Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums Eleanor Selfridge-Field Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums. By Peter B. Hirtle, Emily Hudson, and Andrew T. Kenyon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2009. [xi, 259 p. ISBN 9780935995107. $39.95; free electronic copy available at http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/14142/2/Hirtle-Copyright_final_RGB_lowres-cover1.pdf (accessed 9 June 2010)]. Illustrations, bibliography. This collaborative work gives an overview of the conventional topics of copyright—the scope of protection and duration, tests of fair use and principles of exemptions—together with considerations that specifically address the needs of non-profit institutions planning to put materials in their holdings on the Internet. Thus contracts, licenses, methods of searching for owners, attributions, and risk management get due consideration. The book is completed by two extensive case histories. One covers interviews and oral histories, the other the posting of dissertations, theses, and other student work. A short bibliography of further readings and a list of cases cited throughout the text appear at the end. Copyright and Cultural Institutions is replete with questions, tips, Keypoints, "tricky areas," bulleted lists, decision trees, and tables. This is mostly to the good, but the actual text often seems to lack much scope beyond serving as a background for these ubiquitous inserts. The nucleus of the work originated in the Australian Guidelines for Digitization drafted in 2005, which is due for an update soon. Peter Hirtle is a professor of law at Cornell University; the second and third authors come from the law schools of the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne respectively. The collections imaged by the authors extend to literary, artistic, and musical works, but do not exclude the more pedestrian materials that may reside in libraries and archives. Despite the clarity with which the material is presented, the endemic problem of understanding this or any other area of jurisprudence is conspicuously present. That is, laws exist only within networks of other laws, all of them prone to wiggle too much to allow complete clarification of the issue at hand. In general, there is a lack of direct applicability to music, because music is not specifically differentiated in Section 108 of the United States Copyright Act, which governs libraries and archives. The authors note this lapse early on and remark that [End Page 557] "[i]nteresting questions arise as to the boundaries of musical works" (p. 18). Some of the most intriguing questions that arise, in particular those concerning born-digital materials, are not mentioned, however. They refer to the efforts of John Cage's estate to protect the work of the composer's "4½ minutes of silence" (p. 19) against all comers, but this sheds little light on the fundamental quandaries posed by more substantial works. The text is full of non sequiturs and unclear relationships such as the one following a photographic reproduction of the title page of sheet music for a piece called "America's Pitch Hit March" (McMillan, 1919), which immediately follows the Cage discussion and precedes a section on protections for dramatic works (p. 19). However arbitrary their placements in the text, the illustrations are valuable for their captions. The "Pinch Hit March" comes with five tags: (1) image content, (2) composer, (3) date and agency of publication, (4) source of the image, and (5) copyright status of the image. The reader has to excavate comments on topics related to music libraries. The protections on the sound track of audiovisual works are differentiated from those on a musical work on page 25. Most subsequent references to music occur only in long strings of media labels such as "motion picture, opera . . . music of a song" (p. 57) or "maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements" (pp. 59-60). The diversity of content types does, of course, underscore why copyright in the digital age has become so contentious and so confusing. The heterogeneous polyphony of legacy concepts is now wrapped in a Christo-like installation of "digital rights management." The music itself, even if digitally enhanced beyond its original capabilities, is all but lost...