[SIGCIS-Members] FW: a few comments regarding copyright

Mon Feb 28 21:26:31 PST 2011

More useful advice below. Not sure if this went through – Jim was having
problems before and I don’t see it in the list archives. Tom

From: James Cortada [mailto:jwcorta at us.ibm.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 5:47 PM
To: Thomas Haigh
Cc: members at sigcis.org; members-bounces at sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] a few comments regarding copyright

Tom is absolutely correct. Publishers do not have uniform practices
regarding permissions. It has been my experience that from when you have to
get a group of these until your publisher is happy with the results can
routinely run you 2-6 months. Some of the fancy academic book presses won't
even start production until all these permissions are inhouse in writing and
in your folder with the manuscript, illustrations, art work etc. Some tricks
I have used to simplify the process.

1. I keep a spreadsheet in which I enter the name of the illustration, where
in my book it is to go (e.g., chapter 3, centerfold), who probably owns the
rights, and leave a couple of columns for logging when I asked for
permission, when I got it, and a comments section. When you submit your book
to production, send the spreadsheet along as they can use it as a tracking
vehicle and to know the history by illustration one after the other.

2. Whenever possible, request permissions via e-mail as it is faster than
letter writing. Expect every place you ask to send you a word or PDF
document for you to fill out that is different than everyone else's--scan
and faxing back is acceptable across North America and northern Europe, less
so around the Mediterranean where they sometimes still require paper. Este
es la vida.

3. Always ask for "unrestricted world rights" but keep it to one language
because if you ask for all languages people start going crazy on you and
cause delays. Unrestricted means that the owner of the image can use the
image too even though you are publishing it. Codicil: ask your publisher
what kind of permission they want as that varies too from one publisher to
another and from one country to another.

4. Even though journals are a bit looser in their requirements, you will be
surprised at how much of a problem this can be so assume the same problem
exists.

5. Be very very nice to every archivist and librarian you ever meet because
they can make steps 1 through 4 easy. I treat CBI's staff as some of the
most important people in my life--ditto with the the IBM Archives'
team--because they are, and not just because they really are nice people. Do
the same!

Hope this helps!

PS Tom I never know if the siglist gets to everyone so if you don't think
so, please send it along to our colleagues.

Dr. Jim (James) W. Cortada
IBM Institute for Business Value 
2917 Irvington Way
Madison, WI 53713 USA
jwcorta at us.ibm.com
608-270-4462

Inactive hide details for "Thomas Haigh" ---02/28/2011 04:15:38 PM---On a
pragmatic level there is another consideration. Due t"Thomas Haigh"
---02/28/2011 04:15:38 PM---On a pragmatic level there is another
consideration. Due to 1970s copyright changes and subsequent r

From:

"Thomas Haigh" <thaigh at computer.org>

To:

<members at sigcis.org>

Date:

02/28/11 04:15 PM

Subject:

Re: [SIGCIS-Members] a few comments regarding copyright

Sent by:

members-bounces at sigcis.org

  _____  

On a pragmatic level there is another consideration. Due to 1970s copyright
changes and subsequent retroactive extensions those of us working on the
mid-20th century would often like to reproduce images such as
advertisements. Most advertisements were not copyrighted when they first
appeared, but received protection in the 1970s when fundamental changes were
made to the system.

In this case ownership lies with the company that placed the advertisement,
not with the publication where it was placed. In many cases it is impossible
to track down eventual owner of the intellectual property assets of a
long-defunct business. Furthermore it's not uncommon for the current owner
never to have heard of the company in question (a failed company is acquired
by another company, which then fails and is acquired, by a firm that merges,
etc.)

Most publishers will accept evidence of a good faith effort to try to track
down the copyright holder and receive permission to use the image in lieu of
a signed permission form. Some will not, meaning that there is no way to use
the image in question.

The moral: start a long time ahead with the image permissions and find out
in advance what the policy of your publisher is. No company is ever actually
going to sue you for reproducing an image of a 1920s bookkeeping machine or
a 1970s video terminal in a scholarly publication, so what matters is not
the actual law but the opinion of the law held by your publisher's legal
department. (As long as you're not calling them Nazi collaborators, I
suppose, in which case probably best to have all the permissions signed
first).

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of James Sumner
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 3:44 PM
To: members at sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] a few comments regarding copyright

Thanks for sharing these with the list, Bernard.

It's worth emphasising that the "fair use" concept, as focused on by the 
three sources linked below, is very specific to the United States. 
Britain, Canada and other Commonwealth countries have various different 
sets of provisions known as "fair dealing", which tend to be similar to 
US "fair use" but not as lenient.

Best
James

On 28/02/2011 18:38, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan wrote:
> Hi Members,
>
> This is just a brief followup on my research into images & copyright,
> etc. The short answer is that it's very complicated and hard to find a
> definitive guide. For images it is especially complicated. In general,
> academic publishing seems to have a lot of leeway, but there's more grey
> area than black/white. In the end, my publisher provided the most
> concrete guidance.
>
> However, Ben Peters referred me to the guides produced by the Society
> for Cinema and Media Studies. This has some info:
> www.cmstudies.org/resource/resmgr/docs/
>
<http://www.cmstudies.org/resource/resmgr/docs/>*scms*bestpractices4*fairuse
*inp.pdf
>
> MIT Libraries also had some info:
> In general:
>
http://info-libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/publishing/copyright-information-for
-mit-faculty/
>
> For theses:
>
http://info-libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/publishing/copyright-publishing-guid
e-for-students/reuse-of-figures-images-and-other-content-in-theses/
>
> Debbie Douglas of the MIT museum had this especially robust and helpful
> account, which in many ways was more concrete than what I found even on
> the "expert" websites:
>
> There is no single guide because "property rights" are very complicated
> to untangle.
>
> 1. There is the permission of the owner of the physical artifact that
> allows you to examine the "thing", and to make a picture of that "thing."
>
> Imagine you had donated your bicycle to a museum. As the owner of the
> bike, you can control who looks at it, touches it, takes pictures of it.
> BUT you do not own the patents, trademarks, copyrights associated with
> that bike. You could not grant the right to make a copy of the bicycle.
>
> 2. The second permission is from the maker/creator of the "thing." Or
> rather, the owner of the "intellectual" property rights. In this day,
> this can very complicated because sometimes the maker licenses other
> entities to make objects. The best guide to this is the Library of
> Congress' website which explains all things copyright (in the US) and
> the US Patent and Trademark Office which deals with patents and
trademarks.
>
> Hope this helps someone out there.
>
> Best,
> Bernard
>
>
>
> Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan
> bernard at u.northwestern.edu <mailto:bernard at u.northwestern.edu>
>
> Graduate Fellow, Mediale Historiographien, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
> Doctoral Candidate, Screen Cultures, Northwestern University
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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