Below you will find an announcement of Cornell
University Library's new policy on digital copies
of public domain works. Basically, the Library
will continue to charge for services we provide,
but we are not going to try to exert any
downstream control over copies of public domain
works. This applies to items that we digitize as
well as items already in digital form, and it
applies to both unpublished and published material.

Peter Hirtle

From
News.Library.Cornell:

>FOR RELEASE:
>Contact: Peter Hirtle
>Phone: (607) 255-4033
>E-mail: pbh6@cornell.edu
>Cornell University Library Removes All
>Restrictions on Use of Public Domain Reproductions
>
>ITHACA, N.Y. (May 11, 2009) – In a dramatic
>change of practice, Cornell University Library
>has announced it will no longer require its
>users to seek permission to publish public
>domain items duplicated from its collections.
>Instead, users may now use reproductions of
>public domain works made for them by the Library
>or available via Web sites, without seeking any further permission.
>
>The Library, as the producer of digital
>reproductions made from its collections, has in
>the past licensed the use of those
>reproductions. Individuals and corporations that
>failed to secure permission to repurpose these
>reproductions violated their agreement with the
>Library. "The threat of legal action, however,"
>noted Anne R. Kenney, Carl A. Kroch University
>Librarian, "does little to stop bad actors while
>at the same time limits the good uses that can
>be made of digital surrogates. We decided it was
>more important to encourage the use of the
>public domain materials in our holdings than to impose roadblocks."
>
>The immediate impetus for the new policy is
>Cornell’s donation of more than 70,000 digitized
>public domain books to the Internet Archive
>(details at
> http://www.archive.org/details/cornell>www.archive.org/details/cornell ).

> http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/guidelines.html>cdl.library.cornell.edu/guidelines.html .
>
>
>About Cornell University Library One of the
>leading academic research libraries in the
>United States, Cornell University Library is a
>highly valued partner in teaching, research and
>learning at Cornell University. The Library
>offers cutting-edge programs and a full spectrum
>of services, rare books and manuscripts and a
>growing network of digital resources. The
>Library’s outstanding collections – from
>medieval manuscripts to hip hop and from ancient
>Chinese texts to comic books – preserve the past
>and pave the way for future scholarship. To
>learn more about Cornell University Library,
>visit < http://library.cornell.edu>library.cornell.edu .

Comment: This is great! No more Copyfraud at Cornell.





http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/adw/ADWHlights/Largest/Louven.htm