[Fwd: [ILL-L] Prospero and Copyright question in Canada]

Tue Jun 12 07:45:37 EDT 2007

I want to thank Rob and Ralph for raising these questions in such thorough and
thoughtful manner.  I must confess that I have been somewhat perplexed by
recent developments in this area, especially in the prospect of finally being
able to provide some sort of post/print-to-web service for end users.

My perplexity stems from the fact that it seems to me that there are two
different issues being discussed here.  First there is the issue of 
what can be
copied and the Supreme Court's indication that fair dealing should be the
guiding principle here will, hopefully, increase the scope of what can be
copied for users (especially useful in the face of increasingly restrictive
vendor licensing agreements).

The ban on electronic delivery to end-users (the "how" to the first issue's
"what") is, I think, another issue entirely and one that I can't see as being
dealt with in any way in this ruling.  Neither do I see the Court's
priveledging of the fair dealing principle over the provisions in s30.2 as
being any license to disregard the whole section, only those that deal with
what can be copied.

Thanks again for this interesting and very important exchange.

Joe Wickens

Quoting Ralph Daehn <rdaehn at uoguelph.ca>:

> Thank you for adding your response concerning the Canadian concept of 
> fair dealing. I was in error when I stated that nothing has changed 
> since the time of my Prospero demonstration project when in fact the 
> 2004 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada did clarify the concept of 
> fair dealing and how this relates to the Copyright Act.
>
> I am not a copyright expert, so I do wonder if the saving and storing 
> of electronic copies of documents (which of course is something an 
> end user can do) really is acceptable within the scope of fair 
> dealing. Both Relais Express and Ariel have the ability to post an 
> electronic copy of a document in either TIF or PDF format to a Web 
> site, where the document is then available to the end user, and they 
> also both allow sending an electronic copy of a document in either 
> TIF or PDF format as an email attachment to the end user. Only Relais 
> Express has configurable options to restrict printing, copying, 
> annotating, and modifying a document. However, regardless of whether 
> a library uses Relais Express (even with restrictions on the copy of 
> the electronic document) or Ariel (which does not allow placing any 
> restrictions on the copy of the electronic document), the TIF or PDF 
> document can still be saved and stored by the end user. Therefore, 
> because a library providing an electronic copy of a document using 
> Ariel or Relais Express has no means of preventing an end user from 
> saving that electronic copy, can this still be interpreted as being 
> in the spirit of fair dealing?
>
> This is not meant to be an argumentative posting. I honestly wonder 
> and would like nothing better than to see use of this very effective 
> and labor-saving functionality available in both Ariel and Relais 
> Express in use without legal strings attached.
>
> Ralph Daehn, University of Guelph Library, Guelph, Ontario  N1G 2W1
> 519-824-4120 ext. 53603
> http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rdaehn/
>
> At 01:07 PM 6/11/2007, Rob Tiessen wrote:
>> The 2004 CCH Supreme Court Judgment has changed the copyright law in Canada.
>>
>> Quoting from paragraph 49 of the Judgment:
>>
>>    "As an integral part of the scheme of copyright law, the s. 29 
>> fair dealing exception is always available.  Simply put, a library 
>> can always attempt to prove that its dealings with a copyrighted 
>> work are fair under s. 29 of the Copyright Act.  It is only if a 
>> library were unable to make out the fair dealing exception under s. 
>> 29 that it would need to turn to s. 30.2 of the Copyright Act to 
>> prove that it qualified for the library exemption."
>>
>> In other words as long as the interlibrary loan is a "fair dealing" 
>> a library doesn't need to follow the digital copy prohibition in 
>> 30.2(5) of the Copyright Act.  In fact all of the restrictions in 
>> 30.2 are gone.
>>
>> You are doing a disservice to suggest that section 30.2 of the 
>> Copyright Act is still a valid part of the law that libraries need 
>> to follow.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Rob Tiessen
>> Head, Access Services
>> University of Calgary Library
>> tiessen at ucalgary.ca
>> 403-220-6043
>>
>>
>>
>> Ralph Daehn wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> Since a response to Miguel Escobar's question might be of more 
>>> general interest, I am replying to the list.
>>> For information on Prospero, go to the Prior Health Sciences 
>>> Library, Ohio State University at 
>>> http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/prospero/. The most recent version 
>>> is 1.4, from 2004. Prospero is open source document delivery 
>>> software originally designed to complement Ariel. The Prospero 
>>> functionality is included with Ariel 4.1.1 and it is available as 
>>> part of patron delivery.
>>> Prospero converts Ariel files (TIFF images) to PDF files and makes 
>>> them available on a Web server. The user interface allows patrons 
>>> to retrieve their documents using a Web browser. Access by patrons 
>>> requires authentication. Documents may be viewed a configurable 
>>> maximum number of times and and for a configurable maximum number 
>>> of days. Documents are not restricted to print-only but can be 
>>> saved.
>>> The only problem with Prospero and the very similar Web-based 
>>> patron delivery function included in Ariel 4.1.1 is that the lack 
>>> of a security restriction limiting documents to print-only. Relais 
>>> Express, on the other hand, includes a configuration option to 
>>> limit documents to print-only. This is of some significance because 
>>> limiting the end user to printing of a document made available in 
>>> electronic format - i.e., not allowing saving or alteration of the 
>>> document - is really not so different from a library providing the 
>>> end user with a printed copy of a document.
>>> My evaluation of Prospero in the year 2000 showed that there were 
>>> no technical problems and that Ariel-Prospero interoperability 
>>> worked well. It also was apparent that appropriate work procedures 
>>> were quite simple and that integration with existing workflow 
>>> should have been unproblematic. The greatest argument in favor of 
>>> providing this type of service was the 24x7 access and availability 
>>> which would have been a great convenience for end users. The 
>>> functionality provided as part of the latest version of Ariel is 
>>> similarly uncomplicated and likely easy to implement operationally.
>>> It was very disappointing when my evaluation and demonstration 
>>> project came to an abrupt end with my failure to secure cooperation 
>>> from CISTI to test Prospero and Web-based document delivery. The 
>>> following response to my enquiry was received on 13 April 2000 from 
>>> Christine Midwinter, Marketing Officer, CISTI/NRC: "CISTI cannot 
>>> authorize you to forward documents electronically to an end user. 
>>> Unfortunately this would be an infringement of the copyright laws 
>>> as they now exist in Canada. CISTI cannot condone this practice. At 
>>> present the documents must be printed and then sent on to clients 
>>> and no further copies made."
>>> I include this quote from CISTI because it directly addresses your 
>>> question concerning Prospero (or any similar Web-based 
>>> direct-to-end-user delivery of electronic versions of documents) 
>>> and copyright legislation in Canada which has not changed since the 
>>> time of my project.
>>> Ralph Daehn
>>>
>>> At 02:47 PM 6/5/2007, Sue McGillivray wrote:
>>>
>>>> .........  ......
>>>>
>>>> -------- Original Message --------
>>>> Subject:        [ILL-L] Prospero and Copyright question in Canada
>>>> Date:   Tue, 5 Jun 2007 14:41:56 -0400
>>>> From:   Miguel Escobar <miguel.escobar at usherbrooke.ca>
>>>> Reply-To:       Interlibrary Loan Listserv <ill-l at webjunction.org>
>>>> To:     'Interlibrary Loan Listserv' <ill-l at webjunction.org>
>>>> References:      <4665a1f5.2c2.5958.24018 at olemiss.edu> 
>>>> <4665A7D6.7010206 at mail.armstrong.edu>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>  We are looking for the product Prospero and we want to know some legal
>>>> issues about the copyright.  Does Prospero can help librarians meet the
>>>> needs of users for convenient electronic document delivery with 
>>>> control over
>>>> copyright issues?  What is the copyright control that Prospero has?  Also,
>>>> does anyone do CISTI SOURCE with Prospero?
>>>>
>>>> Miguel
>

Document Delivery Department Head
WK Kellogg Health Sciences Library
Dalhousie University
Sir Charles Tupper Building
5850 College St
Halifax NS
Canada
B3H 1X5
jwickens at dal.ca
Phone 902-494-6329
Fax 902-494-3750
Ariel NSHDM.KELLOGG.DAL.CA

Visit our web site at: http://www.library.dal.ca/kellogg/docdel/docdel.htm