{"id":268,"date":"2017-05-31T23:34:55","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T23:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/scholarlycommunications\/?post_type=podcast&p=268"},"modified":"2026-01-29T16:54:54","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T16:54:54","slug":"nancy-sims-reflects-on-digital-copyright-statements","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/scholarlycommunications\/podcast\/nancy-sims-reflects-on-digital-copyright-statements\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Sims Reflects on Digital Copyright Statements"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo
Photo image credit: Matt Baxter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You are tuned in to copyright chat.<\/p>\n

Copyright chat is a podcast dedicated to discussing important copyright matters. Host Sara Benson the copyright librarian from the University of Illinois converses with experts from across the globe to engage the public with rights issues relevant to their daily lives.<\/p>\n

Copyright Chat is pleased to host Nancy Sims today in lovely Los Angeles. \u00a0Nancy is the library\u2019s subject specialist on copyright issues at the University of Minnesota. \u00a0She\u2019s a real live librarian with long experience working in academic libraries. \u00a0She\u2019s also a lawyer and is fascinated by the pervasiveness of copyright issues in everyday life.<\/p>\n

Transcript:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sara Benson<\/strong>: So welcome, Nancy Sims. Copyright Chat is happy to host you today in lovely Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Nancy Sims:<\/strong> Very exciting\u2013never been here before.<\/p>\n

Sara<\/strong>: Great, we\u2019re glad to have you. I wanted to see if you would tell listeners how you got into copyright?<\/p>\n

Nancy<\/strong>: Sure\u2013go back far enough and I was a little bit of a computer nerd from fairly early on but only a little bit. But it sort of is a bit of a thread. Even from when I was a pretty small kid, I had a computer that I needled around with in my own room because my dad had computers around. And that is something that got me in my first job as a grown up, and I ended up doing a lot of computer support just because I was comfortable with them. And when I went to a library school, I ended up being the person who knew how to talk to the professors who did coding and tell them things like you\u2019re teaching us methods of coding that are ten years out of date. And I wasn\u2019t, like, up to date, but I knew enough to know that they were out of date, so I\u2019ve always been on the cusp of knowing a lot about computers. So, more than many people, but not as much as somebody whose whole existence is computing, and that is sort of the niche I ended up in libraries from the very beginning. In library school I got involved in helping other people with coding-related assignments and then later helping people understand software that they hadn\u2019t used before. And my first library job was as the Instructional Technology Librarian at the University of Michigan where we did things like help people use Photoshop to edit photos for publications but not lie with their photos with publications or learn how to use endnote or make a poster for a conference. And in all of that tech stuff has copyright threaded all through it. And so I was fielding questions like, \u201cHow do I rip from a DVD?\u201d And then eventually somebody tells you that you can\u2019t rip from a DVD because of copyright, and I wanted to know more about that. Eventually it became such a big part of what it was doing in terms of tech-related work that I decided I wanted to know the law side too. I actually just walked across the street to go to law school from my job at the University of Michigan library to the University of Michigan law school.<\/p>\n

Sara<\/strong>: Well, that\u2019s an interesting story. Sounds like it was pretty fortunate that you were so close to such a great law school at the same time when you became interested in it. So most recently I saw an article that you wrote about rights and the Creative Commons and online digital collections, and I wondered if you could explain to listeners a little bit about that article and what you were talking about there.<\/p>\n

Nancy<\/strong>: Sure, the article came out of\u2013it was for a scholarly communications column, but I wanted to write about how we talk about our collections. And so framing it as a scholarly communications this year was an interesting approach for me, anyway. How we communicate rights status has big effects for our users and for whether people can use things in their scholarship. That was part of the framing of that column. One of the reasons I was interested in the issue right now is because there\u2019s been the development of the rights statements from the rightsstatements.org work, and I\u2019ve been interested in how we will apply those, and I\u2019m really excited; they\u2019re really useful tools, and also I\u2019m always excited by people who\u2019ve been trying to get there previously. But a lot of our attempts to get there previously have not quite worked or in fact some of them were not really attempts to communicate with users at all. So the piece that we\u2019re referring to kind of outlines a couple of different ways we\u2019ve been wrong or confusing or legally incorrect when we\u2019re trying to communicate how people can use things. Among other things some people have been attempting to use Creative Commons to indicate, \u201cYes, you can use this.\u201d But for me, and really one of the reasons why the rightsstatements.org stuff is exciting, Creative Commons licenses require that you be an owner. And the whole reason copyright is a huge problem for most of our digital collections is because we aren\u2019t usually the owners. So if copyright is a problem for libraries and archives and museums because we don\u2019t own the copyrights, Creative Commons shouldn\u2019t be a way we can fix them. But we didn\u2019t have anything better. So a couple of the things people have used Creative Commons for is an attempt to communicate about status. People have put CC BY licenses on things when they wanted to say, \u201cThis is in the public domain, please use this.\u201d And so sometimes their whole attempt was just to make it usable. And the CC license doesn\u2019t do that, but it was better than the unavailable stuff. But sometimes people are using CC licenses because they don\u2019t want to give up that little thread of control. We don\u2019t own the copyrights, but we do a lot of the time feel like we sort our own the stuff. And so CC BY says you can use it but only under our terms. I don\u2019t think most institutions were doing that latter thing\u2014trying to exercise control\u2014but a few of them maybe were. In either case those CC BY licenses mess everything up. They mess up real Creative Commons licensing because when we\u2019re issuing Creative Commons licenses on the things that we don\u2019t own, we\u2019re undermining Creative Commons licenses on things that people do own, and they also kind of undermine us as authorities about the status of things in our collections. And so I get that we like to own things\u2014we\u2019re proud of our ownership; we\u2019re proud of our stewardship. That\u2019s good. But we\u2019ve got to let go of that. And so maybe Creative Commons was a necessary step along the way, but the rights statements excite me because they solve most of the problems that Creative Commons licenses had. If what you\u2019re trying to do is communicate to users, Creative Commons didn\u2019t get you there, and the rights statements statements do in a lot of cases, but not every one.<\/p>\n

Sara<\/strong>: So this is an interesting problem that you\u2019ve pointed to because at least we\u2019re moving in the right step of trying to not assert control over a collection that we don\u2019t own. For instance, it\u2019s what Jason Mazzone would characterize as copyfraud, like saying, \u201cCopyright University of Illinois libraries 2017.\u201d Absolutely that\u2019s wrong, right. So at least it was Creative Commons licensing trying to make it public. So I guess I wonder where you think maybe the biggest challenges will come in implementing these rightsstatements.org, because to me, one of the biggest challenges is looking back and trying to understand where all those rights are located.<\/p>\n

Nancy<\/strong>: There\u2019s some pretty obvious challenges in terms of staffing. I mean some of the people who have done a ton of clearance have put in hundreds and hundreds of working hours\u2014sometimes only a couple of staff members but still hundreds and hundreds of hours of those particular people. So there\u2019s the challenge of historical documentation of these things. There are technical challenges. In my institution we\u2019re going to have some problems implementing them because some of our systems don\u2019t support rights at that granularity. And so we may actually have to do some systems work before we can do the full implementation that we want to do. Some of our other systems do support that, so we\u2019re moving forward where we can.\u00a0 But probably because I have a bit of a background way back in social sciences, my undergraduate, I\u2019m really interested in the people challenges here, and I do think that kind of feeling of ownership is still there for people, and it\u2019s not a bad thing. I think it is only a good thing when what you really are feeling is all about the stewardship. And so one of the things that we have in some of our regional collections is these statements that don\u2019t even try to claim copyright, but they say you have to write to us for permission. And we\u2019ve been sort of trying to prep the stage for quite a while to help people realize no, nobody has to write to us for permission; they never have had to write to us\u2014once you put it online, unless you put terms of use on that they have to click through and agree to, nobody needs to come back later and ask you for permission. But that\u2019s not a bad thing. Lots of people will tell you they\u2019re using it. Lots of people will be excited to use it. And one of those things we\u2019re working on and trying to figure out is the best language or best approach for helping people recognize that what you really want is credit for stewardship. So what are the best ways to say the things to users that we really want to be saying. We don\u2019t really want to be saying we own it; that\u2019s not ever what most of us want to say. But we do want people to recognize our stewardship sometimes and also to know where to find the originals. So we\u2019re working on things like, instead of what have the rights statement that we hope will be legally correct and then potential other bits of metadata like suggested attributions. That gets to the value that these small local institutions have and the pride that many of them have in their communities and wanting that acknowledgement. I\u2019m really excited by those challenges, but I\u2019m also feeling like those may be bigger challenges sometimes than I think they are. Or maybe they\u2019ll be smaller, maybe everybody\u2019s ready to make these shifts but the people challenges are some of the things I\u2019m looking at.<\/p>\n

Sara<\/strong>: I think that\u2019s right, and I think the CC BY issue is the wanting that recognition of where this came from and the attribution of the effort that the librarians went through to digitize this particular collection or item. And also, again, like you said, where to find the original because that\u2019s what attribution is all about is trying to find the best copy of whatever piece that you\u2019re citing. I think this will be an interesting challenge going forward for librarians, and I applaud you for the work that you\u2019ve done thus far in educating our community about these issues.<\/p>\n

Nancy<\/strong>: I do have to also give credit to a bunch of different people in the community for helping me understand that I have the legal perspective\u2014that sometimes it takes me a little bit to get where the archivist is coming from, and lots of different people, including lots of folks from the University of Minnesota archives and our regional collaborative partnerships.<\/p>\n

Sara<\/strong>: Well it always takes a village; I think that\u2019s a true statement, and I\u2019ve noticed that since I\u2019ve joined librarianship, it\u2019s always a collaborative effort, so thanks for being on copyright chat today, and I look forward to future conversations with you<\/p>\n

Nancy<\/strong>: Thanks for having me.<\/p>\n

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Nancy Sims Reflects on Digital Copyright Statements<\/a><\/blockquote>