Showing posts with label lawmakers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lawmakers. Show all posts

Friday, April 16, 2021

Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.; The Washington Post, March 10, 2021

 Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post ; Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.

 
"Many Americans now recognize that a few tech companies increasingly dominate our lives. But it’s sometimes hard to put your finger on exactly why that’s a problem. The case of the vanishing e-books shows how tech monopolies hurt us not just as consumers, but as citizens...
 
Librarians have been no match for the beast. When authors sign up with a publisher, it decides how to distribute their work... 
 
In testimony to Congress, the American Library Association called digital sales bans like Amazon’s “the worst obstacle for libraries” moving into the 21st century. Lawmakers in New York and Rhode Island have proposed bills that would require Amazon (and everybody else) to sell e-books to libraries with reasonable terms. This week, the Maryland House of Delegates unanimously approved its own library e-book bill, which now heads back to the state Senate... 
 
Libraries losing e-books matters because they serve us as citizens. It’s easy to take for granted, but libraries are among America’s great equalizers."

Friday, April 24, 2020

Protecting intellectual property still matters in a pandemic; Washington Examiner, April 21, 2020


"With businesses now under pressure as a result of COVID-19, they can hardly afford to absorb the costs associated with patent allegations that cannot be substantiated under close scrutiny. 

That’s why it’s important to preserve a trial-like procedure organized within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that makes it possible to review the legitimacy of patents through a streamlined, cost-effective process that avoids expensive litigation. 

Unfortunately, some lawmakers (such as Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware) are pushing legislation that would gut and dilute what is known as the inter partes review process, which provides important safeguards against patents that should not have been issued. 

A better solution would be for policymakers to provide those businesses harmed by the coronavirus with greater assurances and predictability. They can do this by defending and strengthening the inter partes review process as a tool to eliminate low-quality, wrongly granted patents that harm the economy, stifle innovation, and cost jobs. 

There’s no disputing the fact that patent examiners are overburdened. Government records show that in 2018, there were 640,000 patent applications filed, but fewer than 8,200 patent examiners available to do a thorough review. On average, patent examiners only have about 19 hours to evaluate a patent application. Under these time constraints, a handful of ill-conceived applications are approved."

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

It’s Copyright Week 2020: Stand Up for Copyright Laws That Actually Serve Us All; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), January 20, 2020

Katharine Trendacosta, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); It’s Copyright Week 2020: Stand Up for Copyright Laws That Actually Serve Us All

"We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, addressing what's at stake and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation...

We continue to fight for a version of copyright that does what it is supposed to. And so, every year, EFF and a number of diverse organizations participate in Copyright Week. Each year, we pick five copyright issues to highlight and advocate a set of principles of copyright law. This year’s issues are:
  • Monday: Fair Use and Creativity
    Copyright policy should encourage creativity, not hamper it. Fair use makes it possible for us to comment, criticize, and rework our common culture.
  • Tuesday: Copyright and Competition
    Copyright should not be used to control knowledge, creativity, or the ability to tinker with or repair your own devices. Copyright should encourage more people to share, make, or repair things, rather than concentrate that power in only a few players.
  • Wednesday: Remedies
    Copyright claims should not raise the specter of huge, unpredictable judgments that discourage important uses of creative work. Copyright should have balanced remedies that also provide a real path for deterring bad-faith claims.
  • Thursday: The Public Domain
    The public domain is our cultural commons and a crucial resource for innovation and access to knowledge. Copyright should strive to promote, and not diminish, a robust, accessible public domain.
  • Friday: Copyright and Democracy
    Copyright must be set through a participatory, democratic, and transparent process. It should not be decided through back-room deals, secret international agreements, unaccountable bureaucracies, or unilateral attempts to apply national laws extraterritorially.
Every day this week, we’ll be sharing links to blog posts and actions on these topics at https://www.eff.org/copyrightweek and at #CopyrightWeek on Twitter.

As we said last year, and the year before that, if you too stand behind these principles, please join us by supporting them, sharing them, and telling your lawmakers you want to see copyright law reflect them."

Sunday, May 29, 2016

Must stop bill to copyright public records; San Jose Mercury News, 6/28/16

Thomas Peele, San Jose Mercury News; Must stop bill to copyright public records:
"In a blog post EFF legislative counsel Ernesto Falcon made it clear the potential chilling effect on free speech and public participation Stone has proposed.
"Such a broad grant of copyright authority to state and local governments will chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain," Falcon wrote. "If a citizen infringed on a state owned copyright by making a copy of a government publication, or reading that publication out loud in a public setting, or uploading it to the Internet, they could be liable. ..."
Does Stone want to keep news organizations and others from freely posting public records that show wrongdoing, abuse, corruption, misuse of public funds?
Rather than working to make access to records more difficult, state lawmakers should working to make them more accessible."