SE Professor and a copyright maverick
Photo courtesy of J. David Ake/AFP/Getty Images
SE professor, Dr. Elizabeth Townsend Gard, has been working with her Tulane law class on copyright infringement cases. Read the article below to learn more about her work appearing in the music industry.
The internet has made it easier than ever to access information that you once had to dig through stacks and archives to find. You don’t have to have a New York Public Library card to make use of the system’s holdings as long as they’ve been digitized and made findable online.
There’s a hitch, though. Copyright-holders, including publishers and authors, can get nervous about putting material online when they still have a commercial or intellectual stake in it. Nobody wants to deny creators a living—but murky and overlong copyright terms, combined with fear and uncertainty among librarians and readers, have locked up too much material for too long without benefit to anybody. Librarians have gotten bolder, however, and with the help of copyright specialists, they have been finding more creative ways to open up material without flouting the law.