Copyright audit and the CCC.Of concern to many librarians is the theoretical concept of a "copyright audit." Such an audit would conceivably entail a visit from an external agency to determine if company's copyright policy and practices are following copyright law. Pursuing this idea, I contacted Dave Davis, program developer at Copyright Clearance Center Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) is a not-for-profit U.S. company based in Danvers, Massachusetts, that provides collective copyright licensing services for corporate and academic users of copyrighted materials. , Inc. (CCC CCC A very speculative grade assigned to a debt obligation by a rating agency. Such a rating indicates default or considerable doubt that interest will be paid or principal repaid. Also called Caa. ). Mr. Davis courteously cour·te·ous adj. Characterized by gracious consideration toward others. See Synonyms at polite. [Middle English corteis, courtly, from Old French, from cort, court; see responded to my e-mail and followed up with a phone call. When asked, he said, "I am not familiar with the concept of 'copyright audit.' ... To my knowledge CCC has not done anything like that." He went on to describe a somewhat distant concept which is part of a copyright compliance program. He said that what the CCC does do for licensees (corporations that already have a license from CCC) is an Annual Authorization Service (AAS), in which the CCC asks the corporation to conduct their own survey of photocopy activity (of copyrighted material) for a period of time and report it to CCC. CCC takes this data and statistically determines AAS royalties. This is the mechanism of compliance for larger corporations with high photocopying photocopying, process whereby written or printed matter is directly copied by photographic techniques. Generally, photocopying is practical when just a few copies of an original are needed. When many copies are required, printing processes are more economical. . Beyond the survey, there is no more counting - ie. it is not pay-as-you-go. An estimate of usage is made based upon the number of employees copying and the industry which the corporation is in. Another compliance mechanism at CCC is the Transaction Reporting Service (TRS See traffic engineering methods. TRS - term rewriting system ) which is a pay-as-you-go approach of reporting each instance of photocopying of copyrighted materials. CCC respects the confidentiality of records, but if the court requests them, CCC will comply. Although Mr. Davis said CCC does not do copyright audits, he mentioned that he thought the Software Publishers Association (SPA) conducts "'software audits' where a corporation is visited and their computers checked for registered (and non-registered) software." I attempted to contact the SPA, but at the time of writing, had not heard back from them. Overall, I appreciated Mr. Davis' promptness and courtesy in responding and he seemed to emphasize that CCC is attempting to help companies comply with the copyright law, not to police it. Lawrence Guthrie, II is interlibrary in·ter·li·brar·y adj. Existing or occurring between or involving two or more libraries: an interlibrary loan; an interlibrary network. loan librarian, Covington & Burling Burling may refer to:
This page or section lists people with the surname Burling. If an internal link for a specific person referred you to this page, you may wish to add the given name(s) to that , Washington, DC. For more information on "Copyright Corner," or to contribute to the column, please contact Guthrie at: 1-202-662-6158; fax: 1-202-778-8658; e-mail: lguthrie@cov.com. |
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