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"Copyright in the Classroom"
Yesterday’s announcement that the Library of Congress was designating new classes of works exempt from the anti-circumvention rules of the DMCA has generated lots of Internet buzz, especially about the exemption for those who “jailbreak” their cellular phones. The major exemption for higher education, allowing circumvention by faculty for a range of defined educational purposes, [...]
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Last week I wrote, but had not yet posted, a comment about the proposed copyright reform in Brazil and the more nuanced approach they took to anti-circumvention rules that protect technological systems intended to prevent unauthorized access. In the course of that discussion I again criticized the Library of Congress’ long delay in announcing new [...]
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On Wednesday the Duke Libraries’ Instruction and Outreach department held a retreat on the topic of “Digital Literacies.” The excellent keynote speaker for the event was Ellysa Cahoy from Penn State University. As part of the retreat, I spoke very briefly about copyright issues around the use of digital media. My comments ended up [...]
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Both sides in the Georgia State copyright infringement case – which challenges as infringement the use of excerpts from copyrighted content in the University’s electronic reserves and course management systems – have now filed motions for summary judgment, with supporting briefs and affidavits. The actual motions and arguments in support can be found here, [...]
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It has been widely reported that UCLA has decided to re-start its program of streaming digitized videos for course-related viewing. They do so based on a set of principles adopted by the faculty, which can be read here.
Readers of this blog will recall that I have previously expressed ambivalence about whether and [...]
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Sometimes what a court does not decide can be more important than the actual ruling that the court makes. One newsworthy example of this possibility is the extraordinary step taken by the judge in the file-sharing case of Joel Tenenbaum. As this opinion piece from Ars Technica reports, Judge Nancy Gertner has finalized the [...]
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It is getting both monotonous and annoying to write repeatedly about badly reasoned court decisions in the area of copyright. Unfortunately, when they directly impact higher education, we cannot ignore these pernicious errors by our federal courts.
Earlier this month, a district court in Michigan handed down such a decision in yet another [...]
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A recent article by Steven Shavell called “Should Copyright of Academic Work be Abolished” caught my notice, as I am sure it did for many others, because of the radical question posed in its title, but it ultimately focused my attention on a different article altogether. I hope to have more to say [...]
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As Duke University’s first Scholarly Communications Officer, Kevin Smith’s principal role is to teach and advise faculty, administrators and students about copyright, intellectual property licensing and scholarly publishing. 
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