The rules governing copyright and scholarly publications are changing fast, and they're getting more contested. These days, even a trip to the copy machine can be fraught with copyright implications. The debates are arcane and difficult to understand.
For Duke scholars who need help following the debate, Kevin Smith is here to help.
Smith is Duke's scholarly communications officer. He arrived 14 months ago with the mission of helping Duke scholars understand the full range of legal topics from authors' rights to copyright issues and from digital rights to fair use law.
Kevin Smith's blog isn't the only valuable source for information about copyright and scholarly publications. For information about copyright law, Duke Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain developed the comic book Bound by Law.
Smith's Scholarly Communications blog tracks the latest legal and news articles on these topics, as well as what's happening in Congress and the federal regulatory system.
"When I was hired, one of the tasks given to me was to create a website about copyright," Smith said. "But there are lots of these out there already that are very good. I didn't want to repeat what's already out there.
"Copyright is important, but there are larger realms of scholarly publishing law that need to be explored. Things are changing rapidly. I thought the blog would be one way to keep people informed about a variety of issues that don't make the New York Times. They may not be in the news -- and increasingly they are -- but they still affect academic work and higher education in general."
This wasn't a position that universities had 20 years ago, but today it is essential. Not only is digital technology changing the nature of legal issues surrounding scholarly communications, but it's also making the disputes more contentious, he said.
"Our copyright law simply didn't envision the digital world we're living it," he said. "The law was written to be flexible, but it's now been stretched beyond flexibility. It's also been contested in new ways. Photocopying, for example, has always been done, but now it can be done at higher quality for almost no cost and distributed widely instantaneously, so it's getting more attention."
Smith is a longtime librarian who got a law degree because of his interest in copyright and related topics.
Smith hopes the blog can help people follow the debate. The debates are controversial, but he said he always provides links and information to all sides. That, he said, gives him the freedom to weigh in his own beliefs.
Recent postings have explored issues such as federal rules encouraging making federal research more readily available to the public and the debate as to what constitutes the optimal length of copyright protection.
In addition to the blog, Smith makes presentations throughout the university and is open to consults to individuals needing advice. It's not always faculty that needs help with scholarly communications. In the past year, he's conducted more than 200 consults -- 20 percent were from students and nearly 40 percent were from university staff and administrators.
"I get a lot of calls from librarians who have to deal with these issues regularly, but other staffers also run into these questions," he said.