[WEB4LIB] copyright and the Internet

[Karl M. Bunday]

Gretchen McCord Hoffmann wrote:

> I'm a previous BI librarian now working on my J.D. at the
> University of Texas.

Congratulations. I did my elective study of library science and my
J.D. degree at the U of Minnesota. Texas must have a wonderful
library.

> As you might guess, I'm particularly interested in
> legal issues affecting librarians. I'm doing some writing right now
on
> copyright issues and the Internet. I would like to get your input on
> problems you've encountered regarding copyright and the Internet,

The main problem I have encountered is the persistent mythological
belief that copyright doesn't apply at all to materials posted on the
Internet. This has resulted in several instances of plagiarizing on
the Web of my "Colleges That Admit Homeschoolers FAQ,"

http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html

which began existence some years ago as a FAQ file back on the Prodigy
commercial on-line service before I had ever heard the term FAQ.

It is important for patrons who want to copy something onto the Web to
know that modern copyright law all over the world protects works from
the time of fixation, whether or not there has been copyright
registration, and IN ADDITION that most providers of Web hosting
services have a contractual requirement of Web masters not to post
either copyright-infringing or plagiarizing material. (Because much of
my FAQ consists of a list, and copyright protection of lists has been
weak since a United States Supreme Court case that did not, in my
opinion, give due consideration to the value of reference works, I
sometimes have to seek protection for my FAQ under plagiarism
principles, which can be much broader than copyright principles.)

> questions you've had, difficulties you've seen with your
patrons...basically,
> what do you think you or librarians in general should know about
this issue?

Librarians should tell their patrons that copyright should be ASSUMED
for all materials that do not specifically waive it. There is, of
course, the "fair use" principle, but copying a whole Web site,
something I have seen happen to several of my friends who post Web
sites on subjects I follow closely, is surely not fair use,
particularly when the copying occurs without attribution to the
original source. Since I have discovered how often whole Web pages are
copied and used to build plagiarists' sites I have been careful to put
prominent copyright notices on the template for every Web page I
produce for my site. One instance of plagiarizing my Web site was
detected because I put a link to my site's copyright page in an
innocuous place on my College FAQ, which is studded with hundreds of
links. The plagiarist didn't notice he had copied that link, which
includes my name, so he was caught red-handed when I wrote to the site
master of the site that hosted his plagiarizing page.

> (Questions I've run into so far include how do you know
> when you can download an image from the Web to use on your own pages
> without infringing someone's copyright,

Assume in the first instance that you cannot. I waited so long to
reply to your message because I wanted to examine, in a sample of
images I have downloaded, how many of those images include text in the
copyright information fields that are INHERENT in the .GIF, .JPG, and
.PNG formats. Hardly any on-line images CLAIM copyright, because image
editors hide the capability, if they have it at all, of marking the
copyright information fields in the image data. Before I replied to
you, I made sure the major images on my own site were uploaded again
with revised files that have copyright information! Version 5 of Paint
Shop Pro will show those fields if you choose the appropriate tab from
the image information dialog box, and that box is editable, but NEVER
during the process of creating an image does the program suggest that
you fill in those fields. The program GIF Animator 2.0 makes these
fields much more apparent, but only works for .GIFs, not for .JPGs.

> who owns the email you write at work,

Fortunately, I'm essentially self-employed and thus don't have a boss,
but if I did, I'd assume he owned my E-mail produced on the work
computer system.

Karl M. Bunday  "pray for us" 2 Thessalonians 3:1
P.O. Box 674, Panchiao 220, TAIWAN
http://learninfreedom.org