Libvidders:
I know it's hard to believe but already we must prepare for the triennial 1201 rulemaking on circumvention of technological protection measures employed by rights holders. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-09-29/html/2011-25106.htm For those new to the topic, here's a brief rundown. Every three years, the Copyright Office (CO) conducts a "rulemaking" which is a process initiated by a government agency to create or amend a rule or regulation. This process generally begins with a chance for the public to comment on the issue. ALA provides comments for a number of Notices for Public Rulemakings. When Congress drafted the DMCA they included a new chapter 12 of the Copyright Act that talks about anti-circumvention of TPMs. It is a violation to break a TPM to gain access to a protected work. Congress asked that the CO to conduct a rulemaking to discover if this law inferred with one's rights to exercise a fair use or some other non-infringing use. A good example of this is that people with print disabilities can circumvent e-books to enable text-to-speech functionality. They have lawfully acquired the work but they can't use it because of TPMs. At the last rulemaking, it was determined by the Librarian of Congress (under the recommendation of the CO and Commerce) that faculty in all subject disciplines could break CSS on encrypted DVDs in order to make clip compilations for instruction or research purposes. In addition, college students enrolled in media or film studies could also circumvent CSS to extract clips for educational purposes. ALA made this recommendation based on a lot of feedback that we received from members of video lib. (In fact, Gary Handman and Carlton Jackson testified). This rule must be fought for again because the exemptions only last for 3 years. I am collecting data on how this exemption has been working over the last couple of years. Do faculty at your institutions use clips in the classroom? Why? Are faculty less worried about the legality of using clips in the classroom? Do you have examples of how the exemption helped an educator or student? Currently this use is lawful so there is no reason to hide -- any examples you send to me should include faculty name, discipline and institution would be very helpful. Some rights holders will argue that this exemption is no longer necessary because now one can obtain movie clips through lawful services on the Internet. Is this true? Do existing clip services meet faculty needs? I would appreciate any examples you could send my way via e-mail by November 15th, 2011. Let me know if you have questions. Many thanks! -Carrie Carrie Russell, Director Program on Public Access to Information American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy 1615 New Hampshire Avenue NW, First Floor Washington, DC 20009 202.628.8410/800.941.8478 202.628.8419 (fax) crussell at alawash dot org
VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
