Journal of the Copyright Society, Volume 72(3)

This is a special edition of the Journal of the Copyright Society devoted to legal issues surrounding libraries, archives, and cultural institutions. Part I, Preservation, starts the issue off with the transcripts from a two-hour conversation recorded on June 23, 2025, 'Libraries And Preservation Conversation,' With Rina Pantalony, Brian O’leary, David Sutton Trevor Reed, and Margaret Bodde. This is a conversation about the role of cultural preservation, in light of the recent publication by WIPO in September 2024, the 'The Toolkit on Preservation.' Then, we thought we might revisit the United States 1988 legislation on preservation, the National Film Preservation Act by reprinting Eric J. Schwartz’s article about the legislative process that was published in the Journal in 1989. Part II then moves to Articles. We start with Brandon Butler’s 'Will Google v. Oracle Save the World’s Cultural Heritage,' looking at how the U.S. Supreme Court opinion might find a path helpful for digital works that are software dependent, and their longe term preservation. We then have three articles that are addressing contracts. This seems to be the key issue libraries are concerned with at the moment. The second article, 'No One ’Owns’ That: Metadata, Copyright, and the Problems with [Library Vendor Agreements,' by Kyle K. Courtney, Kathleen DeLaurenti, Matthew Kopel, and Katie Zimmerman is a study of five institutions peer institutional metadata policies, vendor agreements, and the U.S. law to better understand the legal status of bibliographic metadata. The third article, 'Protecting Library Exceptions Against Copyright Override,' by Jonathan Band. The fourth article continues with this theme with 'Contract Override: How Private Contracts Undermine the Goals of the Copyright Act for Libraries and Researchers, and What We Can Do About It,' authored by Dave Hansen, Yuanxiao Xu, and Rachel G. Samberg. We then turn to the fourth article, 'Protecting Progress: Copyright’s Common Law and Libraries,' by Margaret Chon.  Sara Benson graciously wrote a short piece on 'Understanding the Internet Archive Litigation Cases.' And Kyle Courtney rounds out our articles with '’Beam Me a Book, Scotty:’ Virtual Access Rooms under Section 108 of the Copyright Act.'Part III is a lecture by Kenneth Crews, a foremost scholar on libraries and archives. He sat down with Elizabeth to recreate his lecture from the Kraemer Copyright Institute, on 'Libraries, Education, and Fair Use.' Part IV ends the issue with the very much loved annual summaries of cases by Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, with Thomas Kjellberg heading the endeavor with a full team. These summaries cover June 2024 to May 2025, and the highlights were presented at the 2025 annual meeting in June 2025.