Copyright and Internet Resarch

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on December 10, 2007
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More and more researchers are doing research on the world wide web. The prime method for displaying natural processes is with screenshots. In many research areas screenshots are the web researchers equivalent to doing interviews or questionnaires. And of course, we like to publish the text with embedded screenshots in an article in a digital web based journal. But is that possible according to current copyright rules?

One problem is that copyright laws are national while Internet is without borders. Another problem is that a web page is an example of convergence media. A web page might contain several different instances of media, by multiple authors belonging to different countries. It is a fact that prevailing copyright laws are an obstacle in the research on world wide web.

2 Responses to “Copyright and Internet Resarch”

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  1. 1 Peter Giger
    December 11, 2007 at 12:45 pm

    Below is a reasoning which illuminates how diffuse the fair use exception is:

    Fair use.
    Fair use is one of the most important, and least clear cut, limits to copyright. It permits some use of others’ works even without approval. But when? Words like “fair” or “reasonable” cannot be precisely defined, but here are a few benchmarks.

    Uses that advance public interests such as criticism, education or scholarship are favored — particularly if little of another’s work is copied. Uses that generate income or interfere with a copyright owner’s income are not. Fairness also means crediting original artists or authors. (A teacher who copied, without credit, much of another’s course materials was found to infringe.)

    Commercial uses of another’s work are also disfavored. For example, anyone who uses, without explicit permission, others’ work to suggest that they endorse some commercial product is asking for trouble! Yet, not all commercial uses are forbidden. Most magazines and newspapers are operated for profit; that they are not automatically precluded from fair use has been made clear by the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Source: http://www.piercelaw.edu/tfield/copynet.htm

  2. 2 Claudia Koltzenburg
    February 1, 2008 at 7:03 pm

    this might be of interest for further readings:

    International Journal of Internet Research Ethics
    (dedicated specifically to cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research on Internet Research Ethics)
    http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/SOIS/cipr/ijire/

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