[Air-l] Citizens of Copyright

[Nathaniel Poor]

Hello international readers:

Apologies that the specifics of this will be overly US-centric, but the 
root problem, I bet, is more widespread.

Recently, I've gotten the feeling that US citizens don't really know 
their rights when it comes to things like copyright. Now many of you 
might say "Of course they don't!", and that's ok. One mailing list I'm 
on that is internal to my university had a discussion about CD burning 
(it's a Macintosh computer list), and there was a lot of confusion 
about what was legal, and most people thought it was illegal to make a 
copy for a friend, whereas I think it's legal (it's not for profit, for 
instance, and I don't mean making a dozen, but I digress without even 
talking about the small amount extra we pay for blank cassette tapes 
that goes to the music industry, but I'm not sure about CDs, but a lot 
of blank CDs at stores are advertised as "for music").

My most recent run-in with this issue, captured in email (below, 
threaded but it's only 2 emails), distressed me. I am writing a 
dissertation chapter on videotex (a pre-Internet yet Internet-like, 
somewhat, 1980's technology), and I found some useful images on a 
professor's website (he is also a former newspaper industry 
professional). When I emailed him to see if he had higher-res images, 
he said he was concerned about copyright (see below).

If anyone outside of the legal profession should know about copyright, 
it's a former newspaper person turned media studies professor.

So, given that the Internet (like videotex and every other electronic 
communication technology) was supposed to transform us all into a 
global hive-mind of democracy and knowledge (yes, that was somewhat 
sarcastic), or at least holds the potential for informing people, I 
find it really frustrating that there still seems to be confusion over 
important things -- let me be clear, these two copyright examples are 
impacting the people in the email directly! -- when we supposedly live 
in the "information age." (Suddenly I am reminded of Microsoft's FUD 
(Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) tactics.)

I'm not even sure if my question is "why aren't people more informed 
about copyright" since people, at least in the US, do seem to be very 
lazy about political knowledge, and for every organization like the EFF 
there is at least one if not many more well funded organizations like 
RIAA (sorry, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Recording Industry 
Association of America, which have very clear sides on certain issues) 
so for every snippet of good information there seems to be many of 
misinformation.

Well, I'll stop my rant there. (Given that the Internet brings 
copyright issues to the forefront... Sigh....) (Lessig just spoke here 
at UM, talking about loss of culture through copyright....)


Any input on my frustration appreciated.

ndp...


email thread (2 mssgs):
----------------------------------------

Clearly it's a case of fair use: educational/non-profit. Even if I were 
to get my dissertation published as a book, the screen shots would 
represent a small portion of the Viewtron experience and so would be a 
legal use, and the ad would be a form of commentary/criticism (not the 
negative kind of criticism, the critiquing kind). It would be exactly 
like your use of the same images on your website, it's for educational 
use.

Please see sec. 107 of the copyright code:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

Here are some snippets:

"...criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or 
research, is not an infringement of copyright."

"...the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the 
copyrighted work." (And Viewtron has not existed for quite some time.)


If you have them in electronic form and it would be easy to email them, 
I would really appreciate it, but I wouldn't ask you to scan new 
images, that's too much work.

thanks,
ndp...

On Wednesday, March 26, 2003, at 09:14 AM, David Carlson wrote:

> I do have more images, Nat. But I'm not sure what the copyright issues
> might be that surround them. Some are screen shots taken by me or my UF
> colleagues back in the day. The one of the family at home comes from a
> Viewtron ad, and I do have the original.


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Nathaniel D. Poor
Ph.D. Candidate
Dept. of Communication Studies
http://www.umich.edu/~natpoor