This article explores the historical relationships between libraries, policy, and politics in the United States. Far too often, policy and political discussions related to libraries have little historical context. While libraries have long viewed themselves as a pillar of democracy by supporting informed, educated, and engaged citizenry, political…

The first sale doctrine says that after a copyright holder first sells a copy of his or her work, the new owner may do whatever he or she pleases with that copy (assuming that use is legal). This concept came up through common law and was eventually codified in the Copyright Act of 1976. In 2010, two cases were working their way through the U.S.…

The upcoming round of exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 anticircumvention provision and the questions raised by the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the against University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for its streaming video practices illustrate the problematic state of the law concerning the digitization…

Includes two articles: one discusses Federal legislation and regulations affecting libraries in 2000, including database protection, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, funding, Internet filtering, and e-rate; and the second discusses legislation and regulations affecting publishing, including copyright, foreign sales corporation tax, children's…

This guide is designed to help librarians, researchers, and teachers understand and negotiate licensing agreements for electronic resources. Chapter 1 is an introduction to contract law. Chapter 2 describes the various types of licensing agreements, including shrink-wrap, Webwrap, and custom licenses that are negotiated clause-by-clause; examples…

This report addresses the question of what libraries and archives are legally empowered to do to preserve and make accessible for research their holdings of pre-1972 commercial recordings, the large aural legacy that is not protected by federal copyright. The report is one of a series of studies undertaken by the National Recording Preservation…