Copyright Office

Making new expressions from the same facts – copyright, music, and Pi.

by mslevine May 16, 2013

Yes, that’s pi as in 3.14. One of the frequent questions that comes up in my work involves confusion over whether facts and data are subject to US Copyright: they are not. Original expressions or arrangements of facts can, however, be subject to copyright protection. A recent case helps make the distinction clear – and ...

Read More

Open Access Week Events at the University of Michigan Library

by Meredith Kahn October 17, 2012

The University of Michigan Library invites you to celebrate Open Access Week, October 22-28, 2012. Open Access Week provides an opportunity to explore the benefits of open access to scientific research for both the academic community and the greater good of society. The open access movement advocates for free online access to scholarly work in ...

Read More

Copyright Office Fellow Lisa Hardman Selected as ARL Diversity Scholar

by mslevine August 7, 2012

The Copyright Office is pleased to announce that Lisa Hardman, one of our ARL Career Enhancement Program Fellows for 2012, has been named as an ARL Diversity Scholar. Lisa worked with us over the course of last year to create a comprehensive research and action agenda to help libraries make full legal uses of state government ...

Read More

ARL Releases Fair Use Best Practices

by mslevine January 26, 2012

Today the Association of Research Libraries has issued the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries. It is the culmination of two years of work within the academic library community, looking at the state of actual practices regarding fair use, which explicitly supports teaching, scholarship, and research fundamental to scholarly ...

Read More

Golan v. Holder: In Praise of Breyer’s Dissent

by mslevine January 25, 2012

With last week’s flurry of activity over SOPA/PIPA, perhaps you missed the Supreme Court’s decision in Golan v. Holder [PDF]. The opinion makes it unequivocally clear that it is well within the purview of Congress to remove works from the public domain and reinforces the Court’s opinion in Eldred regarding Congress’s authority to extend copyright ...

Read More

Lathered Up About SOPA, RWA, and More

by mslevine January 17, 2012

For the moment, SOPA (HR 3261: Stop Online Piracy Act) is on hold in the wake of a remarkable response from the blogosphere, organizations, and private citizens. The bill is dense, opaque, overreaching, and probably unenforceable. It manages to put a crimp on civil liberties and fail to actually help copyright holders who really do ...

Read More

Copyright Camp 2011 Recap

by Greg Grossmeier August 15, 2011

July 29 marked the second MPublishing Copyright Camp – this year with Deborah Wythe of the Brooklyn Museum.  Copyright Camp is MPublishing’s way of making copyright fun, and we’ve had the great benefit of working with the great team at Open.Michigan on these events.  What is Copyright Camp? On the last Friday of July we invite a ...

Read More

MPublishing Says Farewell to Ari Friedlander and Greg Grossmeier

by Shana July 28, 2011

Ari Friedlander, who has been Outreach Coordinator for the Text Creation Partnership since July 2010, has accepted the position of Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Davis. For the last year, Ari has served as the face of the TCP, representing our work to current and future partners, writing press ...

Read More

MPublishing Presents Copyright Camp!

by admin July 8, 2011

Are you interested in how copyright affects your professional life? Do you miss the fun and welcoming atmosphere of summer camp? Then plan to join MPublishing at Copyright Camp, where we’ll provide a forum to discuss copyright and how it affects you on a daily basis. Copyright Camp will be an unconference-style event with an ...

Read More

U-M Library to Share HathiTrust Orphan Works

by Greg Grossmeier June 23, 2011

There are potentially thousands of “orphan works” in the U-M Library collection that are in-copyright, digitized, and preserved works in the HathiTrust Digital Library–yet remain unavailable because copyright holders cannot be found or contacted. The Orphan Works Project, which began last month, has just announced that U-M Library will make any identified orphan works available ...

Read More