Please join us from 1-2 pm Central time in 4G41 on Wednesday, Oct. 24 to learn more about our use of the Hathi Trust.
Washington DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) will host a webcast on October 24, 2012, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. eastern time, to discuss the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust decision and the implications of this victory for research libraries. The discussion will be moderated by Brandon Butler, Director of Public Policy Initiatives at ARL, and will feature discussion from:
• Jonathan Band, of policybandwidth, an expert in copyright law and the author of the Library Copyright Alliance amicus brief in the HathiTrust case
• Peter Jaszi, Professor of Law at American University’s Washington College of Law, as well as co-facilitator of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries and a member of the legal team that represented the National Federation of the Blind
• Dan Goldstein, a partner at Brown, Goldstein & Levy, acts as counsel for the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and has initiated a national legal campaign to ensure access to technology
• Jason M. Schultz, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law Director, Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the University of California Berkeley School of Law
Background
On October 10, 2012, Judge Harold Baer handed down a landmark fair use decision in the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust case. The HathiTrust was created by university libraries as a collective storehouse for digitized works from their collections, including millions of volumes digitized in partnership with Google. In 2011, the Authors Guild sued the HathiTrust and several ARL member institutions claiming that they committed copyright infringement on a massive scale by using these digital scans for preservation, to power a search tool, and to provide accessible versions of books for print disabled patrons. The NFB intervened in the case to defend the accessibility aspect of the project. The Library Copyright Alliance filed an amicus brief on behalf of libraries, and a group of digital humanities scholars filed a brief in support of the search functionality enabled by the HathiTrust database.
In a striking victory for libraries and their users, Judge Baer rejected the Guild’s claims in the starkest possible terms, saying, “I cannot imagine a definition of fair use that would not encompass the transformative uses made by Defendants’ [mass digitization project] and would require that I terminate this invaluable contribution to the progress of science and cultivation of the arts that at the same time effectuates the ideals espoused by the ADA.”
For more information, please visit http://www.arl.org/news/pr/hathidecision-11oct12.shtml.