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OID: SIANME Forum Summary -- March 6, 1998
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The Forum's first speaker was Gloria Werner, University Librarian for the UCLA campus. Warner has what she termed "an avid lay person's" interest in the subject of copyright and intellectual property and tries to monitor events on the national, local, as well as UC scene. She pointed out some of the websites, which she found invaluable in monitoring the subject. These were:
Until recently, Werner noted, copyright has been an "invisible issue," relying on the copyright laws of 1976. New technologies have disrupted the status quo but, according to Pamela Samuelson (Law Professor at UC Berkeley and prominent in this field), a key element of the 1976 law was the fair use exemption which made provision for educational use of print copies for classroom instructional use and research. Werner went on to note that recent revisions proposed by the Clinton administration did not "retain the balance" required between education and industry and were overly influenced by commercial interests. She favored instead the legislation proposed by Congressmen Boucher and Campbell and Senator Ashcroft (details can be read on the DFC website, referenced above) as the best of a number of bills presently making their way through congress. In Werner's view, unless a bill such as Boucher and Campbell's or Ashcroft's is passed, the future for educators and students (in a worst-case scenario) who seek to make use of digital material is one of "pay-per-use." She urged faculty to become politically active on this issue. Werner then shifted her attention to the Office of the President and the UC Copyright Task Force (see links above) which has been charged with producing a set of policy recommendations by the end of April, 1998. Based on the task force's recommendations, new policies are likely to be drafted in 1998/99; faculty and others will extensively review these before new policies are adopted. To test various approaches to distributing digital information on the campus, the College Library has been experimenting with digitizing non-copyrighted materials (old exams, course notes, and homework solutions) that have been scanned into digital format. This fall some copyrighted journal articles were posted under Fair Use guidelines: that is, they were accessible only via the individual course and faculty names on the library's e-reserves web site, and only for legitimate UCLA IP addresses or to those with BOL accounts. For second-time use of the material, the Library is writing the various publishers for permission (which is consistent with Fair Use Guidelines). Werner predicted that future authorization and authentication systems such as public certificates would increase the library's ability to make such material available. Steve Berman, the next speaker, a lawyer with "a life on the outside," has worked with the American Intellectual Property Law Association and has advised the Writers Guild on the complexities of copyright, fair use, and intellectual property. He came to UCLA via the Office of Sponsored Research to help research the framework of potential partnerships between faculty and non-campus institutions. One of his duties is to interpret current campus and UC policies. In doing so, he noted, he is constrained by the controlling document now in effect, which was published in "pre-web" days in 1992 (available at http://www.ucop.edu/acadinit/copyright/policies-studies.html). Berman agreed with Werner that good legislation was needed, but doubted such legislation could withstand the pressures of competing commercial interests. One major problem drowning out the weaker voice of educators is that many European countries are protecting their online data far more aggressively than the U.S. domestic commercial interests, eager to protect their own material from global misuse, are forcing congress into a more protectionist stance. Such protectionism may benefit free enterprise, but may not facilitate the free exchange of information on the web. On a local level, Berman noted that the 1992 policy statement defined two categories of intellectual property: Category 1 refers to textual material posted on the web. Although faculty do not, in fact, have a clearly enunciated legal right to copyright on this material, the University has in effect granted it to them as a perquisite of performing research on the campus, much as it does to faculty publishing articles or books. Category 2 works are those that require additional audiovisual input (e.g., videos, or computer applications). The copyright for such intellectual property (as defined in the 1992 policy statement) is vested in the University. Faculty can share in the royalties, but do not own such work outright. In response to the rhetorical question, should one then bother to put up materials on the web, Berman's offered a few suggestions. For one, publishing on the web is such a "good opportunity" to communicate with students and other scholars that faculty would be ill served to avoid it for fear of abridging copyright. It is only a question of time, Berman noted, before technology will solve some of the problems of protecting material on the web. Secondly, he suggested faculty make sure material thus posted is original. If a student or TA assists in their production, faculty should secure "work-for-hire" releases absolving faculty of obligation to recompense part time workers. If material is not original, one can make a good-faith effort to secure permission, or simply post it on a password-protected site pursuant to fair use guidelines (first time is permitted, second time faculty must receive permission). William Mason has been using the web in his graduate sociology classes. The effort, he says, "is killing" him. Reason: time is a scarce resource. And having to deal with the institutional and bureaucratic niceties of adhering to fair use is far too taxing in an environment where adequate support is hard to come by. To alleviate information jams, and save valuable time, Mason decided to build his own web pages off campus to maintain more control over the material. With six computers using two different operating systems in his office, Mason noted that he frequently scans relevant articles he wants his students to read and creates Adobe Acrobat PDF files for them to read and/or print on line. His quandary: he knows he will use this material again for a second time. Is he supposed to pretend that he "got the same idea" for an article to use in class the next time he teaches it in order to stay within fair use practices? Securing permission from a publisher is, for him, far too time-consuming, as well as frustrating (publishers, as Steve Berman also noted, frequently do not respond). Mason thus interprets the copyright and intellectual property guidelines "creatively", assuming that "the world will not beat a path to my website." He archives his Acrobat articles on a CD, then posts them on an as-needed basis. Steve Berman noted here that instead of writing individual publishers, faculty and administration could make use of digital copyright clearance centers, of which there are several. Publishers, Berman remarked, are for the most part likely to be reasonable. Katherine King remarked that, although she has not used the Internet for instruction, and has had little experience, and less time, to surf it, she is puzzled and concerned by what she perceives as the University's penchant to treat education as a business, rather than a service. She cited in particular an agreement between University Extension and The Home Education Network (THEN) signed in 1995 which ceded THEN the right to edit and change videorecordings of classes to be distributed off campus to other venues. Dr. King felt that such an emphasis on profit-making activities could only adversely affect the more significant pedagogical concerns, especially as concerns being allowed to use copyrighted material on course web pages and readers. Evan Nisonson, Instructional Technology Coordinator for the Humanities Computing Facility, adroitly moderated the forum discussion.
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