Posted: 10/28/98
Peter W. Martin
We'll continue to explore copyright issues we have already opened in connection with works incorporating fact and other public domain material. Copyright law speaks to the work's creators as they consider what they can include as part of their digital product and what rights they must acquire from others. It also furnishes protection for the product or serve they end up creating. On both fronts, the inclusion of audio clips, images, and animated images alongside text is likely to affect the equation. Copyright law does not apply consistently across types of works. And some of the difference is explicitly reflected in the Act which contains numerous categories for covered material. In addition dominant licensing practices vary from category to category.
Second, one of the major problems in creating a digital product so early in the development of electronic publication is figuring out how the relevant copyright rights have been allocated under assignments or licenses drafted and agreed to before these possibilities were foreseen.
We'll probe the following two basic questions (but emphasizing the first):
In connection with the second we'll explore whether a multi-media CD-ROM falls in a different protection category than the database product we considered last week and, if so, what consequences follow.
Re-read the provisions of the Copyright Act that deal with assignments and licenses as well as those that define such categories as "derivative works," "phonorecords," "sound recordings," "audiovisual works," "motion pictures," the new "digital audio recording devices and media" plus any others that catch your eye and consider which apply to familiar types of multi-media CD-ROM products.
The other materials I'd like you to read include:
I'll begin discussion on this assignment in the webboard conference tomorrow. Our CUSEEME class on this topic will be next Tuesday, Nov. 3.