Right Click!

Right Click! It's Easy to Copy Cool Graphics
for Your Library Web Page.
Can it Lead to Legal Trouble?

Presented by Mary Minow, Library Law Consultant and Co-author of The Library's Legal Answer Book, http://www.librarylaw.com and http://blog.librarylaw.com .

This session was set up to help us:

• identify what is in the public domain
• decide what qualifies as "fair use"
• and provide samples of email requests for permission when necessary

Mary has been kind enough to provide her presentation online for us (available only until April 30) at http://www.librarylaw.com/NJLAcopy.html . (Her other presentations are also available at http://www.librarylaw.com until April 30).

Some other useful resources were mentioned such as:

http://www.chillingeffect.org
This is a joing project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Standford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law.

From their home page, "Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities."

American Library Assocation Copyright Issues page at http://www.ala.org/copyright

Complete Copyright: An Everyday Guide for Librarians, a book by Carrie Russell

and

Copyright in Cyberspace, by Gretchen McCord Hoffmann (which seems to have been updated by Copyright in Cyperspace 2: Questions and Anwers for Librarians).

The main, most useful points from Mary's excellent presentation were:

• If you are sued and lose, you will pay copyright damages, lost profits of copyright holder, or $750 - $30,000 per incident
  
• Familiarize yourself with the "Fair Use" policy (for the purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship, research)
  
• If something is in the Public Domain, it is fine to use (facts, recipes, ideas, dedicated works, government, and expired)
  
• Ideas are not copyrightable
  
• If the item is not in the Public Domain and you cannot justify Fair Use, request permission to use - Determine copyright holder, Identify the rights you need (exclusive/non-exclusive), Put the agreement in writing (email is okay) and keep on file
  
• Sample Forms are located at http://www.librarylaw.com/perm.htm

Mary is super-knowledgeable and I think that NJLA was very lucky to have her come and make such wonderful and useful presentations!