CDL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT SCENARIO

WEB-BASED CONTENT

INTRODUCTION: (Set the scene and give background for general scenario)

Library wishes to collect content from web sites on a particular topic. The topic may be such that the interest is in a particular time span and collection may be periodic. This is current material and is intended both for research and classroom use and as part of a digital preservation repository.

Users and Uses:

Characteristics (features): (goals [i.e. access], granularity of ownership, contractual status, etc.)

· All content is publicly accessible, and not excluded from robots (i.e. in accord with robots.txt file)

· Content may have explicit ownership (i.e. author), but is often the product of an institution or corporation

· Content may or may not have a copyright notice, or the notice may only be on the home page for the site

· Most content is recent in nature, and covered under copyright law

· Physical ownership is not necessarily the same as content ownership

· Sites may have multiple IP contributors; some content pseudonymous or anonymous

· Technology is not “IP aware”

Possible problems:

· Owners may not be named on the web site. Even where they are, contact information may lead to a technical contact rather a rights contact.

· Owners may no longer be taking responsibility for the content (orphan work)

· Depending on the topic in question and the type of sites, there may be privacy issues

· Any “page” may have mixed ownership; some page content is not visible: scripts, style sheets, etc. (may have separate ownership)

· Site owner may not know ownership status of items on site

Legal issues:

· Fair use, in terms of copying large parts of web sites, has not been established

Data requirements issues:

· Because web materials change rapidly, the date and even exact time that a page is copied may be needed to establish copyright and identity

· Many meterials will have little identifying information outside of the context of the site as a whole, so that information will need to be carried throught to individual items

· Ownership has to be assigned at item level