Re: @ services at universities

From: <kcrews[_at_]velcome.iupui.edu>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 1995 14:31:32 -0400 (CDT)

On Thu, 26 Jan 1995, Karen Taylor <ktaylor[_at_]spot.colorado.edu> wrote:
>
> For those of you with copyright responsibilities at universities, I
> would appreciate hearing from you. Rather than us reinventing the
> wheel, I'd like to learn from your successes (and otherwise).
>
> [text deleted]

> Many thanks!

And now a response from Indiana, with a copy of the text of a flyer about the newly opened Copyright Management Center at IUPUI:

     Copyright Management Center

     Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
     University Library, UL 1110C
     755 West Michigan Street
     Indianapolis, IN  46202-5195

     TEL: (317) 274-4400
     FAX: (317) 278-2300
     Email: copyinfo[_at_]indycms.iupui.edu

What is the CMC?

     The Copyright Management Center serves to address and coordinate the university's response to copyright issues affecting higher education. Our university is a complex organization with ambitious programs for the creation and dissemination of new knowledge. In the pursuit of those programs, our activities frequently raise questions about the relationship of copyright to the university's research, teaching, and service mission. A principal objective of the Center is to facilitate a constructive relationship between higher education and our legal rights and responsibilities.

Why is Copyright so Important?

     Copyright usually arises on campus as a frightening beast, terrorizing your plans and threatening everyone with ponderous liability. That image has been shaped largely by disturbing news reports and restrictive warnings against photocopying, software use, database downloading, and other activities. But copyright's relationship to the university is far more complex, and it often serves to protect faculty and the university as much as it might also inhibit them. Working with diverse members of the university community, the Center proposes to identify the many opportunities and benefits that copyright law can confer. Working together, we can discover the mutual respect implicit in copyright's balance of interests: we can demonstrate our respect for the interests of copyright owners, and we can exercise our rights under the law to utilize protected works to advance our common goals.

What Can the CMC do for Me?

     Here is just a sample of the possibilities: (1) Provide guidance for addressing copyright issues as they arise. (2) Offer access to information resources on copyright. (3) Sponsor workshops for groups of faculty, librarians, or staff. (4) Assist departments and other campus units with establishing an understanding of "fair use" and a copyright permission system. (5) Coordinate efforts to formulate policy for your unit or department.

     The Center contributes to the University's research and service goals by pursuing and sponsoring new research on copyright issues and participating in campus, state, and national commissions shaping copyright policy. The Center is also an administrative unit of the university, charged with fostering and coordinating the development of policy positions affecting the use of copyrighted works and the ownership of newly created works on campus.

     What does the CMC not do? We are not the police. You will not see FBI warnings, and we do not want to plant fear in your hearts. Instead, we want to help you find the most productive and least burdensome route through the intricate copyright maze. To achieve that end, we want to work with you, not as your personal copyright counsel, but instead as your guide. The CMC will help you find the right direction, and you will participate in making important judgement calls and implementing your decisions.

Who is the CMC?

     The Center is appropriately located in the new University Library, the information hub of our campus, which shares a deep concern about the direction and consequences of copyright law. The CMC is an entirely new enterprise, not only for IUPUI, but for any university. At the moment the CMC is also a one-person pursuit. The Director is Kenneth Crews, who opened the Center in August 1994 after practicing law in Los Angeles for ten years, followed by four years of teaching Business Law at San Jose State University. Crews has a joint faculty appointment in the School of Law and the School of Library and Information Science. He studied history at Northwestern University, received his law degree from Washington University, and earned an M.L.S. and Ph.D. at UCLA. Crews has written extensively on the relationship between copyright and higher education.

     November 11, 1994

---

PS: Since drafting the above statement last November, I am delighted to announce that Judy Homer has joined the CMC as its secretary. We are still at the early stages of development, so please do not call for copies of policy statements, etc. They simply are not ready for public consumption. But that day will come.... In the meantime, my thanks to everyone on this listserv who has shared ideas that have informed and strengthened our deliberations.

Kenneth Crews
2/1/95
<kcrews[_at_]velcome.iupui.edu> Received on Wed Feb 01 1995 - 19:39:27 GMT