0.5 Managing rights

Module 5: managing rights

Learning objective

This module describes the legal rules that affect the ability of copyright holders to collect revenue from users of their works -- and how librarians can either use those rules to their best advantage or seek to change them.

Case study

Nadia previously helped Angela identify several items that Angela is permitted to include without permission in the packet of course materials she is preparing for her students. Angela now wants Nadia's help in obtaining permissions for the remaining materials. Specifically, she asks Nadia:

• What activities may be covered by licenses the library has already obtained from publishers or collecting societies?
• For the activities that require a separate license, what clauses should I negotiate?
• How should I handle those materials whose authors cannot be identified or located?

Lesson

Individual management

Licenses and assignments

Remember that a copyright gives the copyright holder several exclusive rights with respect to the copyrighted work. Copyright holders commonly use licenses  to authorize other people to engage in the activities covered by those rights. Often, though not always, the copyright owner will demand a fee in return for granting such a license. A typical license will specify the following:

• the authorized use (e.g., reproduction, the preparation of derivative works, public performances);
• the duration of the authorization (e.g. one year);
• the nature of the authorization (e.g. exclusive or non-exclusive);
• the fee related to the transaction (e.g. a flat fee or a fee proportional to the number of copies or of uses);
• the format or media type (e.g. print only or also digital; text only or also in another media, such as a recording or a film);
• the audience and location (e.g. a particular country, the premises of the library, the classroom, a distance learning course).

Sometimes the copyright holder and the prospective licensee negotiate the license directly. At other times, a license may be offered by the copyright holder in a standard form to all potential users. In such circumstances, individual users may have little or no power to negotiate modifications of the license terms.

Some licenses are exclusive. In other words, the licensor agrees not to permit any other party to engage in the activities covered by the license. Others are non-exclusive, meaning that the licensor remains free to permit other parties to engage in the same activities.

An  assignment  occurs when a copyright holder permanently transfers some or all of his exclusive rights to another party. For example, historically publishing contracts for books and articles have often required the author to assign all rights to the publisher. (More recently, many authors have resisted assigning the copyrights in their works as part of a publishing agreement. The Scholarly Publishing&Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has created a model addendum for publishing contracts that allows authors to retain the copyrights to their works, while licensing publishers to make specific uses of those works. More information about the SPARC Author Addendum can be found  here .)