Digitization 101

 From the U.S. Copyright Office:

The U.S. Copyright Office extended the deadline to submit comments in response to its August 30, 2023, notice of inquiry regarding artificial intelligence and copyright. The new deadlines will ensure that members of the public have sufficient time to prepare fulsome responses to the Office's questions so the Office can proceed with its inquiry with the benefit of a complete record of public input and feedback.

Initial written comments are now due by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on Monday, October 30, 2023. Reply comments are now due by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on Wednesday, November 29, 2023.

The Federal Register notice announcing this extension and additional information, including instructions for submitting comments, are available at https://www.copyright.gov/policy/artificial-intelligence/. 

The Copyright Office webpage entitled "Copyright and Artificial Intelligence" contains a lot of useful information and I encourage you to look at it.  One of the resources on that page is "Artificial Intelligence: The Copyright Connection" from 2021. I think the questions asked by Steve Andreadis are still at the center of this discussion:

• How are artists, scientists, and businesses inspired by the technological advances of AI? 
• When AI produces a creative work, is the expression owned by human or machine? 
• What is owed to creators of AI input data from a copyright or moral rights perspective? 
• What ethical implications are involved in selecting a data set and building an AI system?

If you have thoughts on these and other questions regarding AI and copyright, consider submitting them to the Copyright Office.

This article appeared in a recent Public Knowledge email and it seems appropriate to post because of the ongoing questions about generative AI (GAI). The article covers:

1. The training data
2. The training process
3. User inputs

I'm sure the last section on "Expanding Copyright Law Won’t Protect Artists from GAI’s Disruption" will attract your attention.

Copyright and artificial intelligence is worth keeping an eye on, but when you do that recognize that the law isn't going to suddenly change. As I said to someone on Friday, the law changes slowly. It also changes purposefully. Right now, we all still studying what AI means to creators and how the law can help (or hurt) the situation.

Likely you have been reading about the Hachette v. Internet Archive litigation. This is an article that you might want to add to your reference list on the topic. This article by Maria Bustillos starts with an analogy:

Buying a book should be no different from buying an apple. When you buy an apple, the farmer can’t show up in your kitchen later and decide your time is up, and you’ve got to pay for it again. It’s yours forever—to eat, or paint in a still life, or cut up for a kid’s snack. And thanks to the first sale doctrine of copyright law, codified by Congress in 1909, the books on your shelves are yours forever, too, in exactly the same way your apple is; you’re free to read them (or not), loan them to friends, or sell them to a used bookshop, without restriction. Copyright law balances the public good—our collective right to access information—with the rights it grants to authors and inventors.

Are you intrigued? You can read the entire article on The Nation website.

I want to let you know that I’ll be teaching a course on U.S. copyright law in libraries this fall/winter. This is a course that I have taught before through ALA eLearning (and always with updates).

Do you - or someone in your library - need to know more about copyright? This course will guide you through the basics of copyright law and provide you with the foundation to become your library's copyright expert. Each week, we’ll explore how copyright law informs what libraries, library staff, and patrons can do with their materials and how you can stay up-to-date as copyright law and practice evolves. No previous experience or knowledge is required.

This course starts on Monday, October 23 and runs for 7 weeks (which includes a one-week break for Thanksgiving). You can register on ALA eLearning. Bulk and institutional pricing is available.

If you have any questions and/or are interested in bulk pricing, you can contact the folks at ALA Continuing Education at ce@ala.org.

In 2000, Anne R. Kenney and Oya Y. Rieger wrote "Moving theory into practice: digital imaging for libraries and archives", which was an important book on digitization. The book was born out of the workshops they developed. That book is still considered an important resource. Now the 208 page book is available to everyone through the Internet Archive.

On August 24, the Internet Archive hosted a conversation with Oya Rieger about the work she and Anne Kenney did and the book they developed. A recording of the event is available through the Internet Archive (66 min.).

Listening to Chris Freeland and Oya Rieger talk about digitization activities in the 1990s and early 2000s brought back many memories. If you have been involved in digitization over the last 30 years, it is likely the conversation will bring back memories for you too.