3rd Annual Fair Use Week

I am delighted to announce the 3rd Annual Fair Use Week!  This is an opportunity for the community to celebrate the fair use doctrine, which “facilitate[s] balance in copyright law, promoting further progress and accommodating freedom of speech and expression.”

When I launched the “beta” Fair Use Week in 2014, it was a testing ground for what I hoped would be a much larger engagement with one of the most critical of all copyright laws: fair use. I wanted to create a week that would promote, challenge, engage, and educate. And I am happy to say that this 3rd Annual Fair Use Week has more engagement than ever! Thanks to the many libraries, universities, colleges, organizations, individuals, and other institutions that are doing their part to raise the level of dialog during Fair Use Week!

Fair use is important to the work of teachers, artists, playwrights, journalists, librarians, critics, students, scholars and our entire economy.  Fair use supports unprecedented creative outputs. And, as you will see in articles coming this week, fair use is spreading around the world to offer the same benefits given to the U.S. since 1841.

I invite you to explore the upcoming Fair Use Week festivities.

I have some expert fair use colleagues and guests contributing to the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communications copyright blog.

I will be highlighting great stories, art, videos, and other fair use related content on the Fair Use Week Tumblr.

I will be running the official Fair Use Week Twitter feed, which will keep you up to date on Fair Use Week conversations. [In fact, you can follow @FairUseWeek for a chance to win an official Fair Use Week tote, featuring the logo and one side, and a surprise fair use image on the other!]

I, myself, will be quite busy this week:

• On Tuesday, Feb. 23rd I will be on a panel (and moderating) a joint MIT and Harvard Library discussion, “Fair Use in Scholarly Journal and Book Publishing” at MIT’s Killian Hall (14W-111) from 12:00-1:00pm (watch the live webcast!). Panelists include: Nick Lindsay, Journals Director, MIT Press and Bill Smith, Director of Intellectual Property Licensing, MIT Press.

• On Wednesday, Feb 24th I will be presenting a webinar for the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries titled “Mitigating Risk at the Front Lines: The Library Copyright First Responders Program” at 2:00pm.

• On Thursday, Feb. 25th, I am giving the Keynote address for Florida State University’s Publish or Perish: Conversations on Academic Publishing Symposium.  My talk is titled “Where Will Publishing Be in 2030? A Look to the Future” at 2:45pm.

• On Friday,  Feb. 26th, I will be giving the opening Keynote address at the Institute on Copyright in Higher Education. My presentation, “Fair Use: Past, Present, and Future of a Critical Legal Right,” will start at 9:20am and will be part of FSU’s live webcast.

Lastly, I would like to thank my partners in Fair Use Week since the 2nd year, Krista Cox and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).  ARL and Krista (she is ARL’s stellar Director of Public Policy Initiatives) have been nothing but supportive of the idea and truly helped Fair Use Week develop from localized programming to worldwide participation. Many thanks!

ARL is kind enough to host a list of other local and national events on their Fair Use Week website.