Article Review

Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center, (2007). Copyright overview (NOLA), retrieved June 6, 2008, from http://fairuse.stanford.edu/.

Most anything can qualify for copyright protection as long as it is in a physical form for at least a brief period of time. It must be original—the author cannot copy another person’s work—and it must have creative effort. For example, there needs to be more creativity than the white pages of a telephone book. The author’s ideas, however, are not protected by copyright. The foundation of copyright lies in encouraging creativity, and copyrighting ideas would certainly hinder the purpose of the law.

While anything published prior to 1923 is in the public domain, there are various rules regarding copyright expiration after 1923. It is best to assume copyright protection until proven otherwise. One exception is the fair use rule whereby use is permitted if it is for education, scholarship or for public benefit. Fair use will depend on the amount of material used, purpose, and how the material is used.

Because it is often difficult to determine when a work is published on the Internet, it is best to assume that it is copyrighted and ask permission of the author before using.

Copyright ownership can be transferred, for example to a book publisher. Ownership can be transferred as an “assignment” that transfers all rights, or as a “license” that transfers some of the rights. Ownership, however, can be revoked by authors or heirs 35 to 40 years following transfer.

Comment:

The Katie Lee exhibit is an unusual exhibit for NAU’s Special Collections and Archives since we do not yet own and/or have copyright permission for her collection. This especially impacts the virtual exhibit. Normally, exhibits are of collections that SCA already owns and the virtual exhibit is housed on SCA’s Digital Archives of the Colorado Plateau. For this exhibit, however, the virtual exhibit will be hosted on Katie’s commercial website with links to SCA’s.