The British Academy  has just issued a report discussing problems that copyright is raising in humanities and social science research. There's a press release here

http://www.britac.ac.uk/news/release.asp?NewsID=219

and the full report can be downloaded from this page

http://www.britac.ac.uk/reports/copyright/index.html

While the details of copyright vary between the United States and the United Kingdom in important particulars (notably the US fair use provisions, which I believe are comparatively stronger and more wide reaching than UK fair dealing), this report will be of interest to some CNI-announce readers, particularly in conjunction with the recent ACLS Commission report on Cyberinfrastructure and the Humanities.

(Thanks to Peter Suber's always-invaluable Open Access News Blog

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

for the initial pointer on this.)

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI