Edited by Michael Matthews and Patricia Brennan

Foreword

Betty G. Bengtson, University of Washington

This past year saw the emergence of a national discussion of copyright and intellectual property, especially with regard to copyright in the electronic environment.

Propelled by the Clinton Administration as part of its National Information Infrastructure (NII) priority, discussions have been led by the Administration's Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights that has explored the application and effectiveness of copyright law. Headed by Bruce Lehman, Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, the Working Group issued a draft report, Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure (July 1994), known as the Green Paper.

The Green Paper asserts that "the potential of the NII will not be realized if the content (of the NII) is not protected effectively." To that end, the draft report proposes a series of recommendations for amending the Copyright Act of 1976 to "provide the necessary protection of rights in copyrighted works." Changes proposed to the copyright law relate to fair use, distribution by transmission, first sale, and educational uses.[1]

Although the Working Group initially characterized these amendments as only "minor changes" to the 1976 Act, if implemented, they would dismantle the current balance between the rights of copyright owners and the rights of libraries and users of proprietary information. ARL, with others in the library and higher education community, presses for the continued equitable balance between those rights. The full potential of the NII for the education and research communities will not be realized if the current balance in the print environment is not extended to the electronic environment.

A recent step toward seeking consensus around matters of intellectual property in an electronic environment was ARL membership endorsement of a statement, "Intellectual Property: An Association of Research Libraries Statement of Principles, Affirming the Rights and Responsibilities of the Research Library Community in the Area of Copyright." The statement was made available to a large number of educational associations to inform and to invite discussion of the issue. This discussion led to the endorsement of the statement by the American Library Association (ALA), the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), CAUSE, and the National Humanities Alliance. It also sparked the development of companion statements in other organizations.

The 1994 release of the Green Paper and related calls for copyright legislative reform led to collaboration among five library associations to address copyright and technology. In January 1995, this partnership produced a working document, Fair Use in the Electronic Age: Serving the Public Interest, that ventures a definition of lawful uses of copyrighted works in the NII. The ARL Board endorsed the statement and encouraged that it be made widely available to spark discussions about fair use of copyrighted materials in an electronic age.

Simultaneously, as a direct follow-up to the Association of American Universities (AAU) Research Libraries Project, a new ARL-AAU Task Force on Intellectual Property in the Electronic Environment was established, led by Peter Nathan, Provost, University of Iowa. This joint task force has the support of ARL's Office of Scientific and Academic Publishing (OSAP) to undertake tasks that encourage and assist university campus reviews of intellectual property practices and policies, possibly resulting in a model statement or two that could be adapted for local use.

Copyright and fair use of copyrighted material are defining issues for the successful transition of research collections to the electronic environment.

At the May 1995 Membership Meeting of the Association of Research Libraries, a panel of experts offered four perspectives on the strategies and public policy choices involved in defining the rights and responsibilities of copyright owners, users, and libraries in the networked environment. These perspectives and an additional paper by Douglas Bennett (ACLS), originally delivered to the Association of American Publishers, are published together to stimulate and inform discussions within the scholarly community.

Footnote

[1] The Green Paper has received many comments since its release. A final "white paper" is expected to be issued later in 1995.

Copyright © July 1995. Copyright of the papers in this collection are held by the individual authors. Permission is granted to reproduce and distribute copies of this work for nonprofit educational or library purposes, provided that the author, source, and copyright notice are included on each copy. For commercial use, please contact ARL Publications.