US Copyright Law

ISSUES OVERVIEW
Fair Use - Public Domain - Resources - Copyright - Copyleft - Commons

EDUCATIONAL CYBERPLAYGROUND™ COPYRIGHT

PERMISSIONS

How To Cite ECP - ECP PERMISSION FORM TO USE WEBSITE CONTENT

DEEP LINKING
You cannot deep link to the information of others and try to present it in a way that consumers might be tricked into thinking that it is your own content.

INLINE LINKING
You cannot steal bandwith by showing Educational CyberPlayGround™ images or playing Educational CyberPlayGround™ music on your page and pass it off as your own content.

CITE ECP FIND ELECTRONIC COPYRIGHT APA MLA STYLES

The resources listed below are worth going through if you need to get familiar with the big picture - and it's big. Copyright is a very important issue in the current world and there are valuable resources regarding copyright on the Educational CyberPlayGround

PERMISSION FORM TO USE MEDIA
Sample Copyright Permission Letters.
Permission to Use Graphics or Create Links.

SCHOOL ACCEPTABLE USE POLICIES

PICTURE RELEASE FORM
K -12 Acceptable Use Policy Release Form for publishing Students Pictures on the Web.

U.S. Copyright Office - Identifies who owns movies, books and other works

Issues relating to audio, visual, digital and paper based materials mostly deals with US copyright laws but is a useful guide.

COPYRIGHT CLEARANCE CENTER, a nonprofit group manages licenses for the reuse of published material, has created an annual copyright license for colleges. The license will let institutions pay a blanket fee to use copyrighted material instead of having to secure the rights to such content on a case-by-case basis.
E- RESERVE:The blanket fee will make it easier for professors and librarians to place articles and book excerpts in course packets, in electronic reserves, and on course Web sites, officials at the copyright center said.

RIGHTS CLEARANCE ORGANIZATIONS for text, images, music, etc.

FAIR USE

"Free as Air, Free As Water, Free As Knowledge" (Speech) ~ Stewert Brand 'What is the distinction of fair use and why is it important?

A NOBEL AND GREAT TEACHER proves Copyright Owners Exaggerate Their Rights
Wendy Seltzer, a law professor who used to work for the EFF and who founded the awesome Chilling Effects a clearinghouse for providing an archive of various takedown notices, has apparently received her first DMCA take down notice. Seltzer posted a snippet from the Superbowl for her students to see.
Not just any snippet, mind you, but the snippet where its announced: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited."
She posted it as an example of a copyright holder exaggerating its rights -- as the NFL cannot ban all of the things they ban in that statement.
The Irony and the Absurdity.
A law professor puts up a short clip for educational purposes (fair use allows both short clips and educational uses of content) for the sake of showing how the NFL exaggerates its copyright control -- and the NFL responds by then sending a DMCA takedown notice to better highlight how they not only exaggerate their claims, but then misuse the law to shut down fair use as well.
The NFL would not intentionally help Seltzer demonstrate how they abuse the law by trying to takedown her example of how of their exaggerated statement which proves Seltzer's point!

COPYLEFT - FAIR USE RIGHTS and IP Intellectual Property Rights

ARTS MULTIMEDIA RIGHTS Protections, Content providers

COPYRIGHT FREE -- buttons, backgrounds, animations, graphics

We have the right to whatever is in the Smithsonian - the Nation's Attic. Here is where you get the photographs for free.

Is it in the Public Domain?

Stanford has Copyright Renewal Database
Books published from 1923 to 1963 fall into an interesting period in U.S. copyright history because from 1964 on, copyright renewals were automatic under the 1976 change in the copyright laws. Also, the Copyright Office only put into its online database renewals received after 1977. Building on earlier work by Project Gutenberg Stanford has put online the renewal forms, though only for books. Still, someone might find it useful, and it's free.

Firms Out of Business (FOB), an online database containing the names and addresses of copyright holders or contact persons for out-of-business printing and publishing firms, magazines, literary agencies and similar organizations that have archives housed in libraries and archives in North America and the United Kingdom.

Writers, Artists and Their Copyright Holders (WATCH), an online database containing the names and addresses of copyright holders or contact persons for authors and artists. FOB is a companion project to FOB. The objective of both projects is to provide information to scholars and researchers about whom to contact for permission to publish text and images that have copyright protection.

BUY A GOV'T RESOURCE AND SET IT FREE FOR YOU AND ME!

Carl Malmud  and Marshall T. Rose
have formed a new nonprofit called public.resource.org. 
Our mission is the creation of public works projects on the net and our initial focus is improving communication between the federal government and people. We've released:

1. Per Lessig's agreement with CNN, we've uploaded both
   Presidential Debates to the Internet Archive
2. Created some images based on the Smithsonian Images site hear the NPR Smithsonian story about it.
3. Mirror of NTIS.Gov

September 30, 2007
From the README at http://bulk.resource.org/copyright/:
This directory contains raw data from the U.S. Copyright Office of the Library of Congress.  Related to this directory are two communications, one to the U.S. Copyright Office, the other a response from the Library of Congress, which functions as the commercial agent for the Copyright Office:
http://public.resource.org/letter_to_peters.html
http://www.loc.gov/blog/?p=187

While the Copyright Office maintains a record-oriented interface, that does not provide adequate facilities to meet their public access obligations.  This directory, accessible via FTP and HTTP, contains 3 sub-directories:

1. The "code" directory contains PERL code from 2000 which is used to convert MARC-format records into XML.
2. The "raw" directory contains the bulk database product
      as sold by the Library of Commerce as of the year 2000.
3. The "hids" directory contains all bulk data from 1978 to the present.  The record-oriented interface maintained by the Copyright Office is limited to interactive keyword searches.  Their system identifies each record with a unique Hidden ID (HID).  This directory thus contains all 21 million of those records sorted in HID order, as well as a per-HID retrieval utility.
   In posting these data, we rely partly on voicemail from the Honorable Marybeth Peters, the U.S. Register of Copyrights received Fri Sep 21 16:17:02 PDT 2007 in response to the above-mentioned letter, in which Ms. Peters states that "I think our records should be available to the public. Certainly there's no copyright in any of the copyright records.  Certainly they're public records and they should be openly available."

Government publications are neither copyrighted nor copyrightable.
That includes Web sites. As a general rule, work prepared by the U.S Government is not eligible for copyright. Text of government testimony at committee hearings, speeches by government officials, copies of public laws, the text of court decisions, government information circulars, etc. may not be copyrighted. The rule applies generally to work prepared by U.S. government employees in the scope of their employment (with certain limited exceptions). For example, if government employees prepared abstracts, summaries or headnotes for speeches, court decisions, government publications, etc., those materials would not be copyrightable. The U.S. government has the same rights as private employers when works are prepared by its employees. There are a number of government organizations that publish material. Usually, here is a specific authorizing statute and the material published is not eligible for copyright. Normally, the selling price covers the costs of dissemination, with no provision for profit. OMB sets federal policy with respect to these issues. Circular A-76 and A-25 would be important. The government shouldn't engage in commercial competition. Even stuff developed by contractors (who do have proprietary claims), if delivered to the Government, are at least philosophically in the public domain

When works pass into the Public Domain

1  Term of joint works is measured by life of the longest-lived author.

2  Works for hire, anonymous and pseudonymous works also have this term.  17 U.S.C. § 302(c).

3  Under the 1909 Act, works published without notice went into the public domain upon publication. Works published without notice between 1-1-78 and 3-1-89, effective date of the Berne Convention Implementation Act, retained copyright only if, e.g., registration was made within five years. 17 U.S.C. § 405.

COPYRIGHT RESOURCES

• How to find out if it is in the Public Domain.
• What does a K12 Teacher or Administrator Needs To Know?
• Comic Book on CopyRight Law from Duke University Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain
• CopyRight Resources
• Search CopyRight
• Copyright Registrations Procedures
• Downloadable copyright forms
• Copyright Protection Not Available for Names, Titles, or Short Phrases
• Registering a federal trademark
• FAQ: HOW TO MAKE THINGS SECURE
• Fair Use Guidelines Applies to the Classroom but not beyond.

• ABOUT DEEP LINKING you cannot deep link to the information of others and try to present it in a way that consumers might be tricked into thinking that it is your own content.

ABOUT SELF PUBLISHING

• The Copyright Office Electronic Registration has accepted CDs and DVDs of articles (and photos, for that matter) for copyright registration.
• Will you make any money?
• Extensive compilation of what all writers/publishers need to know
• WEB SITES AND ARTICLES for small publishers, self-publishers and writers.
• DIGITAL-COPYRIGHT discussion group
• How to get your copyright registered
  ISBN ISBN/SAN Application
  ISSN (International Standard Serial Number)
  Preassigned Control Number Program
  Preassigned Control Number Application

COPYRIGHT HISTORY

The Roots of Print, Power, Politics, Literacy, Ballads, Plays, Thought and failed Censorship. Who is allowed to know how to write, who is allowed to read, who is allowed to hear, who is allowed to print, who is allowed to publish!
It is now and has always been about our unknown culture makers who shape our consciousness vs. the Owners of culture - the Power Elite who through their wealth own the supply chain and can exert their power using thought control over the people. It is now and always has been about your right to know what you want to know. [1]

Copyright law established internationally by the Berne Convention of 1886 and amended from time to time ever since, most notably in 1909, 1911, 1956 and 1988, protects the works of authors, composers and publishers. This includes copyrights in addition to music, such as in art, literature and other intellectual properties. Ninety-six nations currently are signatories.

1710 the British Parliament drafted the Statute of Anne, which was intended to "promote learning and education" within the Empire. This statute both established the concept of the public domain and shifted power back to the authors from publishers. In 1740, the Statute of Anne was reinforced and modified, and became what we know as copyright law. The concepts of copyright and public domain were finally firmly upheld against all legal challenges in 1774, and the founding fathers of the United States lifted the concept for its Constitution.

RIGHTS

A copyright owner has 5 rights:

• the right to reproduce
• distribute
• modify
• perform
• display the work

The copyright owner can grant permission to someone else to exercise any of these rights.This permission is called a license. The terms of the license agreement determine when, where, how, and to whom the materials are be distributed and at what cost. The terms resolve all the issues discussed between the copyright owner and publisher and are now written into the relevant license agreements.
As is the case with other "property rights"-- which is what copyright stakes its claim upon --

Contracts are the means whereby permission is granted, parties may sign away all or part of their rights to a particular property, upon an offer having been made by one side and agreed to by the other. Though third parties may receive benefits of a contract, they cannot become obligated by one. And here is where the problems start.

Copyright gives.....
The creator of intellectual property protection under copyright law, which is limited to the life of the author plus 70 years. You don't need to do anything under current law to establish copyright--it's no longer necessary, even, to post a copyright notice. All one needs to do is to create the work in a recognized medium, but you want to be able to prove that you created it and when it was created. Under copyright, no one may, really, do anything with your work without your permission.
Get it copyrighted - Register your work with the US Copyright Office. You want to register your copyrights, as it gives you enormous legal protections. When it comes to book authors, that usually means negotiating with the publisher and having it do the registration for you.

Infringement / Stealing Copyrighted Material

Used without permission.  Take a look at the take-down notice provision of Section 512 of the Copyright Act http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/ and http://fairusenetwork.org/reference/td.php). 
You can send a takedown notice by email directly to whoever you want in accordance with the Designation of Agent form filed by the company with the Copyright Office.

Why Bother?
Consider filing copyright applications on any web site or other copyrightable work that (1) can be infringed, (2) you care about enough to pursue an infringer, and (3) is worth the $45 filing fee and the time it takes to fill out a 2-page application.  You can download the application forms and circulars from the Copyright Office web site (http://www.copyright.gov/forms/ and http://www.copyright.gov/circs/).

Certificate of Registration
If you're a book author, have you ever seen a certificate of registration? Have you checked the US Copyright Office site and searched to see if there's a record of your copyright registration? Can you find your registration in the online database? If you have written a book under a contract that specified copyright to be registered in your name, check the database.

ABOUT COPYLEFT and THE COMMON LICENSE
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE AND OPEN SOURCE EXPLAINED

COPYRIGHT vs. COPYLEFT
4th century Ireland renegade bishop St. Columba snuck into Old Man Finnean's library and copied his psalter by hand, and then gave copies out for free to local churches

Content is just about anything that isn't executable.
One of the most significant uses may be supporting instruction and helping people learn.

The video uses 400 cuts from 27 different Disney films to mock copyright law as overly protective of the interests of copyright owners -- Disney among them. Eric Faden, an assistant professor of English and film studies at Bucknell University, who produced the video with help from seven of his students, said it took eight months to make.

MUSIC AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

• MUSIC AND COPYRIGHT LAWS
• FREE MUSIC
• WILL THE MPAA BE ABLE TO CENSOR ART?
  Will the MPAA be able to censor art? A program that cracks the code designed to protect the content on DVDs from being copied for either legal or illicit uses.
• TECHNOLOGY & THE LAW