copyright. Ms. Armstrong may be a voice of copyright representing and advocating for copyright owners, publishers, and other producers of intellectual property, but she is definitely not the voice of copyright.
Here are some excerpts from the Information Today article, followed by our comments:
Armstrong: "We are looking at licenses that can be used on mobile devices, on laptops, on PC's, wherever you are in your enterprise or outside, when you're visiting clients on the road or studying abroad, whatever you're doing."
Us: It's nice to be able to get information anywhere and everywhere. But are you ready to pay for content every time you use it? What about fair use?
Armstrong: "[The CCC is] about access and ease of use and using licensing to help enable that … We're not about locking up content; we're about creating access. Think of us as the keys to creating access to that content through licensing."
Us: Let's call a spade a spade. The Copyright Clearance Center knows that in a digital world you can't keep content behind a locked door. But they would like you to believe that there is a door, that it is locked, and that you need to pay them for the key. The CCC continues to "educate" users about the risk of infringement, and they are effective. Many in the private sector have simply abandoned fair use and just pay royalties through the CCC. They now have their eyes on academic libraries, and you can bet that public libraries are next.
Our book is another voice of copyright, written by three lawyer librarians. We understand that interpreting copyright can be tricky. There's some black, some white, and a lot of gray. When we are confronted with a copyright question we approach it as a lawyer does: (1) what are the facts; (2) what does the Copyright Act say; and (3) are there court decisions addressing facts like these?
The Association of American Publishers, the Copyright Clearance Center, and other rights organizations such as Attributor begin with the premise that if you want to use something, you have to pay for it. We begin with a different premise: copyright exists to promote the dissemination of information, and while creators have certain rights, so do users. There are many situations where users do need permission or pay royalties.
