RE: Supreme Court Ruling--Copyright--New York Times v. Tasini

[Paul Burry <paul.burry@techbc.ca>]

Library Associations like ALA and Librarians everywhere have a long and
proud history of protecting the interests of writers/creators/copyright
holders by educating their staff and users about copyright laws and
infringements.  To abandon their principles because of a decision that might
prove inconvenient for libraries would not reflect well on ALA or other
defenders of these values.

When a community protests the labor practices of their local WalMart, they
do so despite the fact that their success will mean that Junior's
back-to-school wardrobe will end up costing a lot more than it would
otherwise.  Cost effectiveness, unfortunately, does not justify the use of
any means to achieve it.

Paul Burry
Information Services Support Specialist
Information Resources & Digital Library
Technical University of British Columbia
paul.burry@techbc.ca
p: 604-586-6019
f:  604-586-6025


 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Kent Mulliner [mailto:mulliner@ohio.edu] 
Sent:	Wednesday, June 27, 2001 3:41 PM
To:	liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject:	Re: Supreme Court Ruling--Copyright--New York Times v.
Tasini

         Much of the discussion has identified two issues for libraries
from the discussions:  loss of content and increased price.

         As a collateral to these issues, I (and colleagues) am at a loss
as to why ALA and ARL were so strong in supporting the Tasini side.  I
recognize the moral value of rewarding writers for their work but at what
cost?  My first obligation is to library users and if, as appears likely,
they will have less content (either because the producers will not pay the
authors or that I am unable to afford the added cost of the databases as a
result of producers paying the writers), why are these leading library
organizations supporting a position that ill-serves our users?

                 kent mulliner, ohio university
___________

At 05:15 PM 6/26/01 -0400, you wrote:
>I have to agree with Anthony that researching, clearing, renegotiating (if
>possible) for rights to include this content WILL cost money...we will
>either have to settle for lest, or acknowledge that it will cost more.
>This will definitely take awhile to shake down, but I'd be astonished if
>it didn't have some kind of repercussions for us.
>
>Carole Richter
>Electronic Resources Coordinator
>University of Notre Dame Libraries
>(219)631-8405
>richter.8@nd.edu