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By David Rothman

Copyright and the poorJohn Edwards’ new poverty center at the University of North Carolina–unveiled back in February–still has not announced its first staffer. Supposedly it’ll happen “shortly.” Let’s see whom Prof. Edwards hires. Will his poverty center be for real or just a campaign gimmick for ’08? And will his staffers delve into tricky issues such as the harm that Draconian copyright does to poverty-fighting efforts?

Prof. Edwards’ law school as a fair user or copyright violator–take your pick: A center-related Web page points to Law School-hosted PDFs of clips from the Raleigh New & Observer and the Durham Herald-Sun. Professor, did you or the Law School get permission? I don’t see it online. If no one secured permission, then people are relying on fair use. Will your poverty center care about the right of poor people and their advocates to do the same in civic discourse? Or the right of cash-strapped schools to use copyrighted material in a fair use context? How about DRM and the DMCA? What if nobody can reproduce newspaper articles without bypassing electronic locks? Time to utter a few syllables against the DMCA? And maybe the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and other elitist atrocities while you’re at it?

The legalese from the Durham clip: “© Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. All material on heraldsun.com is copyrighted by The Durham Herald Company and may not be reproduced or redistributed in any medium except as provided in the site’s Terms of Use.” Some relevant language from the terms:

You may not modify, remove, delete, augment, add to, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, create derivative works from, or in any way exploit any of the Content, in whole or in part, except as expressly allowed in this Agreement or U.S. Copyright law. Concerning certain, designated Content, you may make a single copy of the Content, provided that the copy is made only for your personal, informational and non-commercial use and that you do not alter or modify the Content in any way. You must not delete or alter any notices contained in the Content, such as all copyright notices, trademark legends, or other proprietary rights notices. Except as provided above, you may not upload, post, reproduce, modify or distribute in any way Content without obtaining permission of the owner of the copyright or other proprietary right…

How “personal” is the Edwards-related information as posted for the world to see on a UNC institutional Web site? I’d argue as a nonlawyer that this should be fair use. Many copyright owners would not, and in an increasingly DRMed and DMCAed world, including the Third World part of it, that could spell problems.

But what about the N&O’s terms of use? Couldn’t be clearer. “You will not reuse, republish or otherwise distribute the content or any modified or altered versions of it, whether over the Internet or otherwise, and whether or not for payment, without the express written permission of The News & Observer or the copyright holder.”

Reminder: Hey, I voted for Edwards in November, and as a lifelong lib Democrat, I may well do so again if he’s on the presidential ticket in ’08. But his hypocrisy so far on copyright matters. including laws harmful to the UNC-related Project Gutenberg, really POs me. How can one be a full-service populist by speaking out on drug prices but not on matters dear to Hollywood contributors? Please, Professor. Let’s get this behind you. Come out against Bono, the present DMCA and the rest, so no one can accuse you of pandering to Hollywood by ducking copyright issues.

 
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