A new survey has found that many communications scholars lack confidence in their knowledge of copyright laws in relation to their research.
On Thursday, American University’s Center for Social Media and the International Communication Association released a survey of ICA members titled “Clipping Our Own Wings: Copyright and Creativity in Communication Research.” The e-mail survey—to which about 8 percent of ICA members, or 387, responded—found that nearly half of all communications scholars were not confident about their knowledge of copyright laws. The survey also found that nearly a third avoided research subjects or questions because of that lack of knowledge, and a fifth abandoned research that was already under way because of copyright worries.
The report’s authors say that the abandoned research is perhaps the most important part of the study because it results in unrealized work and “self censorship” among scholars.
Patricia Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media and part of the committee that produced the report, said that in the last two decades “we’ve seen the erosion of ‘fair use’” for different reasons. She cited the growth of the Internet, tightening of copyright rules, and the growth of large media copyright holders, among other things.
“There’s a lot of pressures that end up at the desk of some poor communications professor who never thought he’d have to think about this stuff,” said Ms. Aufderheide.
According to the report, communications scholars on the whole frequently use copyrighted works such as books (82 percent), journal articles (86 percent) and Internet content (72 percent).
But according to the report, about 60 percent of the scholars had some difficulty getting access to copyrighted works, including problems with obtaining permissions, prohibitive costs, convenient access or copying options, and technological barriers including encryption.
The authors of the report recommend that scholars develop standards for copyright exemption that include “fair use” allowances guaranteed by federal law. The Center for Social Media has produced a code of best practices for use in the profession.
“Effective use of copyright exemptions, such as fair use, fair dealing, and right of quotation, has been shown to have direct links to the quality and nature of creative work,” the authors say in the report. “When creators fail to understand or make use of exemptions that permit quotation of existing (and usually copyrighted) culture, they typically suffer from a failure not only to complete work but a hobbling of the imaginative and creative process itself.”
9 Responses to Study Finds Copyright Concerns Affect Communications Research
11159995 - April 1, 2010 at 5:28 pm
It’s no wonder that professors are confused about copyright law. The blame rests in large part on Congress in the conceptual mess it left behind with the 1976 Copyright Act. As then Stanford Press director Leon Seltzer said in his 1977 Harvard book about fair use: “it has failed to articulate a coherent rationale for copyright, it has failed to define fair use, it has introduced confusions between fair use and exempted use, and it has in the end tossed the fair use question, now thoroughly enmeshed in contradictions, back to the courts.” The confusion is represented well in the last paragraph of this article, which talks about fair use as though it were the same as exempted uses.—Sandy Thatcher
kathden - April 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
I’m not sure what you mean, Sandy Thatcher, when you say that the last paragraph is confused. Section 107 through 122 of the 1976 Copyright Act spell out exemptions limiting the rights of copyright holders. Section 107 is fair use…. Thus fair use is a species of the genus exemption.
francishamit - April 1, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Having quite a bit of experience with copyright (I sued and won twice over database infringements of my work and testified at the Electronic Database Settlement Fairness Hearing in New York in 2005.)I can say that most academics need not worry about lawsuits and should simply read the law carefully. The law is a global one, controlled by treaty rather than a national one and many of the features that people object to are there because we are trying to comply with those treaties. Anything published before 1923 is Public Domain. Anything published in the USA where the copyright was not registered with the Copyright Office is useable unless the author registers it later and comes after you. They are not likely to do so. Lawsuits for copyright infringement can only be brought in a Federal District Court where the minimum damage amount is $75,000 and the filing fees are thousands of dollars. (Trust me on this. I’ve done this as a plaintiff.) No other court has jurisdiction here. (Abroad it may be different). You can check the status of any copyrighted work with the Copyright Office, usually online: There is an electronic database.The first move of the court is to get the parties in and try to settle the case. They don’t want these big complex cases and copyright suits are always about the money. You go forward from there at your peril. The exception are Droit Morale (moral rights) cases where the author or artist feels that his or her reputation has been injured and wants corrective action. Those are rare. The Copyright Act is very simple and reading it should put your mind at ease…or not, if you just think anything on the Internet is or should be free for anyone to use. The Federal Courts, up to the Supreme Court, have repeatedly disagreed. And will again. This is settled law that can only be changed by Congress…and that’s not likely because copyright protection is a constitutional right.And now the disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and none of the above should be construed as legal advice or any kind.
11159995 - April 2, 2010 at 8:17 am
“Kathden,” I urge you to read Seltzer’s book for an explanation of the difference. Simply put, fair use operates within the ambit of the copyright scheme, which essentially is based on the notion that economic incentives are needed to encourage authors to create; it is a defense of an action, like making copies, that would otherwise be regarded as infringement of one of the exclusive rights guaranteed to authors by Section 106. Exemptions, by contrast, place certain actions altogether outside the copyright scheme, as not even putative infringements in the first place.—Sandy Thatcher
d_fevens - April 2, 2010 at 8:52 am
American scholars will not be happy until they have an amendment to the American constitution that says that Article. I., Section. 8., Clause 8 of the United States Contitution does not apply to them. “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”[Article. I., Section. 8., Clause 8](Please take note the word “by”, it is very significant!)In 2004 my “Fevens, a family history” was published and in 2008 the University of Wisconsin in a de facto commercial partnership with Google Inc. made digital printing plates of it. Is four years to long for “exclusive right”??”Through digitization with Google, the genealogical material is now searchable and accessible online, eliminating the expense and time previously needed to travel to Madison.” [University of Wisconsin letter to the Court- August 14, 2009]They were commercially exploiting my work and I demand an apology!Douglas Fevens,Halifax, Nova ScotiaThe University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me
mbelvadi - April 2, 2010 at 9:33 am
francishamit, the treaties you describe the US as “trying to comply with” didn’t get handed down from the Gods – it was primarily the US, pushed by big corporate entertainment-industry copyright holders like Disney and the music and film industries, that actually wrote them and strong-armed most of the rest of the world into signing them.Since I see all the usual extremist commenters out on this article as they are on every other article that mentions Google or copyright, let me join in on my pet idea: copyright law needs to have different rules and different expiry periods for non-fiction compared with fictional works. I really don’t care if I can never copy a Disney movie in my lifetime, but it hurts all of us in ways we don’t even know when non-fiction medical, scientific, and social scientific scholarship is locked up for generations. Many scholars have noted that if copyright monopoly power enforced by the govt is justified to “promote the progress” of science etc. the current laws do just the opposite.
d_fevens - April 2, 2010 at 10:06 am
mbelvadi, I think you will find that the United States is a late comer to international treaties respecting the copyrights others which have been in effect since December 5, 1887 with the Berne Convention. Douglas Fevens,Halifax, Nova ScotiaThe University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me
d_fevens - April 2, 2010 at 10:17 am
“Since I see all the usual extremist commenters out on this article as they are on every other article that mentions Google or copyright,” –6. mbelvadi – April 02, 2010 at 09:33 ammbelvadi,I reread the article in case I had missed something, but I saw “Google” mentioned nowhere. Douglas Fevens,Halifax, Nova Scotia,The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me
daniellee - April 2, 2010 at 12:48 pm
For Sandy Thatcher, I haven’t read Seltzer’s book, but I have read the statute. Section 107, where fair use is defined, begins “Not withstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106(A), the fair use of a copyrighted work . . . is not an infringement of copyright.” Section 108, which lays out specific, narrow library exemptions, begins “Except as otherwise provdided in this title and not withstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright . . . “Section 110, which lays out specific, narrow educational exemptions begine “Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, the following are not infringements of copyright . . . “Section 111 begins “The secondary transmission of a performance or display of a work . . . is not an infringement of copyright . . . “You get the idea. I’m not a lawyer either, but purely from a textual reading “Kathden” and the author had it right.