For immediate release:
December 12, 2007

For more information, contact:
Prue Adler
Association of Research Libraries
202-296-2296
prue@arl.org

ARL Releases White Paper on Educational Fair Use

Washington DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released a white paper, “Educational Fair Use Today,” by Jonathan Band, JD. Band discusses three recent appellate decisions concerning fair use that should give educators and librarians greater confidence and guidance for asserting this important privilege.

In all three decisions discussed in the paper, the courts permitted extensive copying and display in the commercial context because the uses involved repurposing and recontextualization. The reasoning of these opinions could have far-reaching implications in the educational environment.

Band summarizes the three cases—Blanch v. Koons, Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com, and Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley—and analyzes the significance of the appellate decisions in the educational context.

The paper is freely available for download from the ARL Web site at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/educationalfairusetoday.pdf.

Jonathan Band helps shape the laws governing intellectual property and the Internet through a combination of legislative and appellate advocacy. He has represented clients with respect to the drafting of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); database protection legislation; the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act; and other statutes relating to copyrights, privacy, spam, cybersecurity, and indecency. He complements this legislative advocacy by filing amicus briefs in significant cases related to these provisions. Jonathan Band is located on the Web at http://www.policybandwidth.com/.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. 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, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is located on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.