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Copyright Week Explores Principles of Copyright Policy

copyright-week-logoThis week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is hosting Copyright Week, with each day devoted to a different issue. Copyright Week will last six days, ending on Saturday, January 18, 2014, the two-year anniversary of the Internet blackouts protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). ARL and 16 other organizations are participating in Copyright Week. Throughout the week, the participants will discuss key principles that should guide copyright policy.

Here is the lineup for Copyright Week:

Day 1: Transparency. Copyright policy must be set through a participatory, democratic, and transparent process. It should not be decided through back-room deals or secret international agreements.

Day 2: Building and Defending a Robust Public Domain. The public domain is our cultural commons and a public trust. Copyright policy should seek to promote, and not diminish, this crucial resource.

Day 3: Open Access. The results of publicly funded research should be made freely available to the public online, to be fully used by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Day 4: You Bought It, You Own It. Copyright policy should foster the freedom to truly own your stuff: to tinker with it, repair it, reuse it, recycle it, read or watch or launch it on any device, lend it, and then give it away (or re-sell it) when you’re done.

Day 5: Fair Use Rights. For copyright to achieve its purpose of encouraging creativity and innovation, it must preserve and promote ample breathing space for unexpected and innovative uses.

Day 6: Getting Copyright Right. A free and open Internet is essential infrastructure, fostering speech, activism, new creativity, and new business models for artists, authors, musicians and other creators. It must not be sacrificed in the name of copyright enforcement.

Follow the conversation on the Copyright Week website, the ARL Policy Notes blog, and the @ARLpolicy Twitter feed.


The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.

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