Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist; Guardian, 8/29/11

George Monbiot, Guardian; Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist:

"You might resent Murdoch's paywall policy, in which he charges £1 for 24 hours of access to the Times and Sunday Times. But at least in that period you can read and download as many articles as you like. Reading a single article published by one of Elsevier's journals will cost you $31.50. Springer charges €34.95, Wiley-Blackwell, $42. Read 10 and you pay 10 times. And the journals retain perpetual copyright. You want to read a letter printed in 1981? That'll be $31.50.

Of course, you could go into the library (if it still exists). But they too have been hit by cosmic fees. The average cost of an annual subscription to a chemistry journal is $3,792."

UK Copyright Modernisation Effort Picks Up Steam; Intellectual Property Watch, 8/31/11

Dugie Standeford, Intellectual Property Watch; UK Copyright Modernisation Effort Picks Up Steam:

"Efforts to modernise Britain’s creaking copyright regime sped up over the summer as the government accepted recommendations for major changes to the system, Parliament opened an inquiry into the matter, and the Intellectual Property Office said updating the rules could significantly boost the UK economy."

The Copyright Nightmare of "I Have a Dream"; Mother Board, 8/29/11

Alex Pasternack, Mother Board; The Copyright Nightmare of "I Have a Dream" :

"At the family’s Web site, videotapes and audiotapes of the speech can be purchased for $10 a piece. The family controls the copyright of the speech for 70 years after King’s death, in 2038.

Until then, you’ll most likely have an easier finding ABBA’s version of “I Have a Dream” than King’s."

[Press Release] Universities Band Together To Join Orphan Works Project; Cornell University Library, 8/24/11

[Press Release] Cornell University Library; Universities Band Together To Join Orphan Works Project:

"Leaders at Cornell, Duke, Emory and Johns Hopkins universities jointly announced today that they would begin making the full text of thousands of “orphan works” in their library collections digitally accessible to students, faculty and researchers at their own institutions."

Monday, August 29, 2011

Legislator Calls for Clarifying Copyright Law; New York Times, 8/28/11

Larry Rohter, New York Times; Legislator Calls for Clarifying Copyright Law:

"Arguing that Congress has an obligation “to preserve fairness and justice for artists,” the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has called for a revision of United States copyright law to remove ambiguities in the current statute about who is eligible to reclaim ownership rights to songs and sound recordings.

“For too long the work of musicians has been used to create enormous profits for record labels, radio stations and others, without fairly distributing these profits to the artists,” said Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, who was chairman of the committee until January."

Friday, August 26, 2011

In France, Publisher and Google Reach Deal; New York Times, 8/25/11

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; In France, Publisher and Google Reach Deal:

"A second French publisher has reached a deal on digital books with Google to settle a copyright lawsuit in exchange for control over how its out-of-print, copyright-protected works are scanned and sold."

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

$600K Grant to Fund Indiana University-Led HathiTrust Text-Mining Project; Library Journal, 8/12/11

David Rapp, Library Journal; $600K Grant to Fund Indiana University-Led HathiTrust Text-Mining Project:

"The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded a $600,000 grant to a project to be led by the Data to Insight Center (D2I) at Indiana University (IU), exploring ways of conducting secure "non-consumptive" research using copyrighted digital works in the HathiTrust repository."

A Village Person Tests the Copyright Law; New York Times, 8/16/11

Larry Rohter, New York Times; A Village Person Tests the Copyright Law:

"“This is totally different, and outside the scope of these termination rights issues,” said Stewart L. Levy, of the New York firm Eisenberg Tanchum & Levy, who is representing the publishing companies. “The Village People were a concept group, created by my clients, who picked the people and the costumes. It was probably no different than the Monkees when they started. We hired this guy. He was an employee, we gave them the material and a studio to record in and controlled what was recorded, where, what hours and what they did.”"

Jack Kirby Estate Files Appeal in Marvel Superhero Lawsuit (Exclusive); Hollywood Reporter, 8/15/11

Matthew Belloni, Hollywood Reporter; Jack Kirby Estate Files Appeal in Marvel Superhero Lawsuit (Exclusive) :

"The estate of comic book legend Jack Kirby has appealed a U.S. District Court ruling tossing several key copyright claims against Marvel over such iconic characters as Thor, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk and others."

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Gunning for the copyright reformers; Guardian, 8/15/11

Frederic Filloux, Guardian; Gunning for the copyright reformers:

"The book's most spectacular deconstruction involves Lawrence Lessig. The Harvard law professor is one of the most outspoken opponents of tough copyright. For years, he's been criss-crossing the world delivering well-crafted, compelling presentations about the need to overhaul copyright. When, in 2007, Viacom sued YouTube for copyright infringement, seeking more than $1bn in damages, Lessig accused Viacom of trying to overturn the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was a de facto defense of Google by Lessig who at the time was head of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. What Lessig failed to disclose is that two weeks after closing the deal to acquire YouTube, Google made a $2m donation to the Stanford Center, and a year later gave another $1.5m to Creative Commons, Lessig's most famous intellectual baby. To be fair, Levine told me he didn't believe Lessig's positions on copyright were influenced by the grants from Google."

How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers; Observer via Guardian, 8/14/11

Robert Levine, Observer via Guardian; How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers:

"As pressure builds to enforce copyright law online, technology companies and the activists they support have started to argue that any attempt to block pirate sites will "break the internet", as though it were an iPhone teetering on the edge of a table. The truth is that the internet is broken already: it's simply too chaotic to provide the infrastructure for a 21st-century economy. This has to change, before newspapers and film suffer declines like that of the music industry. Technology companies have long lectured creators on the need to adapt to a changing changing digital world. It would be a shame if they couldn't heed their own advice.

Robert Levine is the author of Free Ride: How the Internet is Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business can Fight Back"

Don Henley Urges Artists to Know Their Rights; New York Times, 8/16/11

Larry Rohter, New York Times; Don Henley Urges Artists to Know Their Rights:

"Q.[Larry Rohter] You and Sheryl Crow went to Washington back in 1999 and 2000 and convinced Congress to undo language classifying sound recordings as “works for hire,” which had just been inserted stealthily into another, unrelated bill. Back then, were you already looking ahead to today, when artists would have the right to reclaim ownership of their recordings, at the expense of record labels?

A. [Don Henley] The termination issue was certainly part of it. We were concerned with a lot of issues in recording contracts that we considered to be unfair, and this was one of the most glaring. We knew that 2013 was going to be a deadline, and that recordings from 1978 would be the first battle. But let’s go back and talk about the history of work for hire for a minute. “Work for hire” was never intended to apply to sound recordings. That came about because of movies and books. Sound recordings somehow got added to the list, then taken off again."

Record Industry Braces for Artists’ Battles Over Song Rights; New York Times, 8/15/11

Larry Rohter, New York Times; Record Industry Braces for Artists’ Battles Over Song Rights:

"Congress passed the copyright law in 1976, specifying that it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 1978, meaning that the earliest any recording can be reclaimed is Jan. 1, 2013. But artists must file termination notices at least two years before the date they want to recoup their work, and once a song or recording qualifies for termination, its authors have five years in which to file a claim; if they fail to act in that time, their right to reclaim the work lapses."

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Universities Join Together to Support Open-Access Policies; Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus, 8/2/11

Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus; Universities Join Together to Support Open-Access Policies:

"Today Kansas and 21 other universities and colleges announced that they’re joining forces to form the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions, or Coapi. The new group will “collaborate and share implementation strategies, and advocate on a national level,” it said in a statement. The group’s members so far include Arizona State, Columbia, Duke, Emory, Harvard, Oregon State, Stanford, and Trinity universities as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oberlin College."