The Language of Copyright

Even though IANAL, I rather enjoy the intricacies of copyright law. Maybe it's because copyright occupies such a central place for both free software - which depends on it to enforce licences - and for free content, where it's often more of a hindrance than a help. Maybe it's just because I was, am and always will be a mathematician who likes dealing with logical systems; or maybe I'm just sad.

Whatever the case, here's something I've found interesting: a short guide to (US) copyright for linguists.

Why do linguists need to bother about this? Isn’t this what lawyers are for? There probably was a time when individuals involved in scholarly linguistic work, whether functioning as fieldworkers, authors, or editors, didn’t have to concern themselves with such matters, but this is no longer the case. (It is striking—and somewhat embarrassing to me—that the Newman and Ratliff (2001) fieldwork volume, whose preparation began barely a decade ago, doesn’t include a single mention of copyright.) There are numerous reasons why the situation is very different now from before, but let me mention just three. First, copyright protection—what I prefer to call copyright “shackles”—now lasts for any inordinate amount of time, anywhere from 70 to 120 years, as compared with the 28 years that formerly was the norm in the U.S. Second, contrary to what used to be the case, the publishing of academic journals has turned out to be extremely profitable. Putting out journals is less and less a labor of love by dedicated colleagues committed to promoting scholarship in their fields and more and more a money-making enterprise by large often transnational publishers. Nowadays journals and the scholars who publish in them are not necessarily on the same wave length and they often have conflicting interests. Third, and most obvious, the internet presents new threats to traditional publishing while simultaneously providing new opportunities for fast and effective scholarly communication and the commercial exploitation of that scholarship.

The copyright world has changed. Almost daily we discover that the failure of scholars to pay attention to such matters has had serious negative consequences. For example, older classic works in our field that ideally should be an open part of our intellectual legacy turn out to be off limits, and in general copyright restricts our ability to make creative use of previous works, including our own (!). When we fail to pay attention to copyright matters, we inadvertently give up scholarly rights that we would like to have and needn’t have lost, such as the right to post papers on our private websites or the right to duplicate our own papers for students in classes that we are teaching. In the normal course of things, field linguists might not appreciate the relevance of copyright rules to their work, but the fact is that to protect yourself and your scholarly goals and objectives, you really do need to understand basic concepts in copyright law and how it affects you.

(Via Language Log.)