(Editor’s Note: This article accompanies a lecture K. Matthew Dames gave Oct. 9, 2007, to the Digital Libraries class (IST 677) at Syracuse University’s iSchool. The Fall 2007 class is taught by University Librarian Suzanne Thorin and Angela Ramnarine-Rieks, web administrator at Syracuse University Library.)

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A few months ago, a colleague approached me with an interesting request. He wanted me to review a prospective job posting for a new position he was hoping to fill in his organization. If my colleague moved forward with his plan, he would hire a high-level executive whose primary responsibility would be to negotiate and sign contracts to buy electronic resources.

This position seemed to be tailor-made for a librarian. The position would report to the head of a large institution that values instant and timely access to a wide range of sources, and would be a lead official for an organization with several large information centers stretched across a number of different territories. Further, the position would partner with the organization’s general counsel to handle contract negotiation duties.

The organization’s annual electronic content budget is comfortably in the seven-figure range, and my colleague seemed willing to pay far beyond the embarrassingly low salaries I have seen for various electronic resource librarian positions.

In commenting on the job posting, I told the colleague that the prospective position seemed like a fabulous opportunity. The person in that position would have to deal with a variety of information, legal, and business issues: changes in copyright law; providing content for increasingly smaller devices; juggling different delivery formats; and the possibility of having to educate the general counsel on these content licensing issues.

(It is rare that in-house counsel has expertise in content licensing because it is an unusual procurement function to those outside the information profession.)

Unfortunately, I also expressed dismay that he may have to surrender his hope of filling this position with a librarian, since my experience and observation has been that too few librarians – new or experienced – have any experience or training in buying content.

When I started writing Information Today’s “Intellectual Property” column a year ago, my first piece was about the paucity of copyright education, both in ALA-accredited library schools and through continuing education channels for experienced librarians. Now, in this article, I’ll discuss another yawning gap in contemporary information professional education: the lack of training in licensing electronic content.

An Information Today exclusive.

K. Matthew Dames. Librarians and Licensing. Information Today. March 2007. Page 18.

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Technorati Tags: Information Today, licensing, Copycense, K. Matthew Dames, intellectual property

“Virginia’s public and private colleges and universities soon will be required to submit the names and Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of students they accept each year to state police for cross-checking against sexual offender registries.

“The little-noticed but groundbreaking law is raising concerns among privacy experts about giving police access to a vast new database of student information. They say the data could be stored permanently on hard drives and mishandled, stolen or used for unrelated homeland security or law enforcement purposes.

“Passed this year as part of a crackdown on sex crimes and signed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, the law also requires Department of Motor Vehicles officials to turn over personal information to police any time a Virginian applies for a license or change of address. It goes into effect July 1.”

Michael D. Shear and Rosalind S. Helderman. Police to Receive Student Data for Checks Against Offender List. WashingtonPost.com. June 20, 2006.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

The New York Times has published yet another article about how Google is revving up their Washington, DC lobbying efforts in an attempt to further domestic and international business objectives. Esther Dyson is quoted in the article saying “It’s sad. The kids are growing up. They’ve lost youth and innocence. Now they have to start being grown-ups and playing at least to some extent by grown-up rules.”

Google’s move into the political game is not really news, as regular CopyCense™ readers have been aware of this trend for quite some time. (See our Politics archive for background.) What surprises me is how shocked and disappointed other influential technologists seem to be about this inevitable development.

Despite its Stanford roots and academic progeny, Google is a large business that is competing for market and mindshare against well-heeled and -connected firms (like Yahoo! and Microsoft, both of which have developed an extensive Washington infrastructure). The company was just added to the S&P 500 index. Frankly, it may be corporate malfeasance for Google not to make the sort of political, governmental, and international contacts that would help them get done what they want or need to get done.

One recent internationally dormant area that Google may explore with its new lobbying machine is database legislation. More on this is forthcoming in my new article “O’Connor’s Copyright Legacy: Feist & Database Protection,” published exclusively in the April 2006 edition of Information Today.

K. Matthew Dames. “O’Connor’s Copyright Legacy: Feist & Database Protection.” Information Today. April 2006. (Forthcoming.)

Kate Phillips. Google Joins the Lobbying Herd. The New York Times. March 28, 2006.

See also:

Paul R. La Monica. Google: Too Legit To Quit. CNNMoney.com. March 28, 2006.

American Library Association. Current Status: Database Protection. Jan. 26, 2006.

American Library Association. Database Protection Legislation. No date.

Issues in Scholarly Communication. What Does Reed Elsevier Lobby For? Jan. 24, 2006.

The Patry Copyright Blog. Sandra Day O’Connor. July 5, 2005.

Bitlaw. Database Legal Protection. No date.

American Association of Law Libraries Washington Affairs Office. AALL Issue Brief: House Legislation To Protect Databases. July 2001.

Doug Isenberg. The Great Database Debate. Gigalaw.com. April 2001.

Peter K. Yu. Evolving Legal Protection for Databases. Gigalaw.com. December 2000.

U.S. Copyright Office. Report of Legal Protection for Databases. August 1997.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

In a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge has ordered that Google divulge the entire contents of a Gmail account, including deleted e-mail messages. The subpoena, which is unrelated to the Department of Justice’s own subpoena to Google for search terms and excerpts from its search database, is the second time in a month that the search giant has had a court demand records from its vast database.

As BusinessWeek Online’s David Holzman noted in an article we linked to last week, one of Google’s biggest future legal and business challenges will be the ability to keep its database content private and out of the hands of competitors and third parties, including government and law enforcement agencies. Part of the competitive advantage Google enjoys is buoyed by public trust. This trust will erode quickly if Google cannot find a way to keep its data private.

Declan McCullagh. Police Blotter: Judge Orders Gmail Disclosure. News.com. March 17, 2006.

See also:

CopyCense. Google Faces Increased Legal Challenges. March 16, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“A federal judge hearing arguments in the Department of Justice’s records fight with Google said Tuesday that he would grant federal prosecutors at least part of their request for excerpts from the search giant’s massive database.

“U.S. District Judge James Ware said he intends to release his decision ‘very quickly,’ and that he might give the Justice Department access to a portion of Google’s index of Web sites, but not to its users’ search terms.

“Ware said he was reluctant to give the Justice Department everything it wanted because of the “perception by the public that this is subject to government scrutiny” when they type search terms into Google.com.”

Declan McCullagh. Judge to Help Feds Against Google. News.com. March 14, 2006.

See also:

David H. Holtzman. Guarding Google’s Data Banks. BusinessWeek Online. March 14, 2006. (”The more successful Google is, the more unwelcome legal attention it will draw. As data continues to flood into Google, the comprehensiveness of its databases makes it a juicier target for government fishing expeditions.”)

Updates:

Anne Broache. Judge: Google Must Give Feds Limited Access to Records. News.com. March 17, 2006.

U.S. District Court, Northern District of California. Alberto R. Gonzales v. Google, Inc.: Order Granting In Part and Denying In Part Motion to Compel Compliance with Subpoena Duces Tecum. (.pdf) March 17, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Want to know what published works are in not subject to copyright? Two Canadian copyright groups have announced they will co-operate to create an on-line database of published works that have entered the public domain.

“In what they describe as a “ground-breaking project,” Access Copyright and Creative Commons Canada say they will create the “most comprehensive” searchable catalogue of published works that are no longer protected by copyright law.

“The aim of the registry is to determine whether a published work is in the public domain. The registry will also link to digital versions of the work, and provide information about where a paper copy of the work can be purchased.”

Jack Kapica. Database Planned for Public Domain Works. GlobeandMail.com. March 3, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.