Intellectual Property Law

Liberating books!

By Siva Vaidhyanathan

Great news! The University of Michigan libraries are engaged in an exciting, necessary, and expensive project of Discovering the Undiscovered Public Domain. John Wilkin explains:

Discovering the Undiscovered Public Domain

At Michigan we're engaged in an activity that I hope will one day seem ordinary and a routine part of library work. Resources from several departments are devoted to determining the copyright status of works typically presumed to be in copyright. For now, we’re focusing on US monographic imprints (books, that is) published between 1923 and 1963, but plan to turn our attention to non-US publications in the future. I wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that this is easy work or work without its share of legal perils, but it does feel distinctly like '€ślibrary work' and, as might be obvious, has a number of very significant positive benefits for library users in an increasingly digital environment. ...

Too often we assume a book from the mid-20th century is under copyright when it most likely is not (lack of proper registration, expiration, non-renewal, etc.) This is particularly true of newspapers, periodicals, advertisements, and photographs, which were rarely registered in the first place.

Check out the whole post. It's full of important information.

Bravo Michigan! Go Blue!

Full post as published by SIVACRACY .NET on June 05, 2008 (boomark / email).