Melissa Levine, an adjunct lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Information, is an expert on a thorny subject: copyright.

It’s not that she set out to explore copyright as a singular interest. “But it’s the thing in the middle of everything I care about,” she says. The arts, education and culture are Levine’s professional and personal foundation. Her impressive career spans libraries and museums, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress.

As director of the Copyright Office at the U-M Library, Levine provides guidance on all aspects of copyright, publishing, scholarly communication and open access. She leads a team of copyright specialists who work closely with the U-M community to support transformative learning experiences.

Levine also keeps up with the impact of technology on her field, as advancements like streaming and generative artificial intelligence raise new issues related to ownership and fair use. She is a founding board member of the Open Copyright Education Advisory Network, which provides free copyright education to the cultural heritage community. 

OCEAN emerged from the recognition that copyright and related concerns play a crucial role in the digital world we live in, and in the work done across museums, libraries and archives. Offerings include live, virtual events with experts about topics like AI, video game preservation and music copyright, which anyone can register to attend. 

In the decade she has lectured at UMSI, Levine has developed a reputation for adapting the curriculum to speak to students’ interests and offering mentorship that extends beyond the classroom. She meets UMSI students in the moment — where the best questions are found — and encourages them to take an active role in creating the future. In this Q&A, she shares the surprising topic she could talk about for hours and the reason her course is relevant for any UMSI student. 

UMSI: What sparked your passion for copyright and intellectual property law?

Melissa Levine: I was interested in museums from an early age. In college, I worked at my campus museum at Emory and at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta — the first times I used computers. I saw how copyright and rights issues affected museum work even in that predigital time. I got involved in copyright as a side issue for supporting curatorial and collection work. Copyright came up every day working on contracts at the Smithsonian in partnerships with publishers, licensing music, handling commissions and more. It was central in the work I had the opportunity to do at the Library of Congress on its first significant digital library effort. 

Copyright is fascinating. But for me it is a means to an end, something that can help or hinder us. I’m interested in supporting creators and seeing business flourish, while maximizing the ability for museums, libraries and archives to do their mission-related work.

What do you teach? 

I’ve taught SI 519: Intellectual Property and Information Law at UMSI for over a decade. The course was launched years ago as a cyberlaw survey course. I’ve shifted that over the years. While the core structure remains very similar in surveying intellectual property, privacy, speech and ethics, the course continually evolves in the context of the internet and each year is tailored to issues like artificial intelligence, antitrust and new laws. My own lens is primarily that of cultural heritage, but the course is relevant for anyone at UMSI. 

What do you hope students take away from the course?

I want students to think about law as an expression of social norms, not only as a way to “stay out of trouble.” I want students to be able to confidently read primary and secondary legal materials, have their own opinions, and think about how their choices are shaped by law, policy, coding and professional norms. There's a lot of choice and autonomy in this course — I have students call me Melissa, not professor, because I'm relying on them as colleagues. 

I hope students finish the course with a greater awareness of legal issues, so they recognize and respond to legal and ethical issues proactively in their professional lives. There are so many students interested in UX right now, and UX design choices shape behavior in powerful ways that are distinct from legal frameworks. But they can direct behavior in ways that are more or less aligned with law. The course encourages students to think about how we got to where we are and how they will contribute to where we go. 

How have your experiences working at institutions like the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress influenced your approach to teaching? 

These experiences gave me practical, hands-on, real-world opportunities to solve problems and to understand different perspectives and business interests. My teaching is filled with storytelling that I hope engages students with something that feels real, not just theoretical, so they can see themselves and meaningfully process the ideas and information I’m sharing.

What is your favorite thing about UMSI students? 

They are smart, curious, perceptive and always surprising. They are eager learners and problem solvers. 

What's a topic in your field that you could talk about for hours? 

Well, believe it or not, contracts. I think I did that in class last week. Contracts are amazing tools for human communication and exchange — whether a publishing agreement or an international treaty. How do we both get what we need, and ideally most of what we want? Can we do this cooperatively, thinking about mutual benefit rather than as a zero-sum game? Transactional matters are intriguing and practical. The same dynamics apply to treaties and treaty negotiations.

Something that folks at UMSI might be surprised to learn about you? 

I’m from Miami, Florida, and was certified for open water scuba diving.

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