EDITOR'S NOTE
The Rights Stuff
by Brandi Scardilli
Have you seen the parody of A Quiet Place, Part II that Brigham Young University Library posted in May? If you haven’t, search for “Quiet Place to Study BYU Library” on YouTube. And then there’s Saturday Night Live’s skit “Murder Durder,” spoofing HBO’s Mare of Easttown. (Information Today’s office isn’t too far from the region portrayed on the show, so I got a real kick out of Kate Winslet saying “wooder” for water and Evan Peters talking about picking up Wawa coffees.) We can laugh at these remixes of pop culture because of the Fair Use doctrine. Amber Boedigheimer digs into copyright law, copyright infringement, and fair use by sharing case studies that illustrate the nuances of the concepts (page 16).
This issue has even more information about who may use what and when. Lois Wasoff continues her series on rights licensing in Insider’s Perspective (page 14). In Legal Issues, George Pike shares the current state of intellectual property law regarding the COVID-19 vaccine (page 24). And the Insights on Content feature is a discussion of Maryland’s new law stating that publishers must license ebooks to libraries under reasonable terms, which has important implications for the future of access to digital materials (page 31).
Happy reading,  |
