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John Miedema, one of the Slow Library posse, has an excellent blog up called Slow Reading. He’s been talking about audiobooks lately and his recent installment concerns the patron experience with digital audiobooks. His library uses Overdrive. He is techie enough to not have problems with the install experience, and for this installment he was content to listen to the audiobook on his computer. But he did have one observation about the availability of this content that is supposed to resemble books.

My selected title was not currently available, so I placed a hold on it. It struck me as odd that I would have to place a hold on a digital resource. After all, making an extra copy of a digital resource does not cost additional money. I know, I’m being simplistic. The rights holders have to impose some kind of exclusivity on the product so that people will pay more to get more copies. Still, it irks. I was emailed a couple days later that my title was available for download. Nice. I was told I could only have it for fourteen days. Well, I may be a slow reader, but I suppose I can listen faster. Last note on exclusivity — if I finish early, I can’t return it before the “return” date to let someone else have it earlier.

Like John, I understand why this is built into the audiobook mechanism but as a library patron and possible librarian working with this type of material, I find it obnoxious. As a patron, you get the book for two weeks whether you need it for that long or not. As the library, every time the item is checked out it becomes “unavailable” for two weeks whether the person reads it in a day or in ten. The content costs a fixed price which has a built-in limitation of how many times it can circulate. This offends my thrifty library sensibilities.

Add to this the confusing problem of non-label releases like Radiohead’s new album — pay what you want to download it, or you can pay $80 for a boxed set — and libraries are left having to make ad hoc choices about collection development issues because of bizarre market forces not because of what they feel should be in their library. Cynics can argue that this is the way libraries have always been with major publishers and book jobbers accounting for a disproportionate amount of library sales and shelf space but I’m curious if these new technological advances are going to make this problem better or worse.

Google Books has an enormous amount of material. This is good. However, they paint copyright restrictions with a wide brush and err on the side of protecting copyright holders. So, most content on Google Books that has been published post-1923 are restricted (possibly all, but definitely most). This may or may not be good for most people, but it’s certainly bad in some specific instances, like with government documents. These are in the public domain and yet you can only see “snippets” on Google Books. Rick Prelinger described this phenomenon last year. The problem still exists. The concern, apparently is that cop[yrighted material may appear within these documents — hearings especially — and since Google can’t spare the humans to do the due diligence, we all suffer with restricted access. [freegovinfo]

Mary Minow points us to the Handbook on Copyright and Related Issues for Libraries downloadable and redistributable and a slim 700K

I’ve mentioned the “speaking with one voice” idea quite a lot. When you work with ALA in any capacity for long you’ll hear about it. Councilors were encouraged to all support the dues increase so that we could speak with one voice for ALA. The Social Responsibilities Round Table was discouraged from sending out copies of their own resolutions using their name (and by extention, ALA’s name) because of the supposed value of a “speaking with one voice” approach. When I worked at a reference desk, I tried hard to balance my own opinions on library policies with the binding nature of the policies, and the assumption that we were allowed to be flexible within the rules, to a degree, a degree I was never sure of (”Yes, I think the fines are a little high. No you should still pay them.”).

This just leads up to an anecdote. Last week the READ Poster I added to the Flickr group I mentioned a few weeks ago was selected to illustrate a little blurb about the Flickr group in AL Direct. AL Direct is an e-newsletter distributed by ALA. It’s distributed to all ALA members, except ones like me who have unsubscribed. I was a little surprised by the (unattributed) inclusion of my image both because it’s a bit icky and because it’s a direct rip-off of an ALA trademark. As I recall, when Audible came out with their Don’t Read campaign, ALA sent them a strongly worded letter.

I was a little surprised to see this post on LISNews about how to make your own legit READ posters. Apparently the gal from ALA called Blake about this item. I didn’t get specifics but it’s clear from the wording that

• ALA would certainly prefer that you paid $134 for a set of templates. You can then import these into your own editing software and are subsequently licensed to use what you create, though you can’t sell anything you make with it.
• The people at ALA Graphics are not “speaking with one voice” with the people from AL Direct. I am not suprised at this, since it’s a huge organization, and American Libraries is technically editorially independent, but it’s a little jarring nonetheless. From a business perspective, ALA has a legal responsibility to “defend” its trademark which in this case is the word READ, as indicated by the license agreement [text below] which has a whole bunch of other interesting points (one computer at a time, no “redistribution” of the image etc)

The word READ is a registered trademark of the American Library Association (ALA). With the purchase of this disc, ALA grants the purchaser a license to use the trademark, but only within the context of the images on the disc subject to the conditions below. ALA grants you a personal, non-transferable, non-exclusive right to transfer the images on the accompanying CD-ROM disc to one computer at a time and to use the images on that computer with one user, subject to the following terms and conditions. The images and layouts are for use only by registered non-profit purchasers only to enhance reading programs and to promote them. The images may not be incorporated in products offered for sale. An image(s) may not be incorporated in a product for the purpose of redistributing the image(s), and the images themselves may not be sold or rented, or downloaded or transferred electronically such as on an electronic network or bulletin board. Pornographic or defamatory use of the images is prohibited. You may not copy the disc in its entirety.

From my perspective, this is a “no harm, no foul” situation with the homemade READ Posters. However, the sudden presence of someone acting like a referee, essentially an agent from an advocacy organization tut-tutting a bunch of librarians for taking their good idea and running with it, makes me feel just a little bit shamed.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the Internet Archive Open Library project was the software they used to attempting to determine whether works they were scanning were or were not under copyright. It was an elaborate set of questions and answers with access to some copyright databases. In contrast, unless I’m mistaken, Google Books just draws a line at 1923 and assumes everything after that date is in copyright. This includes government information which as you know is made with tax dollars and generally in the public domain. So why does Google Book Search treat all post-1923 books as under copyright? Just over-cautious?

ALA’s Office for Technology Policy has their programmming for ALA Annual in New Orleans scheduled already. If you have a particular love of copyright issues, you may want to go to some of these events.

Best Practices in Digital Reference: Copyright, Licensing, and Privacy Guidelines (Linda Arret)
Sunday, June 25 8-10am

The Long Tail: The Internet, Culture, and the Mega-Store (Nancy Kranich)
Monday, June 26 10:30-12noon

Copyright 101: Everything You Wanted to Know about Copyright But Were Afraid to Ask (CAC, CAN, COL-IP)
Monday, June 26 1:30-3:30

Ray Patterson Copyright Award and Reception (CAN, CAC, OITP)
Monday, June 26 4-5:30pm

ACRL’s Copyright Program: Copyrights and Licensing Wrongs (as an FYI)
Sunday, June 25 10:30-12noon

Walt Crawford has a long piece in the latest Cites & Insights about the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license, responding to some online arguments against them by the Free Content community (Walt’s capitalization creates a useful distinction) including Wikipedia. My approach to the NC designation which I also use on this site, is philosophically much the same as Walt’s. If you’re using my content as a primary method of making money for yourself, please cut me in on it. If you’re not, then go ahead and use what you’d like. Letting me know is always appreciated.

This specific designation on this blog has come into play three times that I can recall.

1. The New York Times magazine reprinted a text version of my Five Technically Legal Signs for Your Library, only they changed five to three and changed some of the wording and credited the material incorrectly. I wrote them a pointed email outlining this and highlighting the site license, and they allowed me a heavily edited response in the letters section of the next issue.
2. When a Wikipedia editor wrote an article about me, I was asked if I would offer my “The FBI Has Not Been Here” sign as an illustration. This seemed to be preferable to some dorky picture of me, so I agreed. They needed me to remove the license from that image in order to have it be available on Wikipedia which is a Free Content site — meaning that you can use any image in Wikipedia for any puspose at all. Remember the people who own the content and dictate the terms of the license can negotiate other deals for their own content, the license is just a shortcut for people who want to know “what can I do with this content without even asking?”
3. When TechSoup asked to reprint an article of mine on safety and security issues for public access PCs that had originally appeared on WebJunction, they asked if I wouldn’t mind putting a CC license on the content so that it could be reprinted by other nonprofits which seemed fine to me. We had a little back and forth about how much editing the reprinted article would go through. The fact that I had licensed the content made it a little easier to have the content presented the way I wanted it to be presented and I’m happy with the result.

This luxury assumes of course that you own the content to begin with, and that you know you own it. As we move into the shiny world of user-created content in the form of blogs, podcasts, collaborative online projects and ephemeral notations (do you own the comments you put on someone else’s blog?) this will get more complicated before it gets simpler. For another copright consideration to sink your teeth into, K. Matthew Danes has put together a long easy-to-read piece on what copying means in a library context including a deep look at Section 108 which governs copying by libraries. Read and learn.

You can use the date operator to browse public domain books in Google Books. I’m not entirely sure why the covers of some of these books remain under copyright. Any ideas? I’ve also noticed a few scanning errors and some pretty neat finds like this one which gives the name of every librarian in the US and Canada working in a library holding over 1,000 volumes. Google Books clearly uses keyword indexing to make these books searchable. How great would it be to have this one in a database? You can see a few images that I particularly liked over at Flickr.

Google Print starts the scanners up again this week. What does Michael Gorman have to say about it? Is this the sort of thing that ALA needs to have a stated opinion about? Does ALA need to “get in the game”? Should we even be at a point where we are still asking these questions?

Google Print Library going on hold over copyright is big news in our world. Copyfight followed up on the story. Of particular interest is the comments with people speculating on the copyright-kosherness of a publicly traded for-profit company freely scanning, copying and indexing content that is not owned by them without negotiating for rights. Other popular copyfighters Siva and Seth have worthwhile insights.

Siva “Once again, I think we should recognize that unless we think copyright should not exist, copyright holders should be able to decide when to license their works to other companies. This is far from absolute. But it’s common sense and generally true. Only in unusual circumstances, such as when markets fail to provide an essential public good, should we consider radical moves. This is not one of those cases. The service is not an essential public good — just a cool idea. And the market was not failing. Publishers were at the table…. Google messed up by going all unilateral on the publishers. There was no market failure here. Transaction costs were not prohibitive. They were working out the deal. This was not the recording industry shunning Napster. This was how copyright is supposed to work.”

Seth: Why is Google doing this book-scanning project? It’s not because it’s just so cool (even if it is). While coolness may justify a small-scale promotional project, the scanning efforts are expensive. So Google, as a company, obviously sees some value in the effort. This is not wrong. But it’s also a direct conflict with the granted monopoly know as copyright. Whenever there is value, particularly commercial value, there is conflict over who should be able to receive it.