Cornell Library Lifts Restrictions on Public Domain Works

70,000 public domain works contributed to the Internet Archive

Josh Hadro -- Library Journal, 5/14/2009

• Shift is procedural as much as legal
• Users free to reproduce and reuse public domain materials for any purpose
• Materials vetted as belonging in the public domain

Coinciding with the donation of 70,000 public domain works to the Internet Archive, the Cornell University Library has announced that it will no longer requires users to seek permission to reuse public domain materials for any purpose. 

According to the library's statement, the shift in practice stems from a desire to be consistent with the library and faculty's commitment to Open Access. "Imposing legally binding restrictions on these digital files would have been very difficult and in a way contrary to our broad support of open access principles," said Oya Y. Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies.

Because the materials in question are already in the public domain, and because no new rights to restrict usage of the material are granted during the digitization process, researchers technically had the legal right to use and republish the materials. Indeed, the announcement acknowledges that the tension between institutional licensing policies and users rights can lead to charges of copyfraud, something Cornell hopes to avoid with the codification of this new policy.

In light of this, Cornell's change in policy is as much a procedural and ideological shift as it is a legal one. As Rieger said, "it doesn’t make sense to have different rules for material that is reproduced at the request of patrons, we have removed permission obligations from public domain works." Praising the revised policy, staunch Open Access advocate Peter Suber called it "exemplary."

Vetted public domain works
One unwritten but important aspect of Cornell's recent announcement and its donation to the Internet Archive is that the materials are now all but guaranteed to be verified public domain works. Rights clearance is by no means a trivial task, with the murkiest cases concerning works from the first few decades of the 20th century. 

The university in its new guidelines is still careful in urging researchers to use caution, writing that it is "the obligation of the user to determine and satisfy copyright and other restrictions when making use of materials from the Cornell University Library." 

However, the fact remains that the university has already made an extensive "reasonable effort" to verify that the materials' are entirely clear of copyright restrictions, further reinforced by the Internet Archive's acceptance of the 70,000 items into its collection (the archive accepts only public domain or openly licensed works).

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