works published by the United Nations and by the Organization of American States also are protected.[1]
The Berne and UCC treaties do not provide an international forum to resolve disputes between litigants, and the treaties have no enforcement mechanism. Consequently, disputes must be resolved in a nation’s courts. For example, a British author who claims that an American infringed her copyright will litigate her claim in a British or American court, under British or American law.
License Agreements
Finally, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room: license agreements. Over the past few decades, license agreements have been gradually displacing copyright law. Users and owners of copyrighted material have always been free to alter their copyright rights and responsibilities by mutual agreement. Publishers of print and microform sources rarely use license agreements. But digital publishers are compelled to rely on license agreements, partly because their products are more vulnerable to copying and other misuse, and partly because their users sometimes need rights that copyright law doesn’t provide. As digital sources become more common, books like this one can no longer answer all of your questions about using copyrighted materials—increasingly, you’ll have to look to your license agreements instead of copyright law.
In Chapter Seven, we’ll take a closer look at license agreements and offer some advice on getting an agreement that’s good for your library.
- ↑ The Berne Treaty also provides for so-called “moral rights.” These include the right of attribution (the author has the right to claim authorship of his or her work) and integrity (the right of the author to object to any distortion, mutilation, other modification, or derogatory action in relation to the work that prejudices his reputation). Countries may waive out of, or modify, portions of the treaty, and sometimes they fail to fully honor the provisions they agree to. The U.S. does not protect moral rights at the same level as many other countries. We discuss moral rights in Chapter Two.
