This year marks the first in two decades that a significant body of copyrighted work has lost its U.S. copyright protection and fallen into the public domain. Why is that…and what does it mean for scholars and educators?
Prior to 1978, the term of copyright protection for a work in the United States was measured from its date of first publication in the U.S. Under the first U.S. copyright act in 1790, U.S. works enjoyed an initial term of 14 years of protection, with an optional second term of another 14 years. [Read more…]
Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) is an effort to provide broader access to works held in libraries by creating a digital copy and then lending it out on terms that are ostensibly analogous to the ways that physical copies of books are lent from the library. The practice was initiated last year by the Internet Archive (IA) through its Open Libraries project. CDL.org now appears to be incorporated as a separate entity from the Internet Archive, though IA continues to promote it. 
In a recent TAA webinar, Stephen E. Gillen, a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in and around the publishing business, and author of the book, 
Whether you are publishing open access articles, working on open textbooks, or simply securing images for use in your manuscripts, chances are you will encounter the Creative Commons licensing model at some point.
Your contract provided by your publisher will probably put the burden of securing permission for the use of third party material solely on you. How much of this is negotiable? What are the possible compromises? And regardless of whether you end up doing it or the publisher does it, under what circumstances do you need permission and how do you best go about getting it? Get answers to these questions from Stephen E. Gillen, a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in and around the publishing business, and author of 
