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Copyright Issues in Digital Media

Conference Paper · November 2008

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International Conference on Knowledge for All : Role of Libraries and Information Centres 513

Copyright Issues in Digital Media

Iranna Shettar
Officer, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. Mumbai, E-Mail: imshettar@gmail.com

Abstract: The paper briefly touches about the digital technologies and copyright-related issues. The issues and concerns of
librarians in the face of the intellectual property laws in digital media are highlighted. Characteristics of copyright implications with
digital technologies and its adverse impact on knowledge Society and library services are discussed in detail. This paper also
discusses Fair use and Not fare use rights in digital environment. It gives a brief idea to the readers about the copyright issues and
its implications in the digital information handling.
Keywords: Copyright, Digital Media, Fare Use, Internet, Multimedia, Site Licensing, Software.

1. INTRODUCTION
Over the last few decades, libraries have undergone a transformation as we have incorporated
computers into the structure of the modern library. This revitalization has allowed libraries to accomplish
many things that were never thought possible before. Yet now that computers have become a staple in
libraries everywhere, there was a dramatically quantum jump in the digital information resources made
available through networks, particularly over the Internet and the WWW. Publishers of scholarly,
academic and reference works from almost all fields of human knowledge started bringing them in digital
form. According to InternetWorldStats.com 1,459 million users are connected to the Internet.
There are number of issues and concerns are associated with the usage of digital information. It is
easy to create digital or digitized copies of material including text, image, audio and video; and this
digital information can be distributed across the world through e-mail, electronic bulletin boards,
websites and networks. The increasing use of primary and secondary mass storage media made it
possible to download, store, display and print. Further, the downloaded documents can be modified
or forwarded to others without the knowledge of its rightful owner. In comparison to printed
information, electronic information is not so permanent; it is open to modifications, additions,
deletions, revisions and manipulations without leaving any resemblance and difficult for detection.
Unlike the case of printed materials, close monitoring and restriction of usage of electronic
documents is difficult. Digital environment makes the issues related to copyright law a difficult task,
as only element in knowledge society has not changed with advent of new technologies.
As fundamental copyright is not changed, many people believe copyright law is “Technology
Neutral”, they believe software, WebPages, Networks and Multimedia materials should be
considered as Intellectual properties, just as books, music’s and other pre-electronic forms of
expression and they should adequately addressed and protected under current copyright law.
But others feel that the current law is inadequate and too limited to address the copyright
issues created with these new forms of expressions and recordation that breaks new ground and
creates its own copyright issues.
514 International Conference on Knowledge for All : Role of Libraries and Information Centres

2. CHARACTERISTICS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES WITH COPYRIGHT

IMPLICATIONS
The technologies that presently are raising issues for copyright law are those related to digital
storage and transmission of works. There are a number of aspects to these technologies that have
implications for copyright law, including the following:
Ease of Reproduction: Once a work is rendered in digital form, it can be reproduced rapidly, at little
cost, and without any loss of quality. Each copy, in turn, can be further reproduced, again without any
loss of quality. In this way, a single copy of a work in digital form can supply the needs of millions of
users. We have seen how the compact discs (CDs) containing the original digital versions of recorded
music and sold to consumers in the ’80s and ’90s have become the “masters” from which billions of
copies have been made and distributed on computers and on the Internet in this decade.
Ease of Dissemination: The emergence of global digital networks allows the rapid, worldwide
dissemination of works in digital form. Like broadcasting, digital networks allow dissemination
to many individuals from a single point (although, unlike broadcasting, digitized materials need
not reach each individual simultaneously). However, digital networks allow each recipient on the
network to engage in further dissemination of the work, which can cause the work to spread at a
geometric (sometimes called “viral”) rate of increase. This, combined with the ease of
reproducing works, means that a single digital copy of a work can be multiplied many thousands
of times around the world within a few hours. When transmitted through high-speed transmission
lines, like coaxial cable networks or even fiber optic lines, the process is even faster, and the
capacity for the transmission of works grows as well.
Ease of Storage: Digital storage is dense, and it gets denser with each passing year. Ever-
increasing quantities of material can be stored in a smaller and smaller amount of space. In the
early 1990s, CDs, which can store over 600 megabytes of data, were perhaps the predominant
form of digital storage used by commercial pirates for storing entire libraries of computer
programs or sound recordings with aggregate retail values in the millions of dollars. Today’s
popular iPod portable music player can store nearly 70 times that amount (around 10,000 songs)
in a device the size of a cigarette pack.

3. COPYRIGHT ISSUES IN DIGITAL MEDIA

3.1 Software
Fastest growing industry, the computer software industry has created its own set of copyright
issues. Because most of the software programs can be easily copied and recreate perfectly.
Also extends possibility loading program onto more than one computer, which is not only
infringing but also breaches license agreement that limits use to only one computer.
However, as tempting as this practice may be, it constitutes a major act of copyright
infringement and software piracy. According to Business Software Alliance (BSA) 35% of the
world’s software is pirated, where in India its 69%.
3.2 Scanners
A scanner technology reproduces a photograph or other pictures in near perfect, without
decreasing quality of the image. More importantly where copyright is concerned, reproduced
image can be stored for future, can be used over and over, and even modified.
International Conference on Knowledge for All : Role of Libraries and Information Centres 515

By reproducing, distributing, or modifying the copyrighted images without permission user

infringing the fundamental exclusive rights of Copyright Owner.
3.3 Multimedia and CD-ROMs
The possibility of CD-ROMs seems endless as you can include images, music clips, sounds,
Audiovisuals, animations, computer programs and text. But as endless new possibilities with
multimedia publishing and CD-ROM technology Copyright concerns.
Now, if you want to expose your users to inspiring words of famous Quit India speech by
Mahatma Gandhi, you are no longer limited to presenting the speech only in written form. By
producing the work electronically, with CD-ROM version, your reader can hear the words spoken,
may he or she can even see Mahatma delivering the speech, and you can also add accompanying
music, narration and other images to make the effect of the message more dramatic.
There is no limit to your creativity! Unfortunately there is a limit- that is Copyright law. Each
technological breakthrough adds a new copyright factor for multimedia developers to consider.
To present Mahatma’s speech in multimedia format, you need to request the rights to use more
than just the words and speech and the photo accompany the text, need rights for the audio,
video, music and any additional image you added.
3.4 The Internet and other Networks
Digital technology enables data to be copied without defect, manipulated, sliced and re-edited
with great freedom and is a perfect technology for pirates. All these technical possibilities pose
problems for copyright law in developing suitable techniques for catching up with the
infringements. The information available on the Internet has the same copyright protection as if
it were a magazine, publication, printed book, broadcast, etc.
The great myth is that the Internet is free for all in using vast available resources. In the public
domain, material found on the Internet may be copied freely only if the information is created by the
federal government or the copyright has expired or been abandoned by the holder. Any work
published on the Internet is not automatically placed in the public domain. Information and other
materials provided by others and used with permission, e.g. graphic images including Web graphics,
photos, logos, digital art, writings, text, HTML, Java scripts or other material that people are given
permission to use or display on Web sites, does not entitle anyone to claim copyright to the material
in question. Graphic images provided by free or link ware graphics sites are not in the public domain.
These images are not given in ownership but could be used, if they comply with the owner’s terms
and conditions. Fonts and dingbats, created point by point, drawn from scratch or through similar
means, are copyrighted by the author. Scanned designs converted into fonts and dingbats or
reduplication/ re-fabrication/alteration of existing ones are not original designs and do not entitle the
individual to claim ownership. Hot-linking or linking directly to another Web site’s images and/or
spider-harvesting (robots programmed to index pages and pull images on to another server) is an
unauthorized derivative work and constitutes a violation of the real owner’s copyright.
Apart from Internet, there are many national, regional networks and intranets and extranets.
Millions of people are linked thru these networks. Most of the content distributed over the networks
is copyrighted or is under some sort of contractual licensing. Usually network users tend to think that
non-commercial distribution is fair use and that it does not amount to rights violation. This leaves the
network administrators in a spot over the liability of such infringements.
516 International Conference on Knowledge for All : Role of Libraries and Information Centres

3.5 E-mail
Electronic mail or e-mail is the greatest threat to the Copyright Act. According to Software &
Information Industry Association (SIIA) 75% of Internet users expect more people to know their e-
mail address and more than 50% users prefer to communicate using e-mail rather than a telephone.
E-mail is fast and private way to transfer information between parties. Users must login to the
online service to retrieve the mail. If recipients of e-mail messages want to take print or forward
these private mails, they are in danger of committing copyright infringement. Forward feature allows
users to send somebody’s mail to one or many or to post on mailing lists or “Usenet” groups.
According to existing copyright act, e-mail messages fall into the category of literary works,
copyright remains with author of message. The sender owns copyright on content and recipient
owns the physical space the message takes up on his or her hard disk. The recipient does not
have the right to copy, publish, or otherwise distribute the contents without permission.
3.6 Site Licensing
Nowadays most of the educational institutes and business organizations often employ “Site
Licensing”. A site license allows the institute to purchase the rights to unlimited use of the
product within the organization/ institute.
A single master copy or single access to a product purchased, downloaded or used on two or
more computers leads to the copyright breach and which is very easily traceable through
network server. Information retrieved or downloaded from single access cannot be shared, and
sharing the login details also copyright infringement.

4. I PAID FOR IT, WHY CAN’T I USE IT?

Part of the confusion over copyright and electronic content from the facts that content is easily
accessible, storable, modifiable and sharable. Multimedia collections like images, music files etc, are
easily available in the market with minimal prices, which is very tempt able to reuse the content.
Even if you have purchased a collection, doesn’t guarantee that you can use it in your own
multimedia project, especially if you intend to sell it. Hot linking of images available on internet on
price and freely is also copyright breach and it is also considered as bandwidth theft.
So whenever you are purchasing the online databases, software packages, CD-ROM
collection, consider various levels of licensing agreements and always read carefully that what
you are purchasing? Are you just purchasing ‘information’; you are purchasing the rights to use
the information a specific way and what are the limitations by the licensing agreement.

5. FAIR DEALING IN DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Publishers Association (PA) UK set up a
working party to study the application of the fair dealing and library privilege permissions in
digital environment. They published their guidelines for Fair Dealing in an Electronic
Environment in 1998, which can be adopted in Indian context. Following are the “Fair use” and
“Not fair” instructions given by JISC and PA.
5.1 Fair Use
• Any incidental copying to disk involved in the viewing of part or all of an electronic publication.
International Conference on Knowledge for All : Role of Libraries and Information Centres 517

• One accesses an electronic journal available on a Web site or from university/library

network using the PC in his office. The browser automatically copies the article to his hard
disk cache when he views the article.
• It is fair dealing for an individual to print onto paper one copy of part of an electronic
publication for research or private study.
• A librarian can print onto paper one copy of part of an electronic publication at the request
of an individual.
• One can access an electronic journal to which the library has a paid subscription, using an
open access PC. He can print out a hard copy of the article for research or private study,
assuming this is allowed by the license agreement.
• The librarian should not give the user a print out of whole of an electronic book but can
provide one chapter.
• An individual can copy onto disk part of an electronic publication for permanent local
electronic storage, where the disk is either a portable medium or a fixed medium accessible
to only one user at a time but not for all of an electronic publication for permanent local
electronic storage proper licensing is requires for it
• One can’t download an entire electronic journal or an issue to his PC. It needs permission
from the copyright owner.
5.2 Not Fair
• To scan the article into electronic form. It needs the permission, if granted, would cover
whether the library could retain a copy permanently.
• Transmit by computer network of the whole of an electronic publication for the purpose of
permanent local electronic storage, reading on screen, and printing on individual request
• All the articles of conference proceedings transferred to a re-writeable CD-ROM disk in a
CD-ROM drive attached to one’s computer so he can keep and read them at home.
• To post part or all of an electronic publication on a network or WEB site open to the public.
• To put an interesting group of journal articles up on the Department Web site for his
colleagues to read. He must get permission of the copyright owners first.

6. CONCLUSION
Law can not keep pace with technology. All the efforts need to be made to amend copyright
laws to cover technological impact on the associated legal issues and to include latest provision
for the protection of copyright and also make safeguard for the interest of the users.
Most of the times users are not familiar with copyright laws and the kinds of activities which
leads to copyright breaching. So users can be made aware through various literacy programs of
the rights of the users and rights of the owner to avoid any legal conflict between these two and
it is responsibility of modern days Library & Information Professional. Users also need to
educate how to handle electronic information and what not come under the fair use doctrine.
So the modern day librarianship is “tension between providing good service to their patron
and respecting the rights of the copyright owner.
 518 International Conference on Knowledge for All : Role of Libraries and Information Centres

REFERENCES
1] Besenjak, Cheryl. 2001. Copyright Act Plain & Simple. Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career Press.
2] Charmasson, Henri. 2004. Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks for Dummies, Wiley Publishing Inc.:
Hoboken.
3] Singh, J.P. 2007. Copyright Issues. DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology , 27(6), pp. 19-30.

4] Lakshmana Moorthy, A. and Karisiddappa, C.R. 2005. Copyright Issues in Digital Environment. Paper
presented in the Two-Day State Level Seminar on Perspectives in Intellectual Property Rights, 13-14
August 2005, SDM Dental College, Dharwar. pp. 32-52. Available at https://drtc.isibang.ac.in/
bitstream/handle/1849/362/Copyright-Hubli.pdf?sequence=1
5] Internet Usage World Stats - Internet and Population Statistics http://www.internetworldstats.com/
(Visited on 02 Aug 2008)
6] Business Software Alliance: http://www.bsa.org/ (Visited on 23 Aug 2008)
7] Joint Information Systems Committee and Publishers Association. 1998. Guidelines for Fair Dealing in
an Electronic Environment. Available at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/pa/fair/
intro.html#Heading1

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