Re: creating copyright office on campus

From: Sandy J. Wong <starwave[_at_]batnet.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 10:51:15 -0800

Suzanne Harrell, University of Oklahoma Press, sharrell[_at_]uoknor.edu,wrote:

>I am posting this message on behalf of the University Legal Counsel's
>Office. Replies posted to the group will be routed to him or replies
>sent directly to my email address will be forwarded.
>
>Thank you.
>
>At the University of Oklahoma:
>
> We are thinking of establishing a University office which will
>consolidate and process faculty requests for permission to reproduce
>copyrighted material for classroom use. Currently, faculty must do
>this on their own and are frustrated either by the time it takes to
>receive word from the copyright owner or by their inability to even
>locate the owner.
>
> For those of you who have considered or solved this problem,
>what are the pros and cons of the various solutions (consolidated
>central office, clearinghouse service, individual responsibility,
>off-campus agent, etc)? I would appreciate any administrative rules
>and forms you can share.

The law firm of Fenwick & West and I have considered this problem, especially as it relates to use of copyrighted material in electronic and network communications. All in all,for a viable clearinghouse service, you should address both paper and electronic modes of reproducing copyrighted material. To stimulate your own proposals, I'd love to share with you excerpts extracted from two documents available on the Internet, of which I'm the co-author to the latter:  

o Association of American Universities (AAU) HEIR Alliance Executive Strategies Report #5 [full version from CAUSE Gopher server, cause-gopher.colorado.edu]

o ``Multimedia Content and the Super Highway: Rapid Acceleration or Foot on the Brake?'' [ full version from Electronic Frontier Foundation Web server or URL, http://www.eff.org/pub/CAF/law/multimedia-copyright]

Excerpt from the AAU above:

The Task Force described two possible ownership scenarios, which sound applicable to your situation, for improving the management of intellectual property:

• Joint Faculty/University Ownership of Copyrights: shared ownership for non-royalty producing works; for works that general substantial revnues, the university may require reimbursement for extraordinary expenses.
• Joint Faculty/Consortium Ownership of Copyrights: copyright jointly held by the author(s) of the work and a consortium of universities;participation voluntary.

Also: **Library services should be restructured to rely more heavily on remote access and digitized materials (recommendation of AAU Foreign Acquisitions Task force for transformation of research library operations):

Excerpt from paper ``Multimedia Content and the Super Highway...'' above:

A proposal is given for a U.S. Multimedia Clearinghouse (excerpts from an overview of clearinghouse structure)

• Initial phase would probably be only to establish a database of information without royalty payment admnistration. The eventual administraiton of royalty payments is possible.
• The clearinghouse could first function solely as a database search system. The basic elements of the database would include; 1) name of the work; 2) licensing conditions; 3) royalty fees; and 40 contact information on the copyright owner or agent. Nominal service fees would be paid by both copyright owners and licensees to use the clearinghouse.
• Voluntary participation and pricing for certain defined routine uses could be early features of the clearinghouse. For example, there would be different pricing for internal use within a business as opposed to a public performance.
• Management and Administration...Using an existing entity with clearance experience makes the most sense...would be important at least through the startup phase and possibly indefinitely if a royalty administration function is not implemented...on-going funding could come from service fees associated with both owners and licensees use of the clearinghouse.

Obviously, multimedia title publishing is different from education, but at least you have an idea of what goes behind a clearinghouse concept.

Hope this helps for starters.

---

Sandy Jane Wong, M.P.A.
Write Wavelength
"Conveying the pragmatics of electronic networks" Ph: 415-851-7233
EMail: sandy[_at_]starwave.batnet.com Received on Tue Feb 07 1995 - 19:00:11 GMT