A recent day-long workshop on copyright was insightful and salutary in a number of ways (even though I had to put in extra make-up time for the time spent at the conference to keep up on projects). The presenter treated the participants like her law students (she was a former law professor). She was helping the group abstract out principles to be used in understanding particular situations; she was showing them “how” to think about certain legal issues. She set up the laws with clarity, introduced from-life cases, assigned group discussions, and treated everyone in the room with respect. She expected sophistication from the group. If the group asked her a question without thinking about the prior concepts that would be useful for solving the situation, she would remind them firmly about the prior principles and the applications to that particular case. She enforced clear lines of logic.

Containing Copyright Infringements

One of my favorite points was when the lawyer giving the presentation addressed a question from the back-of-the-room. To paraphrase, the question was about what the project leader should do when guest presenters on her projects would bring in slideshows with images without clear provenance and with no copyright releases? Would it be sufficient just to have a release signed by that professor or subject matter expert? (Would it be possible to just slough off responsibility for the copyright pursuit to that professional?)

The response offered was to enforce responsibility at one’s own level—which is a refreshing idea. The concept is to not go along with someone else’s lack of due diligence or sloppiness. While having a sign-off from the presenter is helpful, it is better to make sure that the images and other digital resources really may be used in that context. If the works do not have clear lines of provenance and no documented copyright releases, then the works should not be used. (I’ve never been on a project where a particular “found image” or “found resource” with no background absolutely needed to be used, even if a substitute was not directly available.) There is no resource that one would have to use that would put the project and people’s reputations at risk. It’s a fact of life that the Internet and WWW are silent about so much. So much is unavailable for open-source use. One runs up against the limits of certain types of resources and information quite often.

Orphaned Works

Part of the discussion addressed the endeavor by Congress to considered “orphaned works” legislation to see if people using copyrighted materials (but without clear owners) could get a “pass” if they actually pursued copyright owners diligently for permissions. She did share a case where a company was digitizing works after doing some preliminary searches for owners of various works, but was found by content creation companies to have contravened over 100 copyright holders’ rights…and was then sued.

Practical Applications

The presenter aligned her presentation with the ideals (“the spirit of the law”) of copyright law to encourage innovations and exploration—for the benefit of larger society. She had political opinions but couched them as such, and she tempered the ideas with lines of reasoning. She was not advocating for pushing the edges of copyright law by taking a hugely liberal interpretation. She was not advocating a very conservative view that would totally constrain higher education. Rather, she encouraged working within the law in smart ways to promote quality learning.