Article Index Copyright
Call with EFF re: BHL Article repository
Sep 19, 2008 (
"Aarrr, matey!")
Fred von Lohmann, Corynne McSherry
Overview
Model for BHL is to scan materials clearly in public domain. For a certain set of journals, we get permission from publishers using an agreement drafted by EFF.
Wide swath of material post-1923 & within copyright or uncertain status. Want to align our efforts with EOL & wider taxonomic community - get core texts for use by our scientists. Many groups, organized by type of organism, that are creating bibliographies of core text for species or group. Some projects have gone ahead and digitized some of the articles & rehost on their servers; some gathered permissions, some not.
Want to gather the benefit of the distributed work & not be exposed whenever anyone does get clearance.
Law, as evidenced by YouTube & other user-content providers, is well designed to accommodate our scenario. Safe harbor for content that is stored at the direction of users. have to have a policy & practice of removing content when complaints come in. Policy of terminating repeat infringers (subscriber, user). "Copyright Agent."
Review of Safe Harbor points, prepared by Fred von Lohmann.
DMCA 512 safe harbors outline.pdf
Outer Limits:
- statue "storage at direction of users". Caution over creating a system where BHL is picking ,choosing, directing content. PRoviding a platform for a select group of users; what they think is useful, what they want to deposit.
- "safe harbor for act of storing", not expressly describe making it available to others (serving). Complicated when go beyond that:
- index materials after upload (searchability, metadata extraction) - probably fine - "information location tools" like Google
- If going beyond store/serve/indexing, need to discuss further
- avoid directing use of collection. mere act of proving links is covered.
- Shouldn't say "BHL is of the view that the following 10 texts would make a fine course reader, and we encourage you to download it." But, if a user did this themselves it would be ok. Ranking is fine.
Terms of Service/Terms of Use
Important for content uploaded by users without rock-solid rights, need to NOT represent that we have any rights to the materials. BHL would need to make no claims about ownership; simply providing a platform.
If person contacts us & wants to make a course listing, we say "Go to user who uploaded or original publisher." No harm if we make that available, but we have no obligation on BHL's part that it was uploaded & we cannot vouch for it.
Need to register a copyright agent with copyright office
- who to contact at a site if your content is discovered there
- $80 fee
- include a link on any page that this material might appear "If you are a copyright owner click here" easy road to report something. Make it simple, dispell dodging notification.
Responsible to terminate repeat infringers. May require some attention. Publisher may say "I've found 10 of my articles posted by the same user. Now you have to eliminate these 10, kick off that user, and everything else that user uploaded." Precise outer limits are murky.
Can lose safe harbor if rights holder can demonstrate direct financial benefit. Our lack of commercial interest works in our benefit.
International Concerns
Materials & software apps will reside on web server. Will be owned by somebody (our own or a data center). Anyone who backtracks IP address to determine "who is responsible"
All of this "safe harbor" covers US. Copyright law asks first and foremost "Where was copying done". Argues for keeping scanning & serving in US. "100 times better than putting the content & servers in the UK." Mirroring does not neatly fall into safe area.
Books scanned in UK, deposited in US. Not sure if they can sue us for the serving - gray area.
