Internet Archive Court Loss Leaves Higher Ed in Gray Area; Inside Higher Ed, September 9, 2024

 Lauren Coffey, Inside Higher Ed; Internet Archive Court Loss Leaves Higher Ed in Gray Area

"Pandemic-era library programs that helped students access books online could be potentially threatened by an appeals court ruling last week. 

Libraries across the country, from Carnegie Mellon University to the University of California system, turned to what’s known as a digital or controlled lending program in 2020, which gave students a way to borrow books that weren’t otherwise available. Those programs are small in scale and largely experimental but part of a broader shift in modernizing the university library.

But the appeals court ruling could upend those programs...

Still, librarians at colleges and elsewhere, along with other experts, feared that the long-running legal fight between the Internet Archive and leading publishers could imperil the ability of libraries to own and preserve books, among other ramifications."

The future of open educational resources; Community College Daily, April 27, 2023

James Glapa-Grossklag is dean of educational technology, learning resources and online education at College of the Canyons (California).

Una Daly is director of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) at Open Education Global, Community College Daily; The future of open educational resources

"The future of OER is that it will not be the next big thing, but rather that OER will be a common way for students to freely access information, a tool in the enrollment management toolkit, and a commitment to equitable outcomes and collaborative teaching."

David Boggs, Co-Inventor of Ethernet, Dies at 71; The New York Times, February 28, 2022

 Cade Metz, The New York Times; David Boggs, Co-Inventor of Ethernet, Dies at 71

Thanks to the invention he helped create in the 1970s, people can send email over an office network or visit a website through a coffee shop hot spot.

"David Boggs, an electrical engineer and computer scientist who helped create Ethernet, the computer networking technology that connects PCs to printers, other devices and the internet in offices and homes, died on Feb. 19 in Palo Alto, Calif...

Before becoming the dominant networking protocol, Ethernet was challenged by several other technologies. In the early 1980s, Mr. Metcalfe said, when Mr. Boggs took the stage at a California computing conference, at the San Jose Convention Center, to discuss the future of networking, a rival technologist questioned the mathematical theory behind Ethernet, telling Mr. Boggs that it would never work with large numbers of machines.

His response was unequivocal. “Seems Ethernet does not work in theory,” he said, “only in practice.”"

This Music Theory Professor Just Showed How Stupid and Broken Copyright Filters Are; Motherboard, August 30, 2018

Karl Bode, Motherboard; This Music Theory Professor Just Showed How Stupid and Broken Copyright Filters Are

"German music professor Ulrich Kaiser this week wrote about a troubling experiment he ran on YouTube. As a music theory teacher, Kaiser routinely works to catalog a collection of public domain recordings he maintains online in order to teach his students about Beethoven and other classical music composers."

To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software; New York Times, August 3, 2017

R. James Woolsey and Brian J. Fox, New York Times; To Protect Voting,Use Open-Source Software

"If the community of proprietary vendors, including Microsoft, would support the use of open-source model for elections, we could expedite progress toward secure voting systems.

With an election on the horizon, it’s urgent that we ensure that those who seek to make our voting systems more secure have easy access to them, and that Mr. Putin does not."

Louisiana considers radical step to counter high drug prices: Federal intervention; Washington Post, July 3, 2017

Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post; Louisiana considers radical step to counter high drug prices: Federal intervention

"At [Louisiana’s health secretary Rebekah] Gee’s urging, Joshua Sharfstein, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University and a former Food and Drug Administration deputy commissioner, convened a meeting of health-policy specialists and economists. They advised that the state ask the federal government to intervene in a two-pronged approach: Gee should first ask the government to negotiate with a drug company and license a medication, in line with a recent recommendation by a committee from the National Academies.

At the same time, they advised Gee to pursue a harder-edged tactic, in case the voluntary approach did not work: Gee should ask the secretary of health and human services to invoke a century-old law that allows the government to use patents at a reasonable cost. The panel recommended a price as low as $1,000 per patient.

The law was used routinely in the 1950s and 1960s to make medicines available at lower prices. It was considered but not used during the anthrax attacks in 2001. It has been used by more than 10 government agencies or departments to lower the prices for patented inventions, including night-vision goggles for the Defense Department.

“The drug has been out for years, and we’re failing to provide it to the majority of people who have this infection,” Gee said. “We’re failing at our mission to improve the public health, and so just doing what we’re doing is not an option and we have to do better.”"

Lou Reed Archives Head to New York Public Library; New York Times, March 2, 2017

Ben Sisario, New York Times; 

Lou Reed Archives Head to New York Public Library

"Ms. Anderson said that the library’s mandate of making its collections available to the public was central to her decision to place the archive there. But she also felt that it all simply belonged in New York.

“Lou is kind of Mr. New York,” Ms. Anderson said. “This is the city he loved the most. It doesn’t make any sense for him to be anywhere else. Then, what’s the best place in New York? This is the best place in New York.”

She also giggled a little, and made a mock librarian’s shush, as she added: “I just love that somebody who is so loud is in the New York Public Library.”"

Turning Promises Of Marrakesh Treaty For Visually Impaired Into Reality; Intellectual Property Watch, 11/21/16

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch; Turning Promises Of Marrakesh Treaty For Visually Impaired Into Reality:

"With the recent entry into force of the Marrakesh Treaty providing copyright exceptions for persons with visual impairments, a panel convened alongside last week’s World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee meeting explored ways to transform the treaty’s promises into reality.

The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) met from 14-18 November. The 15 November side event was organised by the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC), which is hosted by WIPO.

Recently appointed WIPO Deputy Director General for the Copyright and Creative Industries Sector Sylvie Forbin said at the event that 25 countries have now ratified the 2013 Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, which entered into force on 30 September..."

Chris Friend, representing the World Blind Union, in the audience, presented the World Blind Union Guide to the Marrakesh Treaty: Facilitating Access to Books for Print Disabled Individuals, to be published by Oxford University Press in February.

The guide is intended to provide an analysis of the treaty to multiple audiences including parliamentarians and policymakers who adopt domestic legislation and regulations to give effect to the treaty, judges and administrators who interpret and apply those laws, and to disability rights organisations and other civil society groups who advocate for the treaty’s implementation and effective enforcement, according to the guide executive summary."

Ray Kurzweil: Accelerating Tech Is Making Old Intellectual Property Laws Obsolete; Singularity Hub, 9/8/16

[Video] Singularity Hub; Ray Kurzweil: Accelerating Tech Is Making Old Intellectual Property Laws Obsolete:

"As technology and innovation move faster and faster, concerns over ownership and access continue to increase. In answer to a question at a Singularity University event, Ray Kurzweil suggested we need to rethink intellectual property laws to more realistically match today’s pace.

Intellectual property laws from the 19th century were envisioned with roughly 20-year cycles, he said, which was enough to give you a head-start on a new idea or invention and attract funding to see it through. But how relevant is a 20-year cycle today when a generation of technology can come and go in a year—and even that is set to speed up?

Attracting investment and capital is a critical function of intellectual property law. But the way things are currently structured, intellectual property laws are falling behind the pace of invention."

The Future Of Open Access: Why Has Academia Not Embraced The Internet Revolution?; Forbes, 4/29/16

Kalev Leetaru, Forbes; The Future Of Open Access: Why Has Academia Not Embraced The Internet Revolution? :

"One of the most remarkable aspects of the story of the web’s evolution is that the collective output of the world’s universities has remained largely absent from the open online world, even as most other forms of information have shifted to some form of open online access. In the case of encyclopedias, entirely new forms of collaborative knowledge documentation like Wikipedia have emerged, while journalism has shifted to free advertising-supported distribution and even music and videos are increasingly legally available through ad-supported streaming services or affordable licensed download services.

Academic papers, the lifeblood of the scholarly world of academia, have resisted this transition. To those outside academia it might be surprising that most universities don’t publish all of their books, papers, presentations and course materials on their websites for the world to access...

Yesterday Science published a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at Sci-Hub, one of the most infamous academic pirating sites, which provides free access to more than 50 million illegally acquired papers. One of the most fascinating findings is that its download traffic comes not exclusively from the developing world for which journal subscriptions are often claimed to be inaccessible, but also extensively from major Western universities which likely have legal subscriptions to the journals already. One of the reasons for this, the article claims, is the cumbersome and difficult-to-use web portals that university libraries provide to their holdings, making it incredibly difficult to locate a paper even if the university has a legal subscription to the journal. Having spent more than a decade and a half in academia at multiple institutions from public to private, I can personally attest to just how difficult it can be to navigate library portal systems to locate a particular paper...

As the drumbeat of open access continues to grow, the fierce debate over the future of how academic research is published and distributed will only rage louder. In parallel, as the trend towards open access expands to data sharing and replication, the pressure to change how academia does business will reach a breaking point where change will become inevitable. In the end, it is a fascinating commentary that the world of academia, from which the modern web sprung, has been among the most resistant to change and one of the last to embrace the internet revolution."

As Artworks Enter Public Domain, Rules Remain Confusing; New York Times, 3/13/15

Nina Siegal, New York Times; As Artworks Enter Public Domain, Rules Remain Confusing:

"Piet Mondrian, the Dutch modern master, died 71 years ago. Are his works now copyright-free?

The answer — a highly qualified “yes, but” — has ramifications for scholars, publishers, museums, heirs and anyone else who has an interest in seeing and studying works of art in a global context.

The issue turns on a discrepancy between European and American copyright law that is coming to light this year because, as of Jan. 1, 2015, Mondrian’s works enter the public domain in Europe. Under European Union law, the term of copyright for works of art expires on the 1st of January following 70 years after the author or artist’s death.

But the case is particularly complex with Mondrian because he produced part of his work while living in Europe and part of it in the United States, where copyright laws are different.

Although the lack of uniformity in national copyright laws affects reproduction rights for works by any artist, it is becoming a more complicated issue with the growth of online sharing, especially as museums are increasingly interested in offering the public access to their collections on the web."

Librarians Protest Canada Cutbacks; Chronicle of Higher Education via New York Times, 1/26/14

Karen Birchard and Jennifer Lewington, Chronicle of Higher Education via New York Times; Librarians Protest Canada Cutbacks:

"A move by the Canadian government to shrink the number of its departmental research libraries is drawing fire from some academics, who fear a loss of data and trained personnel and damage to the country’s ability to carry out research.

The closing of seven regional libraries in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the quiet elimination of more than two dozen libraries in other departments, might otherwise have passed largely unnoticed, given the modest cost savings...

Gail Shea, head of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or D.F.O., adamantly denied any book burning. “Our government values these collections and will continue to strongly support it by continuing to add new material on an ongoing basis,” she said in a statement. “All materials for which D.F.O. has copyright will be preserved by the department.”

Despite such assurances, some academic researchers and librarians remain skeptical.

“My overwhelming feeling is that we don’t know exactly what some of the ramifications are for my future research or other people’s research because of the nonsystematic way it has been done,” said John Reynolds, a professor of aquatic ecology at Simon Fraser University who uses federal government fisheries data on British Columbia streams for his study of salmon sustainability.

He questioned why the government had failed to publish an inventory of library materials before and after the downsizing, including documents not covered by copyright."

Libraries in the Time of MOOCs; Educause Review, 11/4/13

Curtis Kendrick and Irene Gashurov, Educause Review; Libraries in the Time of MOOCs: "MOOCs give librarians new opportunities to help shape the conversation about changes in higher education and to guide administrators, faculty, and students through these changes. To assume this role, librarians must understand the MOOCs landscape. Numerous stakeholders will have an interest in the massive intellectual property that ultimately resides in libraries' owned and licensed digital repositories. Studying and adopting technologies to manage and monitor MOOC usage of library resources will be essential to controlling access and tightening Internet safeguards."

Tug of War Stretches Architect’s Legacy; New York Times, 11/3/13

Randy Kennedy, New York Times; Tug of War Stretches Architect’s Legacy: "Ms. Magid, who has delved deeply into many of Barragán’s personal papers, letters and books that remain in a smaller archive in Mexico City, has made intellectual property rights a front-and-center subject of her show at Art in General mainly by going to gymnastic lengths to stay just outside the bounds of copyright infringement. Images of Barragán works are not reproduced. Instead she bought several copies of a 2001 Barragán book by Ms. Zanco and hung them on the wall like ready-mades, with frames around images so they resemble photographic prints. Unable to get the Swiss foundation to loan a Butaca chair, one of Barragán rare furniture creations, Ms. Magid photographed a miniature of the chair once produced by Vitra and enlarged it to actual size. Ms. Zanco has warned Ms. Magid in writing to be wary of “copyright implications” in the way she pursues her own Barragán fascinations. But in the interview, Ms. Zanco insisted that she bears no animus toward the artist: “The questions she poses are compelling,” she said. “I love that.” She added that she hoped the two could collaborate in the future."

The Wrong War Over eBooks: Publishers Vs. Libraries; Forbes.com, 12/11/12

David Vinjamuri, Forbes.com; The Wrong War Over eBooks: Publishers Vs. Libraries: "In a society where bookstores disappear every day while the number of books available to read has swelled exponentially, libraries will play an ever more crucial role. Even more than in the past, we will depend on libraries of the future to help discover and curate great books...For publishers, the library will be the showroom of the future. Ensuring that libraries have continuing access to published titles gives them a chance to meet this role, but an important obstacle remains: how eBooks are obtained by libraries. This column is the first in a two-part series about libraries and their role in the marketing and readership of books...The solution to the current pricing problem lies in understanding that the argument publishers and libraries are having is the wrong argument."

Reshaping The International Copyright System To Facilitate Education In Developing Countries; Intellectual Property Watch, 11/28/12

Tiphaine Nunzia Caulier, Intellectual Property Watch; Reshaping The International Copyright System To Facilitate Education In Developing Countries: "International copyright flexibilities are ill-suited to the need of developing countries to create effective access to printed materials in schools, a new book argues. The author, whose work was presented last week at the World Intellectual Property Organization, urges a normative and institutional rethinking of the current system. The book, “International Copyright Law and Access to Education in Developing Countries: Exploring Multilateral Legal and Quasi Legal Solutions,” was authored by Susan Isiko Štrba, senior IP and development research affiliate at the University of Minnesota. It was presented alongside a meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee last week. The event was sponsored by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), and the book is available here. The author demonstrates the difficulties in applying the so-called three-step test in copyright, which allows for specific uses of the protected works without the permission of the right holder."

Google's e-book plan slammed as 'hysterical garbage'; Sydney Morning Herald, 10/19/09

Sydney Morning Herald; Google's e-book plan slammed as 'hysterical garbage':

""Garbage" and "hysterical propaganda" was one angry reaction at the world's biggest book fair this year when Google, the world's biggest internet search service, defended plans to turn millions of books into electronic literature available online.

The row erupted at the 61st international Frankfurt Book Fair, a major annual literary event.

A literature professor from Germany's Heidelberg University responded sharply to Google Books, a massive project to give the world access to books otherwise hard or impossible to obtain.

Describing Google's claims as "just a whole garbage of hysterical propaganda," Professor Roland Reuss warned of a threat to traditional publishing, saying at a forum on the issue: "You revolutionize the market but the cost is that the producers of goods in this market will be demolished."

Google's head of Print Content Partnerships in Britain, Santiago de la Mora, responded: "We're solving one of the big problems in the world, that is books are pretty much dead in the sense that they are not being found."

"We're bringing these books back to life, making them more visible to 1.8 billion internet users in a very controlled way," de la Mora said.

Google Books is facing big legal problems in the United States, Europe and elsewhere around the globe over the key issue of copyright laws."

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/googles-ebook-plan-slammed-as-hysterical-garbage-20091019-h3ha.html

Google tries to sidestep criticism of $125m book project; Guardian, 9/3/09

Bobbie Johnson via Guardian; Google tries to sidestep criticism of $125m book project:

Internet giant works to gather support from proponents of digitisation scheme

"Google today attempted to rally supporters of its deal with the US publishing industry, in an effort to combat growing criticism of the $125m (£76m) agreement.

In a press conference today, Google said its settlement with the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild - which was first agreed to last year - would allow millions of books to be digitised, proving many people with the chance to access information that was otherwise unavailable to them.

"The obvious social justice and social utility impact that the book project is going to have ... are getting lost in the discussion," said Professor Lateef Mtima, director of the Institute of Intellectual Property & Social Justice at Howard University, a pioneering black college in Washington.

He suggested it would help "so many segments of our society today who for decades have been left out of the communication exchange, who have been on the wrong side of the digital divide"."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/03/google-books-project-digital

Will Google Book Search Settlement Increase Access for Underserved Communities?; Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 7/31/09

Lois Elfman via Diverse Issues in Higher Education; Will Google Book Search Settlement Increase Access for Underserved Communities?:

"“Access is the big concern,” said Steven D. Jamar, professor of law at Howard University School of Law and associate director of Howard’s Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice, which on Wednesday held a panel discussion on the settlement. “Just because you’ve digitized doesn’t make it available.

Lateef Mtima, professor of law at Howard University School of Law and director of IIPSJ, has long noted that copyright protections have repeatedly been used to keep underserved members of the population from having access to a great deal of material.

“For us, the digital divide has always been a constitutional copyright issue,” Mtima said. “We are at a point that it is possible for many of those underserved and marginalized people in society to finally have the kind of access to all the creative expression and literary works - that was just not possible before.”

Among the panelists at Howard was Charlie Brown, adviser to the president of the National Federation for the Blind. The settlement agreement provides access for the visually impaired.

Mtima is concerned that some copyright constituents will take advantage of the opportunities that the settlement agreement presents and try to shape it in a way that will continue to deny access to the underserved. Authors and publishers do have a right to opt their books out and not allow them to be digitized. There are also issues about copyright holders such as photographers or illustrators trying to prevent their work from being digitized with a book’s text, potentially leaving a book incomplete.

“It’s perfectly fine for people to raise a variety of questions and points that indicate that this project is not perfect,” Mtima said. “Those of us who are genuinely interested in the intellectual property law and copyright protection as an engine for social justice and social advancement in society it’s our job to keep the conversation in the right context and keep our thumbs on the right priorities.”

He added that he’s very pleased to see that there will be copyright protections for Black authors whose works have often been celebrated but often uncompensated. But tangential issues cannot override the incredible benefit of having vast amounts of knowledge accessible at virtually everyone’s fingertips. It is also important that there be sufficient numbers of terminals in urban libraries and affordable prices for smaller institutions."

http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_12796.shtml

How Good (or Not Evil) Is Google?; New York Times, 6/22/09

David Carr via New York Times; How Good (or Not Evil) Is Google?:

"Among other adventures, Google’s motives were called into question after it scanned in millions of books without permission, prompting the Authors Guild and publishers to file a class-action suit. The proposed $125 million settlement will lead to a book registry financed by Google and a huge online archive of mostly obscure books, searched and served up by Google.

So is that a big win for a culture that increasingly reads on screen — or a land grab of America’s most precious intellectual property?..

"Google is, broadly, the Wal-Mart of the Internet, a huge force that can set terms and price — in this case free — except Google is not selling hammers and CDs, it is operating at the vanguard of intellectual property...

But others, like the Justice Department and a number of state attorneys general, have taken an acute interest in the proposed book settlement that Google negotiated over its right to scan millions of books, many of them out of print. Revenue will be split with any known holders of the copyright, but it is the company’s dominion over so-called orphan works that has intellectual property rights advocates livid.

“It’s disgusting,” said Peter Brantley, director of access for the Internet Archive, which has been scanning books as well. “We all share the general goal of getting more books online, but the class-action settlement gives them a release of any claims of infringement in using those works. For them to say that is not a barrier to entry for other people who might scan in those works is a crock.”

The scanned book project is certainly consistent with the company’s mission, which is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

“What I think is great about books is that people just don’t go to libraries that much, but they are in front of the computer all day,” Mr. [Eric] Schmidt [Google's chief executive] said. “And now they have access. If you are sitting and trying to finish a term paper at 2 in the morning, Google Books saved your rear end. That is a really oh-my-God kind of change.”

The government has not yet made this argument — filings are due in the case in September — but others have pointed out that Google has something of a monopoly because the company went ahead and scanned seven million books without permission.“To be very precise, we did not require permission to make those copies,” Mr. Schmidt said, suggesting that by scanning and making just a portion of those works available, the company was well within the provisions of fair use.

In a later meeting, Mr. [Sergey] Brin [Google's co-founder] waved his hand when it was suggested that the company’s decision to scan books and then reach a settlement had created a barrier to entry for others. (Google also has a separate commercial initiative to work with publishers to sell more current works.)

“I didn’t see anyone lining up to scan books when we did it, or even now,” Mr. Brin said. “Some of them are motivated by near-term business disputes, and they don’t see this as an achievement for humanity.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/business/media/22carr.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=google%20evil&st=cse