Author Archives: Authors Alliance

Authors Alliance Welcomes Erika Wilson as Communications and Operations Manager

Posted June 29, 2015

Authors Alliance is pleased to welcome Erika Wilson as our new Communications and Operations Manager. Erika comes to us with a solid background in authors’ rights and IP issues thanks to her most recent position at the California Digital Library, and looks forward to helping to shape the future of Authors Alliance. “As we continue to grow, it’s important we have staff committed to our mission,” said Authors Alliance Executive Director Michael Wolfe. “Erika’s talent and drive are a much-needed addition to our team and we could not be more thrilled to have her on board.”

Erika holds an MA in English literature, and is a voracious reader. Please join us in welcoming Erika to our team!

Thoughts on the Copyright Office Report and Orphan Works

Posted June 18, 2015

Authors Alliance Co-Founder Pamela Samuelson

The Copyright Office report on Orphan Works and Mass Digitization is an important step in the long road toward resolving the orphan works problem and seeing more of our cultural and intellectual heritage made accessible to the public and to authors who want to build upon this heritage.

Authors Alliance commends the Copyright Office for the serious attention it has given to this issue. We were glad to see that the Office regards the orphan work problem as “widespread and significant” and in need of policy resolution. We commend the Office for endorsing that the orphan work solution should apply to all types of works, all types of uses, and all types of users. We were pleased also to see that the Office accepts that fair use is and should be part of the solution to this problem and that the limitation on liability approach the Office proposes can co-exist with fair use as a solution to the orphan works problem in the United States.

Nevertheless, I am left with three reservations about the proposal: First, the Office proposes to condition eligibility for the limitation on liability approach on the user’s filing a very detailed notice of intent to use with the Copyright Office, which must include a description of the search conducted for the rights holder as well as what the intended uses are before any uses have been made. This may not be unduly cumbersome for major copyright industry firms, but for individual authors, particularly those whose motivation to write is more focused on contributing to knowledge than to make a lot of money, the notice-of-intent-to-use may be too difficult to comply with, particularly if the number of orphans that, say, an historian or anthropologist might want to use is substantial and if the exact nature of the uses have yet to be determined. The Office’s 2006 report did not include the notice-of-intent-to-use requirement.

Second, we should be concerned with the central role that the Office intends to play in developing standards for diligent searches for rights holders. Given the wide variety of works, users and uses that will be affected by the proposal, a one-size-fits-all search standard set by the Office may not provide the flexibility that would be desirable. Of course, a diligent search for rights holders should be required, and those who undertake lame searches should not qualify for limits on liability, but searches should be reasonable in light of the circumstances. A major motion picture studio that wants to make a movie of an orphaned short story should have to make a more rigorous search than an academic author who wants to use orphan works in a research project.

Third, it was disappointing that the Office was somewhat skeptical about the utility of codes of best practices for making fair uses of orphan works. These codes have been adopted through a rigorous and conscientious community processes, and provide greater guidance about fair use than can be had simply by studying the fair use case law.

Tackling problems of this scale is far from easy, but I am hopeful that, with the participation of Authors Alliance and other stakeholders, a fair and viable solution will not prove too far off.

Authors Alliance and the Copyright Office Report on Orphan Works and Mass Digitization

Posted

Earlier this month the Copyright Office released its report on Orphan Works and Mass Digitization. Both of these topics are of special interest to Authors Alliance. We have taken public stands in the past to support mass digitization projects, like those at HathiTrust and Google Books that advance our members’ interest in having their works preserved, made searchable, and made accessible to the print-disabled. And we’re eager to see a solution to the orphan works problem that keeps so much of our cultural and intellectual heritage—even our own works—from participating fully in contemporary culture.

While Authors Alliance commends the serious attention and thought the Copyright Office has given these issues, we have some reservations about its reasoning and its proposed solutions. We will stay involved as these issues continue to work their way through the government, and will be filing a comment in response to the Copyright Office’s related inquiry regarding its proposed “pilot program” for licensing mass digitization projects. Our involvement will be particularly directed toward seeing that the following principles are adequately considered:

  1. We need approachable solutions that anyone can understand and use.
  2. Any solution for these problems must adequately take into account the diversity of author and rights holder interests when it comes to uses of their work. For many authors, and in particular for many Authors Alliance members, the best outcome is one that ensures their ability to take advantage of new avenues for reaching readers, especially when their preference is to do so under an open access license.
  3. Solutions must not prejudice fair use rights.

Stay tuned as we will continue to post updates and further thoughts on the Report here on the Authors Alliance blog.

Recapping the 1201 DMCA Exemption Hearings

Posted May 29, 2015

We have blogged several times about Authors Alliance’s effort to obtain an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that will preserve authors’ right to make fair use in the digital age.

Yesterday, our team testified in support of this effort at a hearing at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Authors Alliance Executive Director Michael Wolfe was joined by noted film scholar Bobette Buster and representatives from the Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic at University of California, Irvine School of Law and the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic at University of Colorado School of Law.

The exemption, which we explain in greater detail here and here, would protect the fair use rights of e-book authors, allowing them to bypass the encryption on DVDs, Blu-ray, and other media in order to use film clips in multimedia e-books. This would be a renewal and modification of a more limited exemption that was granted in 2012 and will expire this fall. Unlike the current rule, the exemption we seek would allow authors to access Blu-ray content and would cover important fair uses beyond the narrow category of criticism and commentary in film analysis.

The hearings went well. The Copyright Office posed many questions early and often, but Michael and Bobette answered them ably, with assistance from their legal team of UCI Law student Aaron Benmark, CU Law student Molly Priya McClurg, CU Professor Blake Reid, and UCI Professor Jack Lerner. The debate revolved around several questions, including the scope of the proposed exemption and the necessity of High Definition footage in the modern multimedia e-book market. The hearing ran long, lasting about two hours and twenty minutes, and we were very glad to have the opportunity to answer all the Office’s questions and to provide additional information demonstrating why this exemption is so important to authors.

At the end of the day, we are confident that our efforts will help the Copyright Office recognize the fundamental realities at play in this proceeding:

  • As rightsholders, authors make responsible fair use, and we do so in many fields beyond film analysis (a limitation in the current exemption);
  • The modern e-book market demands HD footage and we need to access HD footage in order to make our fair use;
  • And finally, nothing in the exemption we propose carries any risk of harm to rightsholders. There has not been even a hint that the current exemption has led to copyright infringement—and there’s no reason to think that our proposed one will be any different.

We’ll know the result of the hearing in the fall, when the Register of Copyrights makes her final recommendation and the Librarian of Congress adopts a final rule. In the meantime, Authors Alliance will continue our work in support of authors who write to be read.

Join us on May 27 in Toronto!

Posted May 8, 2015

Original photograph by Joel Friesen, modified and used here under a CC BY 2.0 license.

Join Authors Alliance and the University of Toronto Libraries for a lively discussion of the opportunities and challenges the internet presents to both academic and independent authors. Topics will include the role of copyright law and fair dealing, new publishing opportunities (including open access publishing), and how digital dissemination can provide new life for older and out-of-print titles.

Following an introduction by Ariel Katz, University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist will moderate the panel, which features:

  • Ren Bucholz, Lawyer, Lenczner Slaght, LLP
  • Natalie Zemon Davis, Professor of History, University of Toronto
  • Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management, University of Toronto
  • Ryan Merkley, CEO, Creative Commons
  • Margaret Jane Radin, Distinguished Research Scholar at the University of Toronto; Professor of Law, University of Michigan; Professor of Law, emerita, Stanford
  • Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Law and Information, University of California, Berkeley; Co-founder of Authors Alliance
  • Peter Unwin, Fiction Author and Poet

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged.

Books and the Valley of the Unassignable

Posted April 22, 2015

Authors Alliance Co-Founder Tom Leonard

In our day of networked information, scholars in North America need not worry about finding a book that bears on a crucial issue. Interlibrary loan has never been more efficient and Amazon and similar sites display single used books for sale. But here the good news ends, for there is often no way to assign this reading. A single volume cannot serve even the smallest seminar, because it cannot be shared in time for the day or week when it is the center of attention. Classes are planned months in advance and without the certainty of a book being available, it will not make the common reading list.

At Authors Alliance we had the impression that many important books in the humanities and qualitative social sciences were falling into the Valley of the Unassignable. But proceeding by anecdote would only take us so far, and so we ran a survey to see if older books that we knew were in demand, could be ordered from a publisher or otherwise were available as an e-book.

The University Library at Berkeley (which holds more than 12 million volumes and has 65,000 borrower cards) gave us a list of the 500 titles that were most frequently checked out in 2013-2014. Circulation figures of this type are imperfect, since some titles are on reserve and have to be checked out or renewed more frequently. But by looking at such a large number, we have corrected for this distortion. We cast a close eye on the nearly 200 titles that were heavily requested and fell into the humanities and qualitative social science.

Much credit should be given to publishers who have largely kept these valued titles in print and to others who have seen that there is at least a pdf of works published in the 20th century. But we could also see that Berkeley borrowers were checking out books that could not be assigned in a class. Market forces and rights issues limit what can be done for groups of readers. If we look at 20th century imprints and, rely on Amazon.com, many titles are out of reach. Consider for example:

Vladimir Putin Book Group

  • Paul W. Schroeder, Austria, Great Britain, and the Crimean War: the destruction of the European Concert (1973) [$110 on Kindle, $116 if Amazon restocks]
  • Winfried Baumgart, Imperialism: the idea and reality of British and French Colonial Expansion, 1880-1914 (1982)
  • Norman Rich, Why the Crimean War? A Cautionary Tale (1985)
  • David Wetzel, The Crimean War: A Diplomatic History (1985)
  • Rosemary Foot, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953 (1985)
  • James Cracraft, Major problems in the history of imperial Russia (1993-94) [some $100 paperbacks from Amazon]

Berkeley readers are checking these titles out, but Mr. Putin would struggle to put them on his reading list.

We can probably find a book group for you in our data, and that is unfortunate. Authors Alliance offers a way for many authors and their heirs to take works out of the Valley of the Unassignable. One path to higher ground was offered earlier this month, when we released a guide that helps authors regain rights to their books in order to make them more available.

Download Understanding Rights Reversions (PDF) from Authors Alliance
Download Understanding Rights Reversions from Unglue.it

Keeping Your Books Available

Posted April 9, 2015

Nicole Cabrera and Jordyn Ostroff

That book you published a few years ago is no longer selling like it used to, but it still contains useful information. Why don’t you ask your publisher for your rights back? You may be surprised to know that your publisher might be quite willing to give you back your rights if you ask. In fact, your publisher might also be quite willing to work with you to increase your book’s availability.

Don’t worry if you are unsure about how to approach your publisher. A new guide created by Authors Alliance will help you through the process, each step of the way.

Today, Authors Alliance releases Understanding Rights Reversion: When, Why, & How to Regain Copyright and Make Your Book More Available, a guide that arms authors with the information and strategies they need to revive their books. This guide is the product of extensive outreach to the publishing industry. In the process, we interviewed authors, publishers, and literary agents, ranging from a CEO of a major publishing house to contracts and rights managers of trade and academic presses, editorial assistants, novelists, and academic authors.

We were happily surprised by the consistency of publishers’ responses: across the board, publishers told us that they want to work together with their authors and that they are often willing to give authors their rights back if its in the books’ best interests. Publishers share the desire to “do the right thing” by books that would otherwise languish out of print. Time and again, we received a warm reception from the publishers, authors, and agents that we spoke with during our outreach, all of whom saw the value in a guide that would help authors keep their works available to readers.

Today’s technologies offer tremendous opportunities for authors to make their out-of-print or otherwise unavailable books more widely available. Some authors want to revive their books by creating e-books, while others may want to use print-on-demand technology or deposit their books in openly accessible repositories. We hope that the guide empowers authors to advocate on their own behalf to make their works more widely available, and we believe that many authors can work with their publishers to increase their books’ availability by following the strategies articulated in the guide: Be Reasonable, Be Flexible, Be Persistent, and Be Creative.

Page through Understanding Rights Reversion, and consider the ways you might make your book more available to your readers. This new guide will help you take an active role in your book’s future.

Download Understanding Rights Reversions (PDF)
Download from Unglue.it

Upcoming Authors Alliance Events

Posted April 7, 2015

Get ready to mark your calendars, as Authors Alliance has a number of events around North America over the next couple of months. Join us if you can!

April 9 in Berkeley, California: Preserving Our Intellectual Legacies in the Digital Age

Will future generations of scholars appreciate our contributions after our books go out of print? Or when the physical bookshelves on which they are stored must compete with virtual bookshelves, full of new electronic resources that are more easily discovered and accessed online? How can authors avoid the prospect of intellectual oblivion in the digital age? Join Authors Alliance’s board and distinguished historian Thomas Laqueur as we explore the ways in which titles can best continue to make their mark in a shifting intellectual ecosystem.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged.

May 27 in Toronto, Ontario: How Can Canadian Authors Thrive in a Digital World?

Join Authors Alliance and the University of Toronto Libraries for a lively discussion of the opportunities and challenges the internet presents to both academic and independent authors. Topics will include the role of copyright law and fair dealing, new publishing opportunities (including open access publishing), and how digital dissemination can provide new life for older and out-of-print titles.

Following an introduction by Ariel Katz, University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist will moderate the panel, which features:

  • Ren Bucholz, Lawyer, Lenczner Slaght, LLP
  • Natalie Zemon Davis, Professor of History, University of Toronto
  • Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management, University of Toronto
  • Ryan Merkley, CEO, Creative Commons
  • Margaret Jane Radin, Distinguished Research Scholar at the University of Toronto; Professor of Law, University of Michigan; Professor of Law, emerita, Stanford
  • Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Law and Information, University of California, Berkeley; Co-founder of Authors Alliance
  • Peter Unwin, Fiction Author and Poet

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged.

But wait! There’s more!

Can’t make these events? You can also catch Authors Alliance executive director Michael Wolfe at DPLAfest 2015 on April 17–18 Indianapolis, or meet up with us when we table at this year’s Bay Area Book Festival on June 6–7 in Berkeley. Stay tuned as we prepare to announce more events for the second half of the year.

Think an Authors Alliance event would benefit your community? Get in touch and let us know!