Works and Fair Use: Can Bridges Be Built Between Educational Users and Copyright Owners? - Jule Sigall, Associate General Counsel, Microsoft
Organizers: Gretchen Wagner, ARTstor and the VRA Intellectual Property Rights Committee
Moderators: Elisa Lanzi, Imaging Center, Smith College; President, VRAF and Cara Hirsch, Assistant General Counsel, ARTstor
Copyright remains one of the most divisive and challenging topics facing both copyright owners and users. Despite the views of many (both among copyright owners and users) that there should be a distinction between the use of images and other materials in the classroom and for research, and the use of those materials for commercial purposes, finding a consensus on how to draw such distinctions remains elusive. Similarly, though many content providers and users see the value of making orphan works more broadly accessible and usable - and though legislation was supported by the Copyright Office - such legislation (which was particularly opposed by photographers) seems to have died on the vine.
Jule Sigall, who has served as the Associate Register for Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Copyright Office, which assists the Register of Copyrights in advising Congress and executive branch agencies on domestic and international copyright policy matters, has agreed to speak on his experiences with the orphan works legislation, lessons learned, and the likelihood that similar legislation will be passed in the future.
In his position at the Copyright Office, Jule Sigall (who currently serves as Associate General Counsel to Microsoft), regularly represented the Copyright Office in U.S. government delegations to meetings at the World Intellectual Property Organization, including its Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. He has published several articles on copyright law and is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences on copyright and intellectual property and lectures at Duke University School of Law and The George Washington University Law School, where he is currently an adjunct professor.
