copyright for a university website?

[fvgfvg]

I'm trying to set up a resource website for students, so that they can search through reference volumes that I wanted to place on the web. Copyright is an obvious problem. I'm hoping someone out there has some experience with this.
What I had in mind was some kind of non-public website - i.e. controlled by a login-routine, just like this forum - and then a search engine which gave out just that section of the text explicitly searched for. Would that work? Just as an example: let's say I've scanned the collected works of Freud, I move it to my website, and then set up a simple 'grep' or something. Would I get a lot of hassle from the publishers?

This is all private, no university funds, nothing. Just an individual initiative to get some interesting content out there..
There are technical issues involved - the search programs seem pretty expensive - but for the moment my main concern is being jumped on by some big publisher...
There must be precedents for this, and I'm hoping that what I've sketched above would be covered by some kind of 'fair use' clause ...

best - (my very first post to this forum)

[hunderdown]

Yes, you would get a lot of hassle from publishers, if the books were still under copyright. Google is doing something like this with publisher permission. University libraries do something like this with journal databases, for which they pay considerable fees for licenses.

What you propose to do wouldn't fall under fair use, because all you're doing is limiting the number of people who could view the documents. College professors who used to claim fair use and photocopied all their course materials have had to start clearing permissions and paying fees.

However, many of the writings of Freud are probably public domain, as they would have been published before 1923. And there would be other public domain materials you could use.

Before you go any further, spend some time researching copyright law, starting with the US Copyright Office and also using your university library and the Web.

And of course, I am not a lawyer, though I have worked for years in publishing and have some experience of how publishers deal with copyright issues. Once you have developed a plan, you will want to discuss it with a lawyer with copyright experience so you don't get yourself into trouble.

Good luck.

[VegasRook]

The bigger question is: Why?

Just about every college, including community colleges, has a huge online search center for students.

Students can search magazines from decades past, books, other publications, and view ebooks--all free and fast.

Not sure if you knew this or not so thought I would post.

[BigDave]

The universities themselves and their libraries, especially state schools, have great leeway when it come to their ability to claim fair use. Doing it as a private initiative would not get you those same protections.

You do have some personal and private distribution rights to works that you have legally obtained, but what you describe almost certainly goes beyond that.

As others have said, if the work is out of copyright (such as early Freud) you can distribute to your heart's content.

[fvgfvg]

Most grateful for the input.
Freud was just an example. In my specialist field I have about 60 volumes digitised - four philosophy authors in all, none of them in the public domain, all of them under copyright - which collectively would make up an academic resource which exists nowhere else. (The main purpose of such a site is for students and scholars to find quotations, which is why I've gone to all this trouble in the first place). Technically I take it that it could be set up so that the user cannot download more than a page or so at a time, i.e. comparable to what one does when one takes a quotation from somewhere and places it in an essay. (Vegasrook: none of this is available except in large libraries, and sometimes not even there.)

'Fair use' is obviously the key, and especially where university libraries and publishers have drawn the line on this. It would indeed be comparable to what Google has done with a lot of the Amazon books: 'digitize em, index em, search em'. From the publisher's point of view an increase in student's interest in these online texts doesn't mean at all that it would decrease sales - probably quite the contrary. I guess I'm looking for *precedents*: what's the attitude of the big publisher's of reference material to such non-commercial, university-based initiatives? (After all: scanners and especially OCR software are improving all the time...)

My thanks for the thoughtfull responses... (I’ve written both to the copyright clearance and the Gutenberg Project people, and can share their responses if there is interest in this.)

[hunderdown]

You make a good case for why the publishers involved would want to give permission (though why they would want to give it to you and not to Amazon, who they may be working with already in the Search Inside the Book program is a big question).

But that suggests a course of action--write to the publishers involved and get their permission.

[stapel]

This sounds as though you are trying to do electronically what universities used to do in print: create an anthology for use in the classroom, to avoid having to pay for all the books separately. Do some research on the Kinko's case, to see if this applies to your situation. But I have a feeling that you can't do what you're trying to do.

Eliz.

[thecopyrightsite.org...]
[utsystem.edu...]
[fairuse.stanford.edu...]

[fvgfvg]

I'm really most grateful to Stapel/Eliz. These are the kinds of links I'd been hoping for. I've been working through the material.

I'm not very good at the technical side of things, but at the moment I'm thinking of the following kind of set-up. (Based also on what's been said on this list, and on my current understanding of the interpretation of 'fair use' in a university/teaching setting.)

1) Users of the search routines (i.e. full-text search of the 60-odd volumes) have to be registered.
2) Search results are limited in scope - not more that 2-3 pages at a time - and sent only to the e-mail address of registered users.
3) Users have to 'click' their agreement to use the material only for non-commercial, private, study purposes, and not to pass it on to third parties.

How does that sound?

Next question: are there any programs around that would do that kind of user administration?

P.S. a word on the purpose of such a website. Everyone who's ever done anything on the meaning of concepts of important authors knows that exact quotations are crucial, and that they're hard to find. To take up my example of Freud again. The Standard Edition consists - I think - of 18 volumes or thereabouts. How does the meaning of the word 'libido' change from Freud's earliest writings to the late works? No student is ever going to buy the Standard Edition to answer that kind of question. But if you had the kind of setup I sketched above …