[Air-L] a question about privacy protection and copyright in Internet research

[Steve Jones]

On the subject of copyright and texts (as opposed to humans and interactions with them, which is a separate issue, as far as university IRBs are concerned, but in some ways is not a separate issue, is it?) there's a slightly similar discussion taking place on the email list of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). As I wrote on that list, liasing with other scholarly associations with an interest in these issues would be useful if for no other reason than to avoid reinventing the wheel. Hopefully such an effort could also lead to formation of a coalition that could have its voice heard by those who might be in a position to influence policy and legislation. 

The International Communication Association about a year ago published a white paper on the topic of fair use by scholars. It can be found online at:

http://www.icahdq.org/publications/reports/fairuse.pdf

On the IASPM list Mike Baker noted that the Film Studies Association of Canada prepared a document on this issue a couple of years ago in anticipation of a revision to the Copyright Act that remains under review: http://www.filmstudies.ca/FSAC_copyright.htm. 

The Society for Cinema and Media Studies also had some discussions on the topic but I haven't tried to dig up the email thread, sorry.

Steve


On May 6, 2011, at 10:10 AM, Nathaniel Poor wrote:

> I fully agree with Kevin's point about fair use / fair dealings, and I also think that we as educators should push for an expansion of fair use. The US-led culture industry is pushing to curtail fair use, strengthen copyright restrictions for rights holders (which, in the case of music, is usually not the artist), and are hegemonically confusing people as to what their rights are -- for instance see Wendy Seltzer's blog posts about her experience with the DMCA and the intentional lie of a copyright notice that most televised US sports use: http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/dmca-nfl (or really anything in her excellent blog, she's an academic lawyer). 
> 
> We also need to educate our grad students, if we have them, about fair use, and I think we should raise a huge generation of pro-fair use militants. Otherwise we are going to continue to lose that war.
> 
> See also http://www.chillingeffects.org/
> 
> 
> On May 6, 2011, at 10:44 AM, Kevin Guidry wrote:
> 
>> A few quick points:
>> 
>> 1. If the quotes are already publicly available and thus presumably
>> indexed by search engines, does it do much good to obfuscate the
>> author's name or handle?  Of course, if the quotes are trivial or
>> common it would be hard to trace them back to the correct author (but
>> if they're trivial or common do they need to be included in a
>> publication?).  But what are the ethics involved here?  If subjects
>> wrongly believe themselves to be publishing in private or semi-private
>> forums should we continue to honor that belief ("play along" with
>> them?) in some way?  Surely others have put significant thought into
>> this and can provide us some guidance!
>> 
>> 2. I'm very surprised that no one has raised "fair use" or "fair
>> dealing" in the brief discussion of copyright.  I don't know about
>> copyright and intellectual property in Finland but in many countries
>> there are research and scholarship exceptions in copyright law
>> allowing us to publish copyrighted material without permission from
>> the copyright holder.  When appropriate, we shouldn't be shy about
>> taking advantage of those rights.  Copyright should not be an excuse
>> to prematurely or unnecessarily censor or restrict ethical, valuable
>> research.  By not understanding or taking advantage of copyright law
>> there seems to be a danger that we unnecessarily self-censor our work,
>> possibly more harshly than even the most aggressive copyright holders.
>> 
>> 
>> Kevin
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> 
> -------------------------------
> Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D.
> http://natpoor.blogspot.com/
> 
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