RE: OCLC's New License for Bibliographic Records

[richards1000@comcast.net]

Two interesting comments from ARL's report on the OCLC WorldCat 
proposed license:
http://www.arl.org/news/pr/oclc-policy-20feb09.shtml :

>From section IV of the ARL Task Force's comments, p. 7:

"The attempt to bind downstream users to the terms of the Policy 
appears to be of doubtful legal function. This provision has some 
features in common with the Creative Commons 
Attribution-Noncommercial Share Alike license. However, Creative 
Commons licenses define allowed uses of work that is protected by 
copyright, and are thus not an applicable model for WorldCat 
records. . . ."

>From Appendix B, ARL's legal counsel's analysis, p. 4-5 (the 
final two pages of the PDF):

"The Policy attempts to emulate the 'stickiness' of Creative 
Commons licenses, where downstream users must follow the license 
terms established by the author. The stickiness of the Creative 
Commons license derives from the fact that copyright adheres to a 
work as it passes from person to person. Here, by contrast, an 
individual record is unlikely to contain copyrightable 
expression. However, if the library obtains from OCLC a large 
enough set of records that reflects expressive selection, 
coordination, and arrangement, and the library transfers that set 
of records to a company, copyright would restrict the company's 
use of the set of records."

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Robert C. Richards, Jr., J.D.*, M.S.L.I.S., M.A.
Philadelphia, PA
richards1000@comcast.net
* Member New York bar, retired status.
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