Three court decisions and a new law made 2007 a very good year for teachers who want the freedom to use whatever they want in their classrooms. In a paper released last month, Jonathan Band explains recent legal decisions that permit extensive copying and display of copyrighted material on commercial sites because the uses involve “repurposing” and “recontextualization.” In Perfect 10 V. Amazon.com, a Federal Circuit Court ruled that a thumbnail-sized image of a copyrighted photograph is a “transformative use” and is therefore protected by the fair use privilege by the copyright act. Similar rulings were recently handed down in favor of an artist who re-used portions of a fashion photograph, and a publisher who reproduced copyrighted posters in a book. If such uses are allowed for commercial purposes, says Band, they are certainly OK for educators.  Band’s paper “Educational Fair Use Today” is available for free download at the website of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

The year ended on a high note for researchers, when President Bush signed an appropriations bill containing a provision that requires the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide open public access to all of the research it funds. The victory caps a three-year lobbying effort by the Open Access movement but the battle is not over, according to a January 7 post on the website of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). New NIH research does not have to be published for a year, and the Association of American Publishers has vowed to fight the law. But the new rule is the first Open Access mandate for a major public funding agency in the US, so it’s a landmark.  You can weigh in on these new rules at our Whiteboard Talkback blog.