Recently Asked Questions (RAQs)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3
| Question | Submission Date |
|---|---|
| Student Newspaper Archives, Fair Use, Licensing, and the DMCA We are uncertain how to proceed with further digitization of our college’s student newspapers. Currently, the newspapers published between 1948 and 2016 are digitized. They were made available online through a page hosted on the college’s website as well as the NYS Historic Newspapers database. Since the mid-2010s, articles from the newspaper have been published simultaneously online and in the print edition distributed across campus. The college’s administration received a complaint from a company called Copytrack regarding two images used in past issues of the paper. The college’s response was to scrub the images from the online archive of past issues and restrict access to the archives, effectively removing the entire digitized collection of its archives from the newspaper’s website. However, since the issues in question were from 2017 and 2018, the digitized collection still remains intact on NYS Historic Newspapers, where the library has it hosted. We’re uncertain what weight this complaint from Copytrack holds and hope to digitize the remainder of the publication soon, within the bounds of copyright restrictions. After this copyright complaint, is it advisable to leave the collection in NYS Historic Newspapers and continue adding to it, or should we plan to take it down and only digitize future copies for in-house preservation purposes? |
|
| ResearchGate, PDFs, and Copyright ResearchGate is often a place individuals will go to snag PDFs which are typically provided by authors, not publishers. It refers to itself as a community and network for researchers to share and discuss their research with others from around the globe. ResearchGate explicitly states that they are not liable for any copyright infringement, and that the responsibility rests with the individual; it is entirely up to the individual to either post the PDF to be downloaded freely, or to send the PDF to individuals upon request. I have multiple questions surrounding the use of ResearchGate. Number one, should libraries be directing individuals to ResearchGate to ask authors for copies of their articles? Number two, should our document delivery service be providing copies of PDFs from ResearchGate to our library patrons? I am personally very hesitant to refer anyone to ResearchGate as I find most faculty researchers are not aware of who truly holds the copyright to their published articles. Thank you! |
|
| Patron Streaming Content and Library as a Contributory Infringer According to Motion Picture Licensing Corporation, "A library can even be held as a contributory infringer simply for allowing patrons or guests to conduct unlicensed exhibitions on site. Innocuous activities, such as patrons streaming content from Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime on library computers, require a public performance license."
There is a lot of variations in how a patron may access these sites - on a public computer; on a personal device; on library wi-fi; on their personal device using a personal data plan... Is this referring to public library computers ONLY, or any patron device that is accessing their private streaming accounts in the public library? We have a lot of people that come in and use our wi-fi, and download episodes to watch at home. We've always treated public computers as a private space.
Does this mean that we have to block access to these sites or provide proactive messaging at each computer, and/or monitor their computer use?
Should messaging that addresses this issue be included in our wi-fi and/or computer use policy?
Is this something that if we provide computer screens or privacy walls we would reduce or eliminate our role as a contributory infringer?
Any guidance would be appreciated.
|