December 2000
Submitted by Kate Wittenberg, Project Director
The discussion was not scripted and was lead by June Beseck and Jane Ginsburg, professors at the Columbia Law School whose academic work focuses on the issues if intellectual property and copyright. The roundtable was by invitation, and included the following participants:
Project PIs and staff in attendance included:
Summary of Discussion
We focused the discussion by posing the following questions:
Major issues raised by participants during the discussion
Two issues that emerged as being of primary importance in the creation of a digital rights management system are:
Comments on Integrity of content:
The integrity of the content is critical to the library's usefulness to scholars and educators. How do we protect the integrity of content in the digital library environment?
Some reasons for using technological protections include:
Many publishers use the honor system rather than technological means for ensuring the authenticated nature of the content on their products.
One possible role for the digital rights management system is a tracking mechanism to ensure that author receives scholarly credit for use of his or her material.
Will users give up some rights to privacy in exchange for better quality information from a digital library?
Comments on Payment for content:
Summary of policy issues raised that will be considered in building the rights management technology:
Levels of restriction
Determined according to type of the user, or the type of content, or both? Cost and Revenue
Authenticity and integrity of electronic materials
Report on Intellectual Property Rights Policy Roundtable for Columbia Pubscape
NSDL CIS Project
Director, Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC)
Senior Executive Editor, Columbia University Press
On December 15, 2000, the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) sponsored a roundtable discussion on intellectual property rights policy at the Columbia University Law School. The purpose of the discussion was to solicit the comments and perspective of those who will be affected by intellectual rights policies in the digital library environment as authors, users, and disseminators of scholarly and educational scientific content. We plant o use the results of this discussion to understand the important issues in this emerging area and to create a framework for developing policies and the accompanying technologies to manage rights within a digital science library on a large scale.
Elizabeth Fish, Geology Librarian, Columbia University
Kim Kastens, Senior Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Jeffrey Mitnick, General Counsel, McGraw Hill Publishers
Tom Moritz, Librarian, the American Museum of Natural History
Kaye Pace, Publisher, College Division, John Wiley and Sons Publishers
Frank Wattenberg, Director, Mathforum.com
Lee Zia, Program Officer, NSDL Program, National Science Foundation
Karen Bornarth, Project Manager, EPIC
Lewis Gilbert, Director, Office of Strategic Initiatives, Columbia University
David Millman, Manager, Research and Development, Academic Information Systems, Columbia University
Kate Wittenberg, Director, Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia