Paper: Mass Digitization and Copyright Law, Policy and Practice

This 25-page well-researched paper by Georgia Harper has this as it premise:

Copyright industries live and die by their bottom lines. Some of the money that has trouble achieving what it used to in Washington has begun to bet on the strengths of the digital networked environment rather than against them. This paper describes how that change is beginning. The story does indeed start with Congress but quickly turns to what’s taking place outside the law, in the markets. Then it looks to the courts, where mass digitization is having its most direct effect on copyright law. Even here, however, the markets are, again, the bigger story. I’ll close with Google Book Search, an important part of any path forward.

Published in May 2008, it was recently promoted through the Center for Intellectual Property.

I could see assigning this as a paper that students studying copyright or digitization would need to read, because it is well-written and easy to understand.

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Technorati tag: Copyright