Copyrights

After reading Cohen and Rosenzweig (Digital History, 2005, Chapter 7: Owning the Past?), I came to conclude that the this copyright concern among historians and other scholars is not different than the issue of “what is pornography?”.After being unable to describe what is pornography, the United States supreme court judge Potter Stewart said: “I had been a Marines officer; he a Navy officer. We discussed our experiences with material we had seen during our military careers, and discovered we had both seen materials we considered at the time to be pornographic, but this conclusion was arrived at somewhat intuitively. We agreed that “we know it when we see it,” but that further analysis was difficult.”(The Wall Street Journal, 2010). I think that 10 judges will come up with 10 different judgements on this issue of just "what is a copyright for the new media". The copyright is very complex and subjective matter which will remain constantly changing and very partial (either provide more favors to authors and minimize distribution of intellectual materials or provide more to much access to users and de-favorise the rights of authors to be recognized).
With Digital media, historians should be concerned:

First, the nature of copy right laws which is constantly changing. The copyright laws vary not just from one country to another but also a user can be held liable for violating the right of an author while being in another country. With the New Media (Digital Media), there seem to be no jurisdiction based land borders. Historians or scholars in could be using intellectual materials without knowing that those material are copyrighted in a different country.
In the case of GNU General Public License (2007), the Free Software Foundation grants a copyleft license which guarantees the recipient's freedom to share and change all versions of a program, to make sure it remains free software for all its users. Here, the biggest issue historians should worry about is originality. If I create a digital material and pass it on to someone else, does whatever the next person creates is original? http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html Moreover, institutions such as Museums should start worrying about pirate materials (Free Culture, 2004).

Second, the notion of creativity can be fuzzy and blurry to determine. Cohen and Rosenzweig (2005) state that copyrightable works must reflect a minimal degree of creativity and originality.,http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/copyright/3.php Now the question is: Who determines that is a minimal degree of creativity? When DJ's mixes songs is it creative? Is it enough for DJ's to comodify those products?
In The MIT Press article: The case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship (2006), John Willinsky argues about the place of scholarly work in a world dominated by the new media and about he future of knowledge. He thinks that open access is a public good. He claims that the scholarly work carries with it the responsibility to be widely accessed and circulated. For John Willinsky, the right to know and the right to be known are inextricably mixed. However, I think that John Willinsky is missing the fact not all scholar work is done for the sake of knowledge. There is a lucrative aspect as well. Although Scholars (historians) are less likely to be concerned by the lucrative aspect of their work rather than to their reputation, still the money is a great motivator for scholars to copyright their creations. http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10611

Third and finally, the notion of “fair use” is very open ended. What is fair use? Who should draw the line between fair use and a violation?
In the book Free Culture (2004), when it comes to the issue of Free Use versus Fair Use Lawrence Lessig states that an author can deny the release of a movie to a movie maker even though that is not his/her writing. These “Exclusive Right” given to authors by the congress for “their writings” is just absurd. It gives too much power to authors. http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf