The following blog entry ran on December 14. I submitted a comment which is (still) awaiting moderation.

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=8658

Remembering the rights of others

Peter Brantley -- December 14th, 2011 Mr. Brantley writes (in part) and then quotes from the NFB Intervention Memo: The NFB believes that the AGs request to have the entire library taken down would interfere with the visually impaireds right of access to the books under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), contravene the intent of the Chafee Amendment of the Copyright Act supporting access to copyright materials by the print disabled, and impinge on Fair Use. In their motion [pdf], the NFB writes with an almost palpable sense of frustration: By seeking to impound all of the digital copies of the works in the HathiTrust Digital Library and to prevent all future digitization of copyrighted works by the Defendants, the Plaintiffs threaten (1) to deny the Proposed Intervenors their legal right to access texts in the Defendants collections and (2) to interfere with the Defendants rights to facilitate that access under Sections 107 and 121 of the Copyright Act. http://thepublicindex.org/docs/cases/hathitrust/25-memorandum-in-support.pdf

No Responses to Remembering the rights of others

(My un-posted Comment)

John E. Miller says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

1.

December 15, 2011 at 6:41 am

It is by no means certain that the Hathi libraries are qualified to make reproductions and distributions as Authorized Entities under Section 121 of the Copyright Act. Who says so? The NFB President (and Member of the Bar of the US Supreme Court) Dr. Marc Maurer in 2009 written testimony for the US Copyright Office wrote that there is no authoritative support for the interpretation that libraries and University Disability Services offices do so qualify. Just as NFB says above it objects to the Authors Guild request to have the entire Hathi Library taken down, it may also be a stretch under ADA and Section 107 (Fair Use) as in the Motion above that the entire holdings of the Hathi libraries should be digitized and be made readily available should any student who is blind or has some other qualifying disability choose to request a particular volume.

ADDENDUM: The following is the classic and oft-cited sentence from the 1976 Copyright Act Legislative Hearings: SECTION 107. FAIR USE While the making of multiple copies or phonorecords of a work for general circulation requires the permission of the copyright owner, a problem addressed in section 710 of the bill, the making of a single copy or phonorecord by an individual as a free service for a blind persons would properly be considered a fair use under section 107.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Law_Revision_(House_Re port_No._94-1476)/Annotated

at (p73)

Note: Please also see my Comment on this issue at

http://laboratorium.net/archive/2011/12/12/gbs_related_cases#comment-69640