Hello Wiley,
I'm a [] librarian [] and have read many of your BI columns. While I don't always completely share your views regarding intellectual property, you seem to be well informed and have good understanding of the issues. While I do believe that artists, musicians, and other creative individuals (such as authors) should be compensated for their professional work, major publishers (as you may already be aware) tend to be greedy and seem to be trying to chip away at "fair use" provisions in current copyright law. A current suit against Georgia State University by several publishers as a case in point. They really don't represent the interests of their authors so much as their own bottom lines.
Anyway, when I saw this blog by a librarian who is well known in the profession for her astute writings, I thought you might be interested in reading it. We all hope this scenario doesn't play out as depicted here, but students and faculty alike would do well to be more aware of this issue. We library types don't have a lot of clout in such matters, but if the scholars who produce the work for which the big publishers charge so much would just get more worked up about it, there might be some hope of preserving the traditional values of higher education—including the free and unimpeded exchange of ideas, information, and research.
Cheers,
xxx xxxx
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[Sir],
Thank you for your link. As an avid bibliophile, I consider librarians (as a totalizing stereotype) to be people with whom I share many goals, open and free access to knowledge being one of them.
I will caution you that I have inadvertently engaged in a rant below (as is often the case), and do not expect you to read all of it, but would like to briefly present my views regarding intellectual property, with the hope that we could find some sort of middle ground, or at least discover specific policy suggestions vis a vis my views on intellectual property and your expertise in the library sciences.
I agree with you that artists and musicians should receive compensation for their work, but I often find that they are simply the "working class" of their respective monopolized industries--and hence why writers like me must work for free (as I am doing right now) simply to "build a portfolio," most musicians will devote countless years to pursuit of their passion, with little prospect of "making it" (or "selling out," depending on your perspective), and most artists will hone their skills to a precise degree with little prospect of their pieces ending up in any major galleries. The end goal of "making it" in any of these industries is touted as some definitive state of accomplishment, whereas the people who achieve that ultimate measure of success are usually hacks (in my opinion) who have no real talent but are easily marketable because their production formula does not change (unless the industry demands it): see Steven King or Katy Perry for apt, if over-exposed examples.
I am not attempting to polemicize, but I find that these are broad issues that are not relegated to any one industry or field. The ultimate mission of libraries is to provide free or low-cost copyrighted materials to the public at large (not limited to books, clearly), and as such I think it is obvious that there will be a constant adversarial relationship between "artistic industries" and those who attempt to distribute their materials for anything but the suggested retail price.
Intellectual property is generally the purview of large business interests with the legal capabilities to ensure they receive the benefit of those rights, often undercutting one another in the attempt to gain vertical and horizontal control of any industry. As a recent (and slightly tangential) example, you can take a look at this article: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/in-a-bill-wall-street-shows-clout/, which illustrates (at least from a fiscal perspective), the importance of intellectual property in the ability of large businesses to charge fees for processes that are entirely abstract in nature. I assume that you have read Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture," which is a great (though dry) review of the interference of business interests, via the legal system, in areas which were formerly considered cultural domains and not subject to monetization. If not, you can take a brief look at his website (http://www.lessig.org/), which hasn't been updated in awhile, but still features some interesting resources and blog posts in a slightly more open-ended vein than the blog you linked me to. I also believe Coe library has all of his books in their catalog.
Interestingly enough, in a recent discussion hosted by Democracy Now! in London, Slavoj Zizek (the famous Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst) mentioned (roughly apropos of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange) that he believed "one of the main reasons capitalism will get in to crisis is intellectual property. In the long term it simply cannot deal with it." You can browse the transcript or watch the video here: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/7/5/watch_full_video_of_wikileaks_julian_assange_philosopher_slavoj_iek_with_amy_goodman (I recommend skimming the transcript unless you have a deep personal interest in Zizek's nearly unfathomable ramblings or Assange's conspiratorial analysis of world politics).
Now, even though I am certainly not a "post-Hegelian neo-Marxist" or whatever Zizek claims to be as of his most recent book, I do think he is smart enough to be making a cogent point here: intellectual ideas are not the property of any one person, and especially not large corporate entities legally considered to be people. If one considers an idea to be their property, they should not even espouse it without the expectation that it will be re-appropriated by others for their own personal use, and the use of society at large. I do not write with the intention of charging people for my work, I write with the intention of encouraging open-minded discussions within the public sphere--notably, my efforts would most likely be curbed at any "respectable" publication outside of campus media. The attempt to restrict the ownership of ideas amounts to totalitarianism (thought control), in my view, and though it is not as blatant as outright censorship, it may in fact be more pernicious because the only people who are aware of the impacts are those involved in creative industries or (in your provided example) academics and librarians who have difficulty accessing the information necessary to their jobs. More importantly, those of us who are attempting to make a career in one of these fields become accomplices in the process once we "make it" and receive some minor reward for our extensive efforts.
With this general overview in mind, perhaps I could ask you for a suggestion as to how we should maintain these intellectual property rights without large-scale social change? As you are undoubtedly aware, the period for copyright licenses has been quietly extended over the century until, in some industries, copyrights have come to outlive most authors/artists/etc. Should we make copyright laws less stringent, or should we make more provisions for fair use by libraries and educators? What are some specific real-world examples of restrictive policies on university campuses that I could look at in order to formulate a more nuanced perspective on this matter?
I hope you do not find this response overly-long, combative, or unfocused (though it is likely all three of these). I am genuinely interested in learning more about these issues, but my studies leave me little time to familiarize myself with new areas of law and society unless I am prodded to do so by one such as yourself. Let me thank you for occasionally taking the time to read my unpopular diatribes in the Branding Iron, and thank you further for having the consideration to write me about an issue that I believe we share some common ground on. If there is any way that I could convince you to outline the issues (bullet-point style, perhaps?) that you consider paramount to the maintenance of fair use rights on university campuses, I would greatly appreciate it.
Warmest regards (and apologies for my verbose tendencies),
-w.c.
P.S. As I am looking for content for my blog and have spent an inordinate amount of time on this email, would you mind if I post your email and my response? I would cut out your name and personally identifying characteristics.
I will caution you that I have inadvertently engaged in a rant below (as is often the case), and do not expect you to read all of it, but would like to briefly present my views regarding intellectual property, with the hope that we could find some sort of middle ground, or at least discover specific policy suggestions vis a vis my views on intellectual property and your expertise in the library sciences.
I agree with you that artists and musicians should receive compensation for their work, but I often find that they are simply the "working class" of their respective monopolized industries--and hence why writers like me must work for free (as I am doing right now) simply to "build a portfolio," most musicians will devote countless years to pursuit of their passion, with little prospect of "making it" (or "selling out," depending on your perspective), and most artists will hone their skills to a precise degree with little prospect of their pieces ending up in any major galleries. The end goal of "making it" in any of these industries is touted as some definitive state of accomplishment, whereas the people who achieve that ultimate measure of success are usually hacks (in my opinion) who have no real talent but are easily marketable because their production formula does not change (unless the industry demands it): see Steven King or Katy Perry for apt, if over-exposed examples.
I am not attempting to polemicize, but I find that these are broad issues that are not relegated to any one industry or field. The ultimate mission of libraries is to provide free or low-cost copyrighted materials to the public at large (not limited to books, clearly), and as such I think it is obvious that there will be a constant adversarial relationship between "artistic industries" and those who attempt to distribute their materials for anything but the suggested retail price.
Intellectual property is generally the purview of large business interests with the legal capabilities to ensure they receive the benefit of those rights, often undercutting one another in the attempt to gain vertical and horizontal control of any industry. As a recent (and slightly tangential) example, you can take a look at this article: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/in-a-bill-wall-street-shows-clout/, which illustrates (at least from a fiscal perspective), the importance of intellectual property in the ability of large businesses to charge fees for processes that are entirely abstract in nature. I assume that you have read Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture," which is a great (though dry) review of the interference of business interests, via the legal system, in areas which were formerly considered cultural domains and not subject to monetization. If not, you can take a brief look at his website (http://www.lessig.org/), which hasn't been updated in awhile, but still features some interesting resources and blog posts in a slightly more open-ended vein than the blog you linked me to. I also believe Coe library has all of his books in their catalog.
Interestingly enough, in a recent discussion hosted by Democracy Now! in London, Slavoj Zizek (the famous Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst) mentioned (roughly apropos of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange) that he believed "one of the main reasons capitalism will get in to crisis is intellectual property. In the long term it simply cannot deal with it." You can browse the transcript or watch the video here: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/7/5/watch_full_video_of_wikileaks_julian_assange_philosopher_slavoj_iek_with_amy_goodman (I recommend skimming the transcript unless you have a deep personal interest in Zizek's nearly unfathomable ramblings or Assange's conspiratorial analysis of world politics).
Now, even though I am certainly not a "post-Hegelian neo-Marxist" or whatever Zizek claims to be as of his most recent book, I do think he is smart enough to be making a cogent point here: intellectual ideas are not the property of any one person, and especially not large corporate entities legally considered to be people. If one considers an idea to be their property, they should not even espouse it without the expectation that it will be re-appropriated by others for their own personal use, and the use of society at large. I do not write with the intention of charging people for my work, I write with the intention of encouraging open-minded discussions within the public sphere--notably, my efforts would most likely be curbed at any "respectable" publication outside of campus media. The attempt to restrict the ownership of ideas amounts to totalitarianism (thought control), in my view, and though it is not as blatant as outright censorship, it may in fact be more pernicious because the only people who are aware of the impacts are those involved in creative industries or (in your provided example) academics and librarians who have difficulty accessing the information necessary to their jobs. More importantly, those of us who are attempting to make a career in one of these fields become accomplices in the process once we "make it" and receive some minor reward for our extensive efforts.
With this general overview in mind, perhaps I could ask you for a suggestion as to how we should maintain these intellectual property rights without large-scale social change? As you are undoubtedly aware, the period for copyright licenses has been quietly extended over the century until, in some industries, copyrights have come to outlive most authors/artists/etc. Should we make copyright laws less stringent, or should we make more provisions for fair use by libraries and educators? What are some specific real-world examples of restrictive policies on university campuses that I could look at in order to formulate a more nuanced perspective on this matter?
I hope you do not find this response overly-long, combative, or unfocused (though it is likely all three of these). I am genuinely interested in learning more about these issues, but my studies leave me little time to familiarize myself with new areas of law and society unless I am prodded to do so by one such as yourself. Let me thank you for occasionally taking the time to read my unpopular diatribes in the Branding Iron, and thank you further for having the consideration to write me about an issue that I believe we share some common ground on. If there is any way that I could convince you to outline the issues (bullet-point style, perhaps?) that you consider paramount to the maintenance of fair use rights on university campuses, I would greatly appreciate it.
Warmest regards (and apologies for my verbose tendencies),
-w.c.
P.S. As I am looking for content for my blog and have spent an inordinate amount of time on this email, would you mind if I post your email and my response? I would cut out your name and personally identifying characteristics.
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Wiley,
I find your reply to be none of the 3 negative adjectives you ascribe to it. It was a pleasant surprise to see anyone take the time to write this comprehensive and thoughtful of a reply. Among other things, I do understand a bit better now the nuances of your thinking on recompense for creative individuals vis-a-vis large corporations (or corporate-style entities). I do not mind if you post the content on your blog with the personal info deleted as offered.
Right now I don't have quite the time to do your request justice, but as soon as possible I will try to address your questions. Again, thanks so much for taking the time to answer my email.
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Hi again. I will take a bit of time to respond to your email asking me for my thoughts on the intellectual property on campus issue. Glad to see you are familiar with Lawrence Lessig's work in this area. While I have not read his publications in full, I have seen a number of blog posts, commentaries, etc., both from and about him, that have been linked from library-oriented sites that I follow. So he certainly has visibility within the library community.
As to my thoughts on the most promising strategies for dealing with overly restrictive copyright policies, making copyright laws less stringent would clearly be the best option. Unfortunately, realistically I do not see that happening in the foreseeable future. As the passage of the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" makes clear, Congress sadly is not going to suddenly stop listening to the big guys like Disney and start listening to us library/academic types. Far more promising (though challenging enough in its own right) is fighting hard to preserve existing fair-use provisions for libraries and educators. It is provisions like these that appear to be under assault in copyright litigation such as the current Georgia State University case mentioned in the blog. Besides engaging the litigation battles and doing our best to lobby lawmakers, we need to keep the issue visible to the public (or at least teachers, students and other scholars) through advocacy. The American Library Association does this all the time, and hopefully higher-education groups such as the Association of American Universities and the American Association of University Professors are on board too. More people need to be aware of, and care about, the subject. A point one often hears is that we need to be sure we are fully utilizing fair use in our daily work, as voluntarily restricting our practices through fear or uncertainty as to what we can/cannot do makes it that much harder to maintain legitimate rights to use copyrighted material.
Off the top of my head I can't cite particular examples of restrictive policies on campuses because I have not researched this and any examples I may have run across in the past have faded from memory. Generally speaking, I would say that we have adjusted pretty well to the current copyright law which has been in effect since 1978 (as amended to extend the term, as you correctly note). As you know we here at UW provide a lot of material on e-reserves as well as delivering huge quantities of material that people ask for via "Request It" either utilizing fair-use or paying for permissions when necessary (a cost that is seldom passed on to students). I don't work directly with e-reserves or Interlibrary Loan (the "Request It" people), but my sense is they can usually provide what faculty & students want, one way or another. They do get the occasional clueless prof who will ask them to scan an entire book and place it on e-reserve—not bloody likely—but then we simply suggest that they either pick the most relevant chapter or two, or just place the physical book on reserve. Course pack requirements and costs may be good cases of restrictive policies, but I'm not well informed on that area.
I can give you a relevant example, though, that you may find interesting. Don't know if you've discovered it, but we have a wonderful database of digitized Wyoming newspapers representing most of the news output from around the state. Great for researching Wyo. history and all things Wyoming—if you're interested only in content published up to 1923. That date is the most recent one for which we could safely assume that everything was in the public domain. Much of the post-1923 content probably could have been used as well, but there was neither the time nor money to seek out all the rights holders to either get permission to reproduce the content or confirm that there were no rights holders (the latter category is often called "orphan works"). Very frustrating to say the least.
Finally, to address your question about any other issues paramount to maintenance of fair-use rights, my major case in point would be the open-access movement in scholarly communication, both within and outside the library context. The primary premise of open access is that academic authors do their research, publication, etc. using university resources (appropriately since this is a core job expectation of most faculty), usually without remuneration beyond their existing salaries; then submit their work to an academic journal, whose publisher retains copyright and sells the work back to the institution (usually via the library of course) at a ridiculous price. Open access seeks to circumvent this model by turning universities into publishers in their own right, cutting out the expensive middleman (aka the traditional publisher) and thereby saving money. But it's taking longer to get off the ground than some had hoped. For one thing, there are genuine costs involved in publishing. Even with the typical e-journal which eliminates the costs of printing, binding, shipping, etc., there are costs relating to the editorial and production processes. If you're not going to charge the author to publish their work—and few wish to go that route for obvious reasons—then the university either individually or as part of a consortium is going to have to subsidize this work somehow. With the painful budget cuts now taking place in most states, this is even more of a challenge. Getting faculty buy-in is an issue too—hard to change the academic culture where publishing in prestigious, top-tier journals is valued greatly, despite the fact that said journals also tend to be among the pricier ones. Nonetheless, I don't see the open access model going away, and most of us hope that ultimately it will get the kinks worked out and become the dominant means of scholarly communication. At a minimum, authors are being encouraged to retain copyright on work submitted for publication rather than turn it over to the publisher.
One related initiative is the rule established a few years ago by the National Institutes of Health, requiring NIH research grant recipients to make their published work funded by said grants freely available to the public after a certain time period (one year as I recall). This is a condition of receiving the grant in the first place. The premise being that the taxpayers who ultimately fund the work should be able to access the results without either having to pay twice by buying a copy of the journal, or trying to find a library that will make it available to them. The latter is obviously not an issue for those with access to library resources through their affiliation with a college, university, etc., but can be for members of the general public. Other funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, have been encouraged to adopt such policies as well, but I'm not clear right now on how that effort is going. Would be nice if it was a uniform requirement across funding agencies, but we're not there yet.
Hope this has been of some help in addressing your request. Again, thanks for writing.
Warm regards,
xxxx
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