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Last week I escaped the extreme heat of NC for the gorgeous weather of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend a two-day meeting about all things copyright. This was my second year attending this small, intimate gathering of copyright experts from across the U.S., and I loved it. Our group operates under the Chatham House Rule, so details of our discussions are confidential. But I can tell you that we touched upon everything from recent court rulings to legislative updates to rights statements to model publishing contracts to ereserves to take-down notices to career paths to activist scholarship. Discussions were lively, thoughtful, and well-informed, and I was privileged to spend two days geeking out on copyright.
A few key takeaways:
- Yoga poses, recipe compilations, and chicken sandwiches are NOT copyrightable – but cheerleading uniforms may be (awaiting SCOTUS ruling)
- Attribution of CC-licensed materials is no different than scholarly citation
- The Batmobile is a copyrightable character
- Madonna, Led Zeppelin, and Disney (now there’s a combo!) are all – individually, not jointly – involved in some manner of copyright litigation
- Half of all pre-1950 films and approximately 90% of all nitrate films are gone, as the Library of Congress has no “body of record” on file (sad!)
- When collecting activist scholarship (e.g., tweets, photographs, record, etc.), libraries are not neutral, so if we can’t protect, maybe we shouldn’t collect; also, preservation trumps access
This year’s meeting was jointly hosted by the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication and MIT Libraries, and we met at the Harvard Law School Library. In addition to being a lovely library (hello, it’s HARVARD!), we got a chance to see their spiffy high-speed scanner in action. And when I say high-speed, I mean high-speed: averages 230 pieces of paper, or 460 pages, per MINUTE, and 2.5 MILLION pages per MONTH. It was a marvel!
4 Comments on ‘Molly in Cambridge for Copyright’
Sounds like a great time, Molly! I’d like to know more about your stance on libraries preserving activist scholarship and whether libraries are/should be neutral.
Also: Madonna, Led Zeppelin, and Disney walk into a bar.
I can’t think of the punchline.
Kyle, I do believe we should collect and preserve activist scholarship, but I side with those who conclude that – at least in this realm – we are not neutral. And really, perhaps when it comes to special collections and archives, we’re never neutral. (And, if I stop to really think about it, I could also argue that academic libraries are never neutral, either: we exist to serve a specific institution, which has specific aims and interests, and we are by default skewed toward supporting those.)
Back to the original point, I do think that when we collect activist scholarship we have to be strategic, thinking through public vs. private, access rights, protections, etc. It’s difficult – if not impossible – to take neutral positions on those various fronts.
Molly — I’d agree, academic libraries are never neutral. The library classroom is certainly not neutral, for many reasons.
Also, that scanner is AMAZING and I would love to see it in person.
Never heard of the Chatham House Rule before, cool! Also, I think I’m afraid of that scanner.