Cornell University Library, a US-based academic research library, has announced that it will no longer require its users to seek permission to publish public domain items duplicated from its collections. Instead, users may now use reproductions of public domain works made for them by the library or available via web sites, without seeking any further permission.
Cornell, as the producer of digital reproductions made from its collections, has in the past licensed the use of those reproductions. Individuals and corporations that failed to secure permission to repurpose these reproductions violated their agreement with the library.
The immediate impetus for the new policy is Cornell's donation of more than 70,000 digitised public domain books to the Internet Archive (details at www.archive.org/details/cornell).
Institutional restrictions on the use of public domain work, sometimes labelled 'copyfraud', have been the subject of much scholarly criticism. The Cornell initiative goes further than many other recent attempts to open access to public domain material by removing restrictions on both commercial and non-commercial use. Users of the public domain works are still expected to determine on their own that works are in the public domain where they live. They also must respect non-copyright rights, such as the rights of privacy, publicity and trademark.
Cornell will continue to charge service fees associated with the reproduction of analog material or the provision of versions of files different than what is freely available on the web. All library websites will be updated to reflect this new policy during 2009.
