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About the Author
Stan Katz teaches public and international affairs and directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at the Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is a past president of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society for Legal History. He comments frequently on policy issues relating to higher education, particularly liberal education, and on the humanities and social sciences, philanthropy, scholarly relations with Cuba, and the interplay of civil society, constitutionalism, and democracy. And on his beloved Cubs.
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Recent Posts
The Higher Education Act and the Education Industry | Comment [2]
A Good Day for History Teaching | Comment [4]
Good Luck, President Simon and MSU! | Comment [7]
A Curious Pair of Obituaries | Comment [5]
Bronislaw Geremek: Scholar-Statesman | Comment
Featured Articles By the Author
Who Owns Intellectual Property?
As all readers of the Chronicle will know, the law of intellectual property has become a critical issue for university teachers and scholars. Copyright used to be something we thought about, if at all, when we wondered how much of a single book we could Xerox for our coursepack, or perhaps when we wondered how much of a writer’s correspondence we could use in a book manuscript.
These problems have not gone away, and, indeed, with the onset of electronic reserves (used in lieu of coursepacks, if we are honest), some of the old problems have become more urgent and complicated. But the recent news that the House I.P. subcommittee is introducing a new copyright act called “Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP)” should remind us of the large economic forces with which the academy’s chattering class contends. The new legislation, which has little chance of passage, establishes both civil and criminal penalties for infringement, the result of lobbying and drafting by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry of America (RIAA).
Time was when these organizations did not seem relevant to our work as academics, but now that they are suing our students and threatening our universities, we can no longer ignore them. I am the only academic member of the board of the Copyright Clearance Center, which licenses most of our universities to photocopy material protected by copyright, and which is now trying to do the same thing for electronic intellectual property. There are many reasons why teachers and scholars should support the copyright regime — and there are many reasons why they need to be reminded that the law of intellectual property is a political act, so that if we don’t like what we have, we need to pay consistent attention to what the lawmakers are doing. At the moment, the academy has neither a strong nor a consistent voice in the process. And that is just plain shortsighted.
Posted at 04:36:17 PM on December 13, 2007 | All postings by Stan KatzComments
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Bullseye! Stan’s connection between recent RIAA/MPAA legal actions (and the IP/copyright debate yet to come) with the rights, prerogatives, and responsibilities of the faculty is heartening. Some institutions have aquiesced and are now monitoring the packet content of network traffic looking for copyrighted media. Their aim is to reduce illegal P2P filesharing. The outcome is that this very blog entry and all of our electronic communications can longer be presumed to be private.
Academic freedom, let alone fair use, are at stake.
RWS
— Bob Sams · Dec 13, 05:03 PM · #
All laws are a political act. If we are lucky, the legislative process tries to balance conflicting interests.
In the case of copyright, the conflict is between the creator (who wants and deserves to be remunerated) and the user (who would dearly love everything to be free).
Copyright started out as a protection of the right of the creator (and the publisher) to derive income from their creative (and economic) effort.
It would be disappointing if salaried academics opposed the right of artists and other “creators” to be paid for their creativity by royalties.
Academics get paid a salary for their intellectual property, why shouldn’t non-academics be entitled to a system of reward?
Copyright shouldn’t depend on the form of the work, i.e., whether it is hard copy of digital. However, perhaps, the amount of the licence fee should, because digital is easier and cheaper to distribute.
Fair use and fair comment comment are common sense protections for academics and academic freedom.
However, surely the test of the success of the adacdemy is whether it creates individuals who go on to create and be rewarded for their creativity, both economically and personally?
— Ian Gray · Dec 16, 01:21 AM · #