Copyright Notes
Ideas on how to approach permissions and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act
AITopics > Project Notes > Copyright Notes
with input from Bruce Buchanan, Kevin Ashley and Jon Glick.
- We assume there is no issue when we point to the URLs of videos that others have digitized and stored on their own servers.
- If we're going to have any problem, it is likely to arise from making whole videos or edited segments available on our own server (e.g., copyright infringement claims, privacy concerns, suits from people who feel they are depicted in a bad light).
- Given that AAAI is a nonprofit organization, we assume that copying a video for archival purposes and making the copy available for scholarly use is a "fair use" (i.e., educational, noncommercial use, no effect on any market). (On the other hand, the copy is of the whole work.)
- We expect the material to come in from AAAI Fellows and others in AI in response to a general call. In some cases the senders will have made the videos in the first place and own the copyrights. In other cases they won't know whether their institution owns the video or they do. Some of the videos may be works-for-hire and/or ownership depends on contractual arrangements between the sender and his/her employer.
- While we assume that responsibility for obtaining permissions from subjects shown in a video lies with the sender, we will probably not know where those permissions exist (in the unlikely event they were ever obtained).
- Re copyright infringement, the concern is secondary liability (i.e., a sender incorporates someone else's copyrighted work in a video, which AAAI distributes to the world). In this case AAAI could be indirectly liable for facilitating others in making infringing copies. Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act lays out steps for internet service providers and educational institutions to protect against secondary liability and possibly other kinds of legal problems. Watch out for: "the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the service provider" [512(a)(1)], and "the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider" [512(a)(2)].
- We will need to demonstrate that AAAI has made a good-faith attempt to: (a) identify & secure permission from the copyright holder; and, (b) secure permissions from the people shown in the video segments:
- Organize the obtaining and collection of permissions as part of the general call and provide the forms that specify permissions/releases for the particular uses AAAI wants to make of the videos (archiving complete copies and making segments available on the Web). (Collecting them is probably necessary so that AAAI can access them in a timely manner if necessary. It is also preferable if permissions can be collected electronically.)
- Make clear on the Web site how someone should direct a complaint and our policy and process regarding removal of offending items from the Web ("takedown" procedure). See Google Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy and YouTube Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy for commercial examples. See National Academies Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") Notice and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists - Reporting Copyright Infringements for professional society and journal examples. See Digital Library for Earth System Education Terms of Use for a library example.
Additional Reading on Copyright Issues
