly from another person ’s work, or are they doing something new and different? Second, what kind of work was used? Butler explained that this factor has been the home of some bad doctrines. It used to be the case that if a creator wanted to make use of someone else ’s work and that work was not published, judges believed that the creator could not use it, as they mistakenly believed that the original author had the absolute right to decide when his or her work would be published. This notion was ultimately rejected, and now the fact that something is unpublished does not bar it from being used under fair use. A third factor for consideration is the amount of the original work used. It was formerly the case that if a creator made use of an entire work by someone else, the use was not considered fair. This interpretation, too, has been discarded over the last few decades; current interpretations of fair use law are more nuanced and consider whether the amount used was appropriate. The fourth factor is effect on the market. Here , too, interpretations have evolved. This factor used to be the most important: whether or not the use in question damaged the market for the original work. However, just because copyright holders can be paid when their work is used by others does not mean that they should be paid. A more important question is whether the use in question has an effect on the legitimate market for the original work. Butler explained that judges in recent years have given more weight to the balancing features of fair use, as copyright laws have become more restrictive, with automatic protection for all creative works, longer terms, and increased awards for damages. The Supreme Court has ruled that fair use is covered by First Amendment protections of free speech; if it were not for the right of fair use, copyright would be an unconstitutional regime because it would allow private censorship by copyright holders. When the Supreme Court in the recent Golan v. Holder case restored copyright status to foreign works previously in the public domain, the justices argued that fair use would serve as an effective counterweight to the increased copyright protections. This shift in judicial interpretations of fair use was heavily influenced by Judge Pierre N. Leval ’s 1990 article in the Harvard Law Review [3] that focused on the role of “transformativeness ” in fair use. Judges now tend to apply Leval ’s two-step test, asking first if the use is transformative (i.e. used for a new purpose, context, audience, or insight) and second if the appropriate amount was used to satisfy the transformative use. In addition to the two-step test, important factors in fair use decisions are custom and the practice of individual creative communities, especially when these are well-documented. In a 2004 article that appeared in the William & Mary Law Review [4], University of Pittsburgh law professor Michael J. Madison examined past fair use decisions looking for commonalities. He found that judges tended to support the creative activities of legitimate communities that could articulate the values that motivated their cultural practices. It was this insight that lead to the development of best practices codes. Aufderheide explained that she and Peter Jaszi began their work to create codes of best practices because, despite the liberal interpretations of fair use espoused by legal scholars, creators wanted more comfort in making their individual decisions. The Center for Social Media has facilitated the creation of fair use codes for a number of communities, including documentary filmmakers, film scholars, media literacy educators, users of dance-related materials, and creators of online video and OpenCourseWare. Documentary filmmakers were startled to discover, when they examined their practices, that there were a number of topics they shied away from making films about, for example anything to do with popular music and movies, public affairs, news, and parody. The filmmakers engaged in lengthy discussions about the practices that they themselves thought should fall under fair use. They identified four situations common in documentary filmmaking in which fair use should apply and documented them in a code of practice. Within weeks, documentary films were being shown at the Sundance Film Festival with clearances that would not have been possible without the code. Over the course of the next year, and because they had this code to guide them, insurers of errors and omissions in documentary films agreed (for the first time in two decades) to insure for fair use. Fair use claims are now being covered at no added cost. Aufderheide stressed that these are codes of best practices, not guidelines. They are principles, not rules; limitations, not bans; and require reasoning in their application, not rote. She explained that fair use matters to librarians because it enables them to fulfill their mission of preserving knowledge and carrying it forward to the future.