17:610:553 DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Tefko Saracevic, Michael Lesk
Fall 2002

Assignment 8

Economics and copyright

Readings:

1. http://www.lesk.com/derek.html - click on "this is the paper" and "cancel" if it asks for authentication.

Assignment for reading on economics:

Hand in a one page answer to the question: "should digital scholarly publications be paid for by the institution that represents the readers (as today) or by the institution that represents the authors (as with
technical reports), in your opinion?"

2. Consult arguments about copyright case before Supreme Court:

http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/briefs/01-618/01-618.pet.eldred.pdf
http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/briefs/01-618/01-618.pet.usa.pdf

These are the leading briefs for the case Eldred v. Ashcroft, the constitutionality of the copyright extension.

If anyone gets interested, there are lots more briefs at http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/docket/2002/october.html#01-618
and lots of articles at
http://llr.lls.edu

(It's unfortunate that the brief by the economists - Akerlof et al -is pretty much unreadable.)

Assignment for readings on copyright:

The class will argue both sides of the case. I expect to devote an hour to assigning the class to argue the two sides. We'll split A-L and M-Z on last names and then choose at random on the day who argues the "for" and who the "against".
Write out notes for one argument on each side. Hand in the notes.

M. Lesk