feb09c.indd


Jenni Terry W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n e  

New Congress, old copyright issues 
The 110th Congress may be over, but many of 
the copyright issues academic libraries have 
been following over the last two years—or 
in some cases even longer—are certainly 
expected to re­emerge in the 111th. 

Not quite as certain, however, is what 
action will be taken on matters, such as or­
phan works, which always seems to be on 
Congress’ agenda but never on its list of fi nal 
accomplishments. 

Though the 110th Congress took orphan 
works legislation further than any other Con­
gress—the Senate passed a reasonable and 
relatively useful version of the bill—because 
the bill ultimately died in the House, it’s back 
to square one now that the 111th has begun. 
Unfortunately, with the dissolution of the 
U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee 
on the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual 
Property, it is unclear whether this bill will 
even be reintroduced. 

In addition to this issue, two other federal 
copyright matters for academic libraries to 
monitor are the DMCA Section 1201 Rulemak­
ing regulatory activity and the Google Book 
Search Settlement Agreement. 

Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium 
Copyright Act provides for exemptions 
from the prohibition on circumvention of 
technological locks that control access to 
copyrighted works. 

Exemptions are available to users of 
“classes of works” who would be “adversely 
affected by virtue of such prohibition in 
their ability to make non­infringing uses” of 
those works. 

During the last round of rulemaking in 
2007, the Library of Congress’s Copyright 
Office granted an exemption that permitted 
film and media studies professors to avoid 
encryption to create their own compilations 
of film clips for classroom instruction. 

Jenni Terry is press officer at ALA’s Washington Offi  ce, 
e-mail: jterry@alawash.org 

In October 2008, the Library of Congress 
announced the start of the latest triennial 
review process to determine not only which 
classes of works may be exempted, but 
also who should be able to circumvent ac­
cess­control technologies and under what 
circumstances. 

In response, ALA, as member of the 
Library Copyright Alliance, along with the 
Music Library Association, requested that 
the current exemption granted to fi lm and 
media studies professors should be extended 
to all professors in higher education. In the 
coming months, ALA will work to provide 
recommendations and participate in hearings 
scheduled by the Copyright Office as it works 
to make decisions on the exemptions that will 
be granted or renewed. 

Also in late October, Google, the Authors 
Guild, and the Association of American 
Publishers announced a major preliminary 
settlement agreement resolving the class­
action lawsuit (The Authors Guild et al. v. 
Google Inc.), brought by book authors and 
publishers in response to Google’s Book 
Search digitization project. 

The ALA Washington Office has been 
reviewing the extensive agreement to deter­
mine what possible implications there may be 
for all types of libraries and released “A Guide 
for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google 
Library Project Settlement,” by Jonathan Band. 
The guide was designed to help the library 
community better understand the terms and 
conditions of the settlement agreement, with 
special emphasis on the provisions that ap­
ply directly to public and academic libraries. 
Additional information about the proposed 
Google Book Search settlement agreement 
is available at wo.ala.org/gbs. 

While it’s too early to tell what’s really 
coming down the pike, it never hurts to be 
prepared! As we move forward, ALA will 
depend on the academic library community 
to use its influence to speak out on these 
important issues. 

C&RL News February 2009  124 

mailto:jterry@alawash.org