New Entry in E-Books a Paper Tiger; New York Times, 8/6/09

David Pogue via New York Times; New Entry in E-Books a Paper Tiger:

"You get five free out-of-copyright books to start you off (“Dracula,” “Sense and Sensibility” and so on)...

Besides, if you want free, out-of-copyright books, you can get them on the Kindle, too. They await at Gutenberg.org and other free sites...

And remember, you can never lend, resell or pass on an A or B e-book. You’re buying into proprietary, copy-protected formats — which can have its downsides. Last month, for example, Amazon erased “1984” and “Animal Farm” from its customers’ Kindles by remote control, having discovered a problem with the rights. Amazon refunded the price, but the sense of violation many customers felt was a disturbing wake-up call...

Buying a “free” book entails a 1-cent charge on your credit card, which is refunded at checkout (huh?)...

Barnes & Noble’s e-book initiative has some bright spots: the iPhone and Windows apps are mostly excellent, the concept of free access to public-domain books is sound and being able to read your e-books on your laptop is a no-brainer.

But over all, this is a 1.0 effort — which, incidentally, the company acknowledges. It vows to address the shortcomings."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/technology/personaltech/06pogue.html?_r=1&hpw

Students Reach Settlement in Turnitin Suit; Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus, 8/3/09

Erica Hendry via Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus; Students Reach Settlement in Turnitin Suit:

"A two-year battle over copyright infringement between four students and Turnitin, a commerical plagiarism-detection service, came to an apparent end last Friday in a settlement that prohibits either party from taking further legal action.

The high-school students first sued iParadigms, Turnitin's parent company, in 2007 for copyright infringement, saying the company took their papers against their will and then made a profit from them.The students' high schools required them to use the service, which scans papers for plagiarism and then adds them to its database, which students argued could easily be hacked.

But the students and their lawyers were handed two decisions against them -- first from the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., in March 2008 and again this April from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit."

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Students-Reach-Settlement-in/7569/

Free culture or "digital barbarism"? A novelist on copyright; Ars Technica, 8/4/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; Free culture or "digital barbarism"? A novelist on copyright:

"In his newest book, novelist Mark Helprin sets out to single-handedly defend copyright from the barbarian freetard hordes. He advocates long-term copyright extensions and happily insults anyone who disagrees with him by comparing them to Idi Amin and Adolf Eichmann. The result is almost... uncivilized...

Given his temperament, it is unsurprising that he is no fan of "giving works back to the community," which happens when they fall out of copyright. But he recognizes that no less an authority than the Constitution says that copyrights are "for limited times" and are meant for the advancement of the community's art and science. What to do? In the op-ed, Helprin made a modest proposal.

"The genius of the framers in making this provision is that it allows for infinite adjustment. Congress is free to extend at will the term of copyright. It last did so in 1998, and should do so again, as far as it can throw. Would it not be just and fair for those who try to extract a living from the uncertain arts of writing and composing to be freed from a form of confiscation not visited upon anyone else? The answer is obvious, and transcends even justice. No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind."

Or, to sum up: Just keep on extending copyright, baby!"

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/one-mans-stand-against-digital-barbarism.ars

New petition demands an end to Kindle DRM, faces long odds; Ars Technica, 8/4/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; New petition demands an end to Kindle DRM, faces long odds:

"It was that decision to link the Kindle hardware and store with a new DRM scheme that led the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to add the Kindle to its "Defective by Design" anti-DRM campaign.

The group has now launched a petition asking Amazon to "remove all DRM, including any ability to control or access the user's library, from the Kindle... Whatever Amazon's reasons for imposing this control may be, they are not as important as the public's freedom to use books without interference or supervision."

The Foundation took particular exception to two decisions that Amazon made. First was the company's decision to address publisher concerns about the Kindle's text-to-speech feature by giving book publishers a way to disable the automated reading of their titles. Second was Amazon's almost unimaginably bad decision to remove already purchased books from customers' devices—and not just any books, but the George Orwell titles 1984 and Animal Farm...

These issues are certainly troubling, and the FSF is right to call Amazon to account for them. But to most consumers, the bigger concern about DRM is vendor lock-in...

The shift to electronic books provides obvious advantages in convenience and portability (every Ars staffer who owns a Kindle swears by it), but those books can only be read on devices that support Kindle DRM. Just as with music, people run the risk of making a significant investment into a product that they cannot resell and which may well become obsolete or unreadable in a decade—or whenever they decide to switch e-reader brands. "

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/new-petition-demands-an-end-to-kindle-drm.ars

Copyright Fight Over Famous Wall Street Bull Statue; Tech Dirt, 8/5/09

Mike Masnick via Tech Dirt; Copyright Fight Over Famous Wall Street Bull Statue:

"What is it with statues and copyright claims lately? Following closely on stories about copyright claims against a town's statue of a mermaid (since resolved) and a still ongoing fight over a photo and US postage stamp of the DC Korean War monument, comes the news that the guy who created the famous (infamous?) Wall Street "bull" statue, is suing both the publisher and authors of a new book about the fall of Lehman Bros., for using a photo of the statue on the cover of the book."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090804/0116455762.shtml

Sony to Cut E-Book Prices and Offer New Readers; New York Times, 8/5/09

Brad Stone and Motoko Rich via New York Times; Sony to Cut E-Book Prices and Offer New Readers:

"Sony’s price cut on digital books and the new devices may not be enough to help it catch up to Amazon. One significant drawback to Sony’s new devices is that, unlike the Kindle, they cannot connect wirelessly to an e-book store. Owners of Sony Readers must plug their devices into a computer to buy and download books.

The new Readers also cannot access magazines or newspapers, and Sony has yet to develop a version of its reading software for other devices like the iPhone. Mr. Haber from Sony said that the company was working on developing all of these features."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/technology/personaltech/05sony.html?_r=1&hpw

Stephenie Meyer's publisher denies 'Breaking Dawn' plagiarism claim; Entertainment Weekly, 8/4/09

Mandi Bierly via Entertainment Weekly; Stephenie Meyer's publisher denies 'Breaking Dawn' plagiarism claim:

"Author Stephenie Meyer has been accused of plagiarizing small portions of Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in her Twilight series, from a novel called The Nocturne by Jordan Scott...

Scott’s attorney, J. Craig Williams, told EW he intends to file a motion for a preliminary injunction stopping the distribution of Breaking Dawn. In a statement, he added, “Jordan Scott began creating The Nocturne in 2003. As she developed the book, originally published in 2006, she regularly posted passages and chapters on her web site, www.jordanscott.com. In reviewing Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn, released in 2008, we found a number of instances where the text, characters and story line contain substantial similarities to Jordan Scott’s original work. We seek an admission from Ms. Meyer that our client’s copyright was infringed and that Breaking Dawn and all derivative works be discontinued.”"

http://news-briefs.ew.com/2009/08/04/stephnie-meyer-breaking-dawn/

Press Release: Library Groups Advise DOJ on Proposed Google Book Search Settlement; Association of Research Libraries, 7/30/09

Press Release: Library Groups Advise DOJ on Proposed Google Book Search Settlement; Association of Research Libraries:

"The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) sent a letter to William Cavanaugh, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division yesterday, requesting the Division to advise the court presiding over the Google Book Settlement to supervise the implementation of the settlement closely, particularly the pricing of institutional subscriptions and the selection of the Book Rights Registry board members.

The letter, which was sent following a meeting the library groups had with the Antitrust Division, also recommended that the Division itself actively monitor the parties’ compliance with the settlement’s provisions."

http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/google/googledoj.shtml

Google pushes for new law on orphan books; CNet News, 7/31/09

Tom Krazit via CNet News; Google pushes for new law on orphan books:

"If those organizations attacking Google's book search settlement with publishers spent as much time lobbying Congress for better laws concerning those issues, perhaps the controversy would go away, Google's chief Book Search engineer suggested Thursday night.

Google's quest to convince the world it has nothing to fear by its settlement with publishers came to the Computer History Museum Thursday where Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Book Search, defended the settlement before a few hundred attendees who submitted written questions to John Hollar, president and CEO of the museum...

The Internet Archive has been one of the more prominent critics of Google's Book Search settlement, and distributed a statement prior to Thursday's event saying just that. "...no one else has the same legal protections that Google has. Would the parties to the settlement amend the settlement to extend legal liability indemnification to any and all digitizers of orphan works? If not, why not leave orphans out of the settlement and compel a legislative solution instead of striking a private deal in a district court?"

Under the settlement, the Books Rights Registry is allowed to cut deals with other companies or organizations looking to digitize books, but they are not allowed to extend the same privileges Google enjoys with respect to orphan works, which Clancy estimated as about 10 percent of the books that are out of print but still protected by copyright.

That's why a legislative solution that fixes the problems concerning orphan works is the best outcome for everyone with a stake in book digitization, and Google is leaning on Congress to get such a law passed, Clancy said. Given the pressing issues before Congress at the moment--not to mention the complexity of copyright law--finding champions for such legislation has been difficult, he said.

Google thinks that by obtaining the right to digitize orphan works, it will stimulate demand for digital book scanning that eventually forces Congress to act. Any law passed to loosen restrictions on the use of orphan works would take precedent over Google's settlement."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10300887-93.html

Op-Ed: Nancy Sinatra; New York Times, 8/4/09

Op-Ed: Nancy Sinatra; New York Times:

"Terrestrial radio is the only radio platform that still doesn’t have to pay these royalties. Internet radio and satellite radio pay artists when they play their records, so do cable television music channels. In fact, AM and FM radio stations that stream their signal online pay performance royalties.

The United States is one of a small number of countries where artists and musicians are not compensated when their music is played on over-the-air radio. Because the United States doesn’t have performance royalties, radio stations in countries that do collect them do not have to pay American artists. In many of these countries, American artists make up as much as 50 percent of radio airplay, and this prevents millions of dollars — industry estimates are $100 million a year — from flowing into our economy.

I believe in a performance royalty because recording artists and musicians from every generation deserve to be compensated for their art."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/opinion/04sinatra.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=sinatra&st=Search

Podcast [7 min. 56 sec.]: $675K fine for music downloads; CNN, 8/4/09

Podcast [7 min. 56 sec.]: $675K fine for music downloads:

A college student who shared music he downloaded talks about the $675,000 fine:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2009/08/04/am.tenenbaum.music.fine.cnn

The Google Book Settlement and the Fair Use Counterfactual; Social Science Research Network, 7/22/09

Matthew Sag, DePaul University College of Law via Social Science Research Network; The Google Book Settlement and the Fair Use Counterfactual:

"Abstract:

This Article compares the Settlement to the most likely outcome of the litigation the settlement resolves. The counterfactual I explore in some detail assumes that the court would have found that the digitization necessary to construct the Google book search engine was protected by copyright law’s fair use doctrine. Although this issue is now unlikely to be litigated, it is nonetheless essential to almost any frame of analysis of the Settlement.

I argue that the fair use issues in relation to the Google Book Search Library Project have been largely misunderstood. Although Google had a very strong set of arguments relating to fair use, it was not likely to receive the courts unqualified approval for its massive digitization effort. Instead, the most likely outcome of the litigation was that book digitization would qualify as a fair use so long as copyright owners were given the opportunity to opt out of inclusion in the book database and that opportunity was made freely available at a cost that was essentially trivial.

From this perspective, the terms of the settlement did not differ significantly from the most likely outcome of the litigation. Essentially, the opt out that fair use would likely have required has been replaced by the ability of copyright owners to opt out of the class-action settlement and the significant opt-out and modification opportunities within the settlement itself.

This Article contains a detailed discussion of the terms of the Settlement. "

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1437812

In a Mermaid Statue, Danes Find Something Rotten in State of Michigan; Wall Street Journal, 7/27/09

Timothy Aeppel via Wall Street Journal; In a Mermaid Statue, Danes Find Something Rotten in State of Michigan:

Small Town's Ode to Ethnic Culture Draws Call From 'the Art Police' Over Licensing:

"This town's statue of Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Mermaid" is a symbol of its proud Danish heritage. Now some are saying she doesn't have permission to be in the country.

Nobody disputes the sculpture -- installed in 1994 as part of Greenville's annual Danish Festival -- was inspired by the famous one in Copenhagen.

The problem is that this ode to the old country allegedly infringes the copyright of Danish artist Edvard Eriksen. In May, just as preparations for this year's Danish-themed festivities were getting under way, the town got a letter from the Artists Rights Society -- a New York-based organization that enforces copyrights on behalf of artists, including Andy Warhol and Picasso. The letter said that the statue is an "unauthorized reproduction" and had to come down. If not, the town would have to pay a licensing fee."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124865622123982685.html

Copyright Cops Go After Town For Creating Little Mermaid Statue; Tech Dirt, 7/31/09

Mike Masnick via Tech Dirt; Copyright Cops Go After Town For Creating Little Mermaid Statue:

"Dan sends in yet another story about copyright gone wrong. Apparently the small town of Greenville Michigan has a strong Danish heritage, and wanted to show that off with some artifact representing Denmark. It chose the iconic Little Mermaid statue, based on Hans Christian Andersen's story, and a similar iconic statue in Denmark. Apparently, however, the family of the artist who created the statue in Denmark is trying to clamp down and is demanding a lump sum payment or that the statue be taken down. The actual artist died in 1959... but thanks to recent extensions in copyright (yippee), copyright now lasts life plus seventy years.

Of course, I'm wondering if the statue even violates the copyright at all. While the town says it was inspired by the one in Denmark, the actual statue is different:

At about 30 inches high, it's half the size of the original and has a different face and other distinct features, including larger breasts. "We've gotten a lot of heat about that too," he says.

Considering that so much of the statue is different, is it even a copyright violation at all?"

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090731/0337175728.shtml

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

Op-Ed: New York Times: Swan Songs?, 7/31/09

Op-Ed: Charles M. Blow via New York Times; Swan Songs?:

"The problem is that if people can get the music they want for free, why would they ever buy it, or even steal it? They won’t. According to a March study by the NPD Group, a market research group for the entertainment industry, 13- to 17-year-olds “acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did in 2007.” CD sales among these teenagers were down 26 percent and digital purchases were down 13 percent.

And a survey of British music fans, conducted by the Leading Question/Music Ally and released last month, found that the percentage of 14- to 18-year-olds who regularly share files dropped by nearly a third from December 2007 to January 2009. On the other hand, two-thirds of those teens now listen to streaming music “regularly” and nearly a third listen to it every day.

This is part of a much broader shift in media consumption by young people. They’re moving from an acquisition model to an access model.

Even if they choose to buy the music, the industry has handicapped its ability to capitalize on that purchase by allowing all songs to be bought individually, apart from their albums. This once seemed like a blessing. Now it looks more like a curse.

In previous forms, you had to take the bad with the good. You may have only wanted two or three songs, but you had to buy the whole 8-track, cassette or CD to get them. So in a sense, these bad songs help finance the good ones. The resulting revenue provided a cushion for the artists and record companies to take chances and make mistakes. Single song downloads helped to kill that.

A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.

So it was no surprise that The Financial Times reported on Monday that Apple is working with the four largest labels to seduce people into buying more digital albums. It’s too little too late."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01blow.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=charles%20blow&st=cse

Oy Tenenbaum! RIAA wins $675,000, or $22,500 per song; Ars Technica, 7/31/09

Ben Sheffner via Ars Technica; Oy Tenenbaum! RIAA wins $675,000, or $22,500 per song:

After a brief deliberation, a federal jury has ruled that PhD student Joel Tenenbaum willfully infringed on the record labels' copyrights, awarding them $675,000 in damages, $22,500 for each of the 30 songs in question. Ars reports with reaction from Tenenbaum and his attorney, Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson.

"A Boston federal jury has ordered Joel Tenenbaum to pay a total of $675,000—$22,500 per song—to the major record labels for willfully infringing 30 songs by downloading and distributing them over the KaZaA peer-to-peer network. The figure is closer to the $222,000 award in the first Jammie Thomas-Rasset trial than the $1.92 million figure from the second trial.

The verdict came down at late Friday afternoon after a little more than three hours of deliberation."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/o-tenenbaum-riaa-wins-675000-or-22500-per-song.ars

My Kindle ate my homework: lawsuit filed over 1984 deletion; Ars Technica, 7/31/09

John Timmer via Ars Technica; My Kindle ate my homework: lawsuit filed over 1984 deletion:

A suit filed on Amazon's home turf claims that the company's recent deletion of e-books from consumers' Kindles violates its contract with users and constitutes computer fraud.

"Amazon attracted a lot of unwanted attention when it used its Kindle e-book reader's always-on network connection to delete copies of works by George Orwell that had been sold without a proper license. The company has since apologized to its users and promised that it will never happen again, but those steps aren't enough for some. A lawsuit has been filed in Seattle that seeks class action status for Kindle owners and Orwell readers, alleging that Amazon has done everything from committing computer fraud to eating a high school student's homework.

One of the plaintiffs, Justin Gawronski, has a compelling story about his experience with Amazon's memory hole. Apparently, he was reading his copy of 1984 as a summer assignment for school, and had been using one of the Kindle's selling points—the ability to attach notes to specific parts of the e-book text—to prepare for his return to school. Since he was actively reading the work when Amazon pulled the plug, he actually got to watch the work vanish from his screen. He's left with a file of notes that are divorced from the text that they reference. A second plaintiff is named, but he just seems to have gotten poor customer service when he complained about the deletion.

But the firm that filed the suit clearly expects that these two individuals are hardly alone, and it seeks class-action status, with three different degrees of harm. The first is simply Kindle owners, who have allegedly seen their device's resale value drop due to Amazon's actions. The second is those that lost a copy of a digital work, and the final class are those, like Gawronski, that have put effort into annotating a work, only to see the underlying text vanish."

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/07/my-kindle-ate-my-homework-lawsuit-filed-over-1984-deletion.ars

Amazon sued over Kindle deletion of Orwell books; Yahoo News, 7/31/09

Tim Klass, AP Writer, via Yahoo News; Amazon sued over Kindle deletion of Orwell books:

"A high school student is suing Amazon.com Inc. for deleting an e-book he purchased for the Kindle reader, saying his electronic notes were bollixed, too.

Amazon CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos has apologized to Kindle customers for remotely removing copies of the George Orwell novels "1984" and "Animal Farm" from their e-reader devices. The company did so after learning the electronic editions were pirated, and it gave buyers automatic refunds. But Amazon did it without prior notice.

The lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle on behalf of Justin D. Gawronski, 17, a student at Eisenhower High School in Shelby Township, Mich., as well as Antoine J. Bruguier, an adult reader in Milpitas, Calif."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090731/ap_on_en_ot/us_tec_amazon_kindle_lawsuit

Hollywood Still Thinks That The Industry Needs DRM; Tech Dirt, 7/30/09

Mike Masnick via tech Dirt; Hollywood Still Thinks That The Industry Needs DRM:

"A bunch of folks have sent in various versions of how the entertainment industry is trying to convince the Copyright Office not to grant a special DMCA exemption for breaking DRM in the very limited -- but quite real -- scenario where a DRM server goes dark, taking away access to content people thought they had legally purchased. This seems like a perfect example of a reasonable DMCA exemption (people legally bought something, and they can no longer access it without getting around the DRM). On top of that, the music industry especially has finally come to terms with the fact that DRM not only doesn't work, but decreases the value of the music and makes people less willing to buy. So you might think that they wouldn't put up much of a fight. But, you'd be wrong."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090730/0212125709.shtml

Judge: Tenenbaum guilty of copyright infringement; Ars Technica, 7/30/09

Eric Bangemen via Ars Technica; Judge: Tenenbaum guilty of copyright infringement:

"In a reversal of her decision Thursday night, Judge Nancy Gertner has issued a directed verdict against P2P defendant Joel Tenenbaum, ruling that he is liable for infringing the record labels' copyrights on all 30 of the songs in question. It will be up to the jury to determine whether the infringement was willful and the size of the award—which could be as high as $4.5 million.

Judge Gertner's change of heart came after she had a chance to review the transcript of Thursday's testimony by Joel Tenenbaum. During direct examination, Tenenbaum was asked a simple question by the labels' counsel: "on the stand now, are you admitting liability for downloading and distributing all 30 sound recordings that are at issue and listed on Exhibits 55 and 56 of the exhibits?" His simple "yes" answer was enough to hand the labels a victory on the question of liability...

For all of the theatrics in the months leading up to the trial, things have gone down differently since the trial started Monday morning. Judge Gertner eviscerated Tenenbaum's Fair Use defense right before things got underway, and it has been all downhill from there for the defendant. Should the jury throw the book at Tenenbaum on the issue of damages, his counsel, Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, will challenge the constitutionality of the damage provisions of the Copyright Act. But that's another chapter; this one is all but written."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/judge-tenenbaum-guilty-of-copyright-infringement.ars

Tenenbaum takes the stand: I used P2P and lied about it; Ars Technica, 7/30/09

Ben Sheffner via Ars Technica; Tenenbaum takes the stand: I used P2P and lied about it:

"Accused of sharing 30 songs on the Internet, Joel Tenenbaum today admitted his liability in a federal courtroom, then told the court he told a "lie" in his earlier sworn responses. The labels have moved for a directed verdict of copyright infringement, and look likely to get it.

“Joel Fights Back,” proclaims the website for Joel Tenenbaum, the Boston University grad student standing trial for copyright infringement this week in a federal courtroom. But today, when he took the stand at his closely watched copyright trial, he didn’t.

Instead, over and over, Tenenbaum admitted under oath that he used KaZaA, LimeWire, and other peer-to-peer software to download and distribute music to others unknown.

“This is me. I’m here to answer,” said Tenenbaum. “I used the computer. I uploaded and downloaded music. This is how it is. I did it,” he testified before a packed courtroom, whose spectators included an all-star cast of Harvard Law School copyright scholars: Lawrence Lessig, John Palfrey, and Jonathan Zittrain.

“Are you admitting liability for all 30 sound recordings” on which the record labels brought suit, asked the plaintiffs’ attorney Tim Reynolds.

“Yes,” said Tenenbaum.

Tenenbaum then admitted that he “lied” in his written discovery responses, the ones in which he denied responsibility.

“Why did you lie at that point?” asked Tenenbaum’s attorney, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson. “It was kind of something I rushed through,” responded Tenenbaum. “It’s what seemed the best response to give.” At the time he gave the admittedly false discovery responses, Tenenbaum testified that he was being advised by his mother Judith, a family law attorney who works for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/tenenbaum-takes-the-stand-i-used-p2p-and-lied-about-it.ars

CDT Releases Privacy Recommendations Report for Google Book Service; Center for Technology and Democracy, 7/27/09

Center for Technology and Democracy; CDT Releases Privacy Recommendations Report for Google Book Service:

"CDT today released a report analyzing the privacy risks associated with the proposed expansion of Google Book Search. The report urges Google to commit to a strong privacy regime for the new service in advance of the settlement fairness hearing this fall. The tentative settlement between Google and publishers, the result of a copyright infringement lawsuit, would dramatically alter the way the public obtains and interacts with books. The report asks the court to approve the settlement but to retain oversight in order to monitor implementation of a privacy plan."

http://cdt.org/headlines/1234

Podcast: Helprin on Copyright; Econ Talk

Podcast [1 hr. 1 min. 52 sec.] Russ Roberts via Econ Talk:

"Novelist Mark Helprin talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about copyright and the ideas in his book, Digital Barbarism. Helprin argues for an extension rather than a reduction in the length of time that authors have control over their work. He also argues that technology is often not attuned to human needs and physical constraints, claiming that tranquility is elusive in modern times. He sees the movement against copyright and intellectual property generally as part of an educational and social trend toward collective rather than individual work."

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/06/helprin_on_copy.html

Civil Rights Activists Champion Google Book Deal; PC World, 7/29/09

Grant Gross via PC World; Civil Rights Activists Champion Google Book Deal:

"A proposed settlement allowing Google to digitize millions of books will have huge benefits for minority populations and their access to valuable information, a group of civil rights leaders and educators said Wednesday.

The Google book settlement, scheduled to be reviewed in an Oct. 7 court hearing, would allow Google to scan and make available scores of books, including millions of out-of-print titles. The digitized books will give minorities and poor people new access to titles that were formerly only available at large university libraries, supporters of the deal said during a forum at the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C.

"The idea that a student in Boston at a very exclusive private school can read the same books that a student somewhere in an underfunded, urban public school, that they can have the same access to the same materials is actually just amazing," said Professor Rhea Ballard-Thrower, law librarian at the Howard law school. "Books are the great equalizer.""

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/169275/civil_rights_activists_champion_google_book_deal.html

At NYPL, No “Smackdown” This Time As Panel Pushes For Google Book Search Settlement; Publishers Weekly, 7/29/09

Andrew Albanese via Publishers Weekly; At NYPL, No “Smackdown” This Time As Panel Pushes For Google Book Search Settlement:

"In what New York Public Library (NYPL) director David Ferriero called a return to the scene of the “Google smackdown,” the sold-out November 2005 event where the initial lawsuits over Google Book Search were first debated, panelists yesterday took questions from Ferriero and audience members and defended the pending Google Book Search Settlement.

The two-hour panel, "Expanding Access to Books: Implications of the Google Books Settlement Agreement,” featured David Drummond, senior v-p of corporate development & chief legal officer at Google; Richard Sarnoff, co-chairman, Bertelsmann, authors Jim Gleick and Peter Petre, and attorney and library legal advisor Jonathan Band, author of A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement. The panel kicks off a week of events in New York as the settlement enters a critical final month before a September 4 deadline for rightsholders to opt-out or object to the deal."

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6673684.html

Tenenbaum lawyer admits liability; damages now main issue; Ars Technica, 7/29/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; Tenenbaum lawyer admits liability; damages now main issue: The second-ever P2P file-sharing case to go to trial has been anything but conventional, and today was no exception: one of Joel Tenenbaum's attorneys admitted in court that his client was liable for infringement. The real issue now appears to be the amount of damages.:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/tenebaum-day-three.ars

Big Content: ludicrous to expect DRMed music to work forever; Ars Technica, 7/29/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; Big Content: ludicrous to expect DRMed music to work forever: Rightsholders can't understand why people who bought DRMed music only to have the authentication servers go dark might demand the right to crack the DRM. Big Content believes the idea that rightsholders "are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to copyrighted works" is laughable. Ha ha.:

"When Wal-Mart announced in 2008 that it was pulling down the DRM servers behind its (nearly unused) online music store, the Internet suffered a collective aneurysm of outrage, eventually forcing the retail giant to run the servers for another year. Buying DRMed content, then having that content neutered a few months later, seemed to most consumers not to be fair.

But that's not quite how Big Content sees things—just ask Steven Metalitz, the Washington DC lawyer who represents the MPAA, RIAA, and other rightsholders before the Copyright Office. Because the Copyright Office is in the thick of its triennial DMCA review process, in which it will decide to allow certain exemptions to the rules against cracking DRM, Metalitz has been doing plenty of representation of late.

He has now responded to a host of questions from the Copyright Office following up on live hearings held earlier this year, and in those comments, Metalitz (again) strongly opposes any exemption that would allow users to legally strip DRM from content if a store goes dark and takes down its authentication servers.

"We reject the view," he writes in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office, "that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so.""

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/big-content-ridiculous-to-expect-drmed-music-to-work-forever.ars

Op-Ed: Google's Big Plan for Books; New York Times, 7/29/09

Op-Ed: Google's Big Plan for Books; New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/opinion/29wed3.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

A New Page; New Yorker, 8/3/09

Nicholson Baker via New Yorker; A New Page: Can the Kindle really improve on the book?:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker

With Software, The A.P. Takes on Digital Piracy of Articles; New York Times, 7/23/09

Richard Perez-Pena via New York Times; With Software, The A.P. Takes on Digital Piracy of Articles:

"Vowing to fight unauthorized reproduction of news reports online, The Associated Press said Thursday that it would add software to each article showing who created it and what limits apply to the rights to use it. The software will also notify the A.P. about how the article is used across the Web.

The new program, approved Thursday by the A.P. board, follows through on a statement the company made in April that it would take on digital piracy not only for itself, but on behalf of embattled American newspapers, which own the A.P., a nonprofit corporation. But the announcement raises many unanswered questions, including who the intended targets are, what the legal limits are on using material online, and what redress it will seek.

At first, the program will apply only to the company’s own reporting – and eventually pictures and video – but the A.P. plans to invite its 1,400 member newspapers to join in next year. Newspaper executives have said that by taking the lead, the A.P. ensures a unified approach, saves publishers from having to design their own programs and circumvents possible charges of collusion against the papers.

Executives of many news organizations have long complained about the way blogs, news aggregators like The Drudge Report and The Huffington Post, and search engines like Google and Yahoo, use excerpts of their work, even when they also link back to the sources of the articles. Those sites contend that their practices fall under the legal principle of fair use, but the boundaries of that doctrine are largely untested in court.

Another complaint is that a link to an article sometimes leads to another second-hand user, not the original source, which can deprive the creator of some of the audience for its own site and the ads on it. There are also less- well-known sites that outright reprint articles, or large pieces of them, without permission, a clearer copyright violation, but there is little consensus about how big a problem that is for news organizations.

The A. P. has not said which sites it considers a major challenge, or how it would confront them, but its executives have made clear that the end goal is to get more compensation from the sites that use the material."

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/with-software-the-ap-takes-on-digital-piracy-of-articles/?scp=2&sq=piracy&st=cse

Organizations Urge Google To Ensure Privacy Protection in Book Search; Library Journal, 7/28/09

Norman Oder via Library Journal; Organizations Urge Google To Ensure Privacy Protection in Book Search:

"(For a set of links, go to LibraryJournal.com/GoogleBookSearchSettlement.)

Public Index debuts

The Public Index, a web site aiming to study and discuss the Google Book Search Settlement, has finally debuted, the work of New York Law School (NYLS) professor James Grimmelmann and colleagues. The centerpiece of the site is an interactive version of the proposed settlement, which allows annotations...

Two defenses of Google

Meanwhile, in a blog post headlined The Earth is Not Flat: The Public Interest and the Google Book Search Settlement: A Reply to Grimmelman, David Balto, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress praises the settlement, writing, “What Google has achieved the in truly remarkable, and potentially transforms the availability of vast amounts of knowledge - much akin to the development of search"...

Similarly, in the San Jose Mercury-News, Jonathan Hillel, a policy fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, criticized the inquiries made by the Justice Department into antitrust implications...

The Google game

Meanwhile, Google has launched the 10 Days in Google Books game, inviting entrants to write a 50-word entry on the topic of books. Each day, the top three submissions will win Sony Readers, while the first 20,000 people to play the game will get Google Books laptop stickers."

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6673463.html

An Open Workshop at Harvard Law School: 7/31/09; Alternative Approaches to Open Digital Libraries in the Shadow of the Google Book Search Settlement

An Open Workshop at Harvard Law School: 7/31/09; Alternative Approaches to Open Digital Libraries in the Shadow of the Google Book Search Settlement: Sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Harvard Law School Library, and Professors Charles Nesson, John Palfrey and Phil Malone:

"Scope and Goals

The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called “orphan works” that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. It need not have been this way.

This workshop seeks to bring a fresh, unique perspective to a complex and widely debated topic. It will focus not on the specific merits and demerits of the settlement itself, or the particular antitrust and privacy and other objections that have been raised. Instead, it will examine the idea of possible alternative universes and offer specific proposals for scenarios that may arise whether or not the settlement is approved. What can libraries, or universities, or non-profits, or Congress, do in the current landscape? And how might these possibilities help us to define a better world than the one that we have today and, more importantly, than the one that will exist if the Google settlement is approved in its current form? Regardless of what happens with respect to the Settlement, what alternative possibilities could lead to a richer, more open and better information ecosystem than the one we have today or might have tomorrow with the Settlement?

By exploring these alternatives, this workshop seeks, in the end, to help inform the debate over the Settlement and its terms and to illuminate some of the key policy considerations that are at stake. Its ultimate goal is to develop a series of options and proposals that could improve on the status quo in novel ways.

Proposed Topics

Here are some tentative topics for beginning discussion at the workshop. We welcome feedback on these suggestions and encourage you to contribute your own proposals. We'll choose several of the topics to be incorporated into our agenda...

What might truly open access to orphan works look like
What might a truly “open” digital collection created by major libraries look like
What might a truly “open” global library look like
What would a truly “open” digital library look like
What might truly open access to and use of an online digital library look like
What might online, digital publishing and access look like going forward
Are all of these the same? Within the open environment what is closed?
Intellectual Freedom = Unrestricted Access to Information + No Monitoring of Use (MarcEPIC)
Payment of processing (author) fees to publishers of journals and monographs
How could the proposed Google Books settlement change the landscape for alternative projects like the Internet Archive? How should such projects adapt so as to remain a viable alternative? "

Post-deadline Submissions

How can we ensure that digital libraries maintain the same privacy protections that non-digital libraries have worked hard to build and preserve?

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/googlebooks/Main_Page

Podcast: Google's Alexander Macgillivray on the Google Book Search Settlement; YouTube, 7/21/09

Podcast [1 hr. 11 min. 33 sec.]: Google's Alexander Macgillivray on the Google Book Search Settlement; 7/21/09 Lecture at Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University:

"The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called orphan works that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. Alexander Macgillivray, Deputy General Counsel for Products and Intellectual Property at Google (and soon to be General Counsel of Twitter) chats about the Google Book Search Settlement, its intricacies, pros, and cons, and responds to provocative questions and comments."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2o0lImxl14

Judge rejects fair use defense as Tenenbaum P2P trial begins; Ars Technica, 7/27/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; Judge rejects fair use defense as Tenenbaum P2P trial begins: Hours before the second P2P file-sharing trial in the US gets underway, the judge finally rules that defendant Joel Tenenbaum cannot claim "fair use" in the case. The proposed defense would be "so broad it would swallow the copyright protections that Congress has created," she wrote:

"There will be no fair use defense for Joel Tenenbaum at trial this week...

That won't happen, because Judge Gertner this morning granted the record labels' request for summary judgment on the issue of fair use. Noting that defendants only have the right to a jury trial when there are material facts in dispute, Gertner went on to point out that Tenenbaum has admitted to the activity in question and that she may therefore rule on the issue of fair use as a matter of law...

Gertner has been no fan of the labels' litigation campaign, telling industry lawyers in the past that they were "basically bankrupting people, and it's terribly critical that you stop it."

But that hasn't stopped her from taking on Team Tenenbaum's attempt to eviscerate copyright. As Nesson wrote in his pretrial outline of the case, "the idea of imposing law on the global ocean of free bits that has flooded into cyberspace is a gross and harmful over-extension of the power of the state and authority of the law." Gertner, whatever her own feelings on these kinds of cases, sees clearly that such claims amount to abolition of copyright in the digital age and are at odds with the law as currently written."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/judge-rejects-fair-use-defense-as-tenenbaum-p2p-trial-begins.ars

Amazon Faces a Fight Over Its E-Books; New York Times, 7/27/09

Brad Stone via New York Times; Amazon Faces a Fight Over Its E-Books:

"A growing number of civil libertarians and customer advocates wants Amazon to fundamentally alter its method for selling Kindle books, lest it be forced to one day change or recall books, perhaps by a judge ruling in a defamation case — or by a government deciding a particular work is politically damaging or embarrassing.

“As long as Amazon maintains control of the device it will have this ability to remove books and that means they will be tempted to use it or they will be forced to it,” said Holmes Wilson, campaigns manager of the Free Software Foundation.

The foundation, based in Boston, is soliciting signatures from librarians, publishers and major authors and public intellectuals. This week it plans to present a petition to Amazon asking it to give up control over the books people load on their Kindles, and to reconsider its use of the software called digital rights management, or D.R.M. The software allows the company to maintain strict control over the copies of electronic books on its reader and also prevents other companies from selling material for the device.

Two years after Amazon first introduced the Kindle and lighted a fire under the e-books market, there is increasing awareness of how traditional libraries of paper and ink differ from those made of bits and bytes. The D.R.M. in Amazon’s Kindle books, backed up by license agreements with copyright holders, prevents customers from copying or reselling Kindle books — the legal right of “first sale” that is guaranteed to owners of regular books.

D.R.M. has created a new dynamic between consumers and the vendors of digital media like books and movies. People do not so much own, but rent this media. And the rental agreement can be breached by the manufacturer at any time, sometime with little or no notice.
People are also worried that the very architecture of network-connected devices like the Kindle, TiVo or iPod give tech companies unprecedented control over digital media and by extension, the free exchange of ideas.

Once upon a time, retailers sold customers a product and then walked away after the transaction. Today’s specialized devices often keep an umbilical cord to their vendor, loading updates and offering convenient ways to make purchases. These devices also limit the extent to which people can load independent software and customize their experiences.

Such tethered systems provide significant advantages to the consumer. Companies can keep their own records of what people buy and restore the content if it is inadvertently lost. Device software can be kept up to date, and vendors can track what people buy and make personalized recommendations for new material they might like.

Randal C. Picker, a law professor at the University of Chicago, says he thinks Amazon was right to delete the improperly sold versions of “1984” and argues such systems can also allow companies to better enforce copyright laws. He notes that the harm to the Orwell book buyers was minimal, since their money was refunded after copies were deleted from their Kindles.

“Because copyright infringement was poor and lax in the offline world, it should also be that way in the online world? I don’t understand that logic,” Mr. Picker said. “The whole point of moving online is that it creates new opportunities.”

But critics say that any device capable of interfering with how its owner uses media is potentially dangerous. “I worry that systems like these tethered appliances are gifts to regulators,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School and author of the book, “The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It.” Mr. Zittrain predicts that governments in some parts of the world will want to use it “like a line item veto for content,” removing objectionable sentences or chapters in some books.

“It could happen first in jurisdictions like the United Kingdom, where there isn’t as rich a First Amendment tradition and where libel suits happen much more frequently,” he said.

Whether or not people are bothered by these possibilities may in part be a function of their age, as a new generation grows up with an implicit understanding of the rules around these networked devices and learns to live with them.

“I’d like to live in a perfect world where I own this content and can do whatever I want with it,” said Justin Gawronski, a high school student whose copy of “1984” was erased by Amazon, but who recently declined when a lawyer asked him to join a class-action lawsuit over the incident. Mr. Gawronski said, “This is probably going to happen again and we just have to learn to live with it.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/technology/companies/27amazon.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse

Google Books causes concern; Boston Globe, 7/24/09

D.C. Denison via Boston Globe; Google Books causes concern: Digital library’s growth has some worried it may be building a monopoly:

"Dan Clancy makes librarians nervous.

When the Google Books engineering director participated in a panel discussion at the Boston Public Library this week, his opening remarks focused on the search engine’s efforts to enable access for “every kid in Arkansas’’ to Harvard-size digital libraries. But soon afterward, he was hearing from librarians on the panel that they felt “queasy’’ about Google Books...

“Google is creating a mega bookstore the likes of which we have never seen,’’ said the panel organizer Maura Marx, executive director of Open Knowledge Commons, a Boston nonprofit organization. “People are very uncomfortable with the idea that one corporation has so much power over such a large collection of knowledge.’’

A growing concern, which was raised during the library panel, is that Google will end up with monopolistic control of access to millions of scanned digital books. This concern was heightened when Google negotiated a settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, groups that represent authors and publishers, after they sued Google to stop the search company from digitizing books."

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/07/24/google_books_causes_concern_among_librarians_authors/

Cracking Down, Antitrust Chief Hits Resistance; New York Times, 7/25/09

Stephen Labaton via New York Timesl; Cracking Down, Antitrust Chief Hits Resistance:

"President Obama’s top antitrust official and some senior Democratic lawmakers are preparing to rein in a host of major industries, including airline and railroad giants, moving so aggressively that they are finding some resistance from officials within the administration.

The official, Christine A. Varney, the antitrust chief at the Justice Department, has begun examining complaints by the phone companies Verizon and AT&T that their rivals — major cable operators like Cablevision and Cox Communications — improperly prevent them from buying sports shows and other programs that the cable companies produce, industry lawyers said...

Ms. Varney has also challenged agreements that the Federal Trade Commission and consumer groups say discourage pharmaceutical companies from marketing more generic drugs. And she is examining a settlement between Google and book publishers and authors to make more books available online."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/business/26antitrust.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Author Appeals Injunction Against Salinger Sequel; New York Times Arts Beat Blog, 7/24/09

Dave Itzkoff via New York Times Arts Beat Blog; Author Appeals Injunction Against Salinger Sequel:

"Judge Deborah A. Batts of United States District Court in Manhattan ruled that the book was not a protected parody or commentary, and that it infringed on Mr. Salinger’s copyrights.

In court papers filed Thursday with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyers for Mr. Colting wrote that “60 Years Later” is “a complex and undeniably transformative comment on one of our nation’s most famous authors,” adding: “Had this commentary and criticism been published as an essay, a dissertation or an academic article, there is no doubt that it never would have been enjoined.”

The appeals filing can be read in its entirety below:

Salinger Case Defendants 2ndCir Brief 7-23-09
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/author-appeals-injunction-against-salinger-sequel/?scp=2&sq=salinger&st=cse

AP setting up tracking system for Web content; Associated Press, 7/23/09

Michael Liedtke via Associated Press; AP setting up tracking system for Web content:

"The Associated Press is moving ahead with plans for a system to detect unlicensed use of its content and potentially create new ways for the 163-year-old news cooperative and other media to make more money on the Internet.

As part of a strategy approved Thursday by the AP's board, the cooperative will start by bundling its text stories in an "informational wrapper" that will include a built-in beacon to monitor where stories go on the Internet.

The beacon is meant to be a policing device aimed at deterring Web sites from posting AP content without paying licensing fees. The AP and its member newspapers contend unlicensed use of their material is costing them tens of millions of dollars in potential ad revenue...

Although the AP's new system is set up to guard copyrights, it could also raise privacy concerns."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ivcsLigqu-EzL9UftRBGenALpzEgD99KEKH02

ALA Conference 2009: From the Harry Potter Case to the Right to Write Fund; Library Journal, 7/22/09

Norman Oder via Library Journal; ALA Conference 2009: From the Harry Potter Case to the Right to Write Fund: Copyright ruling spawns revamped book, new support for derivative works:

"“RDR publisher Roger Rapoport, speaking at a Washington Office update at the American Library Association annual conference on July 11, described the Right to Write Fund, which he heads, as working closely with ALA. The organization “has been created so no one else has to go through what my company went through,” he said suggesting that the Copyright Act passed in 1976 spawned a new industry of lawyers that challenge reference books.

The fund aims to answer questions from writers and librarians, providing advice an assistance. Stanford Law School, along with Harvard Law School, have trained pro bono lawyers; Stanford has found an insurance company that will write a policy—say, for a documentary film—as long as a lawyer associated with the fund has reviewed the project. The fund also will provide litigation support.

Most people think we lost the case,” Rapoport said, pointing to the larger meaning of the ruling, as expressed in an article for ALA and the Association of Research Libraries by attorney Jonathan Band, titled “How Fair Use Prevailed in the Harry Potter Case."

While author J.K. Rowling prevailed, the decision was based on specific facts unique to the case, such as lengthy verbatim copies of descriptions in the novels, and the addition of two short companion books Rowling wrote.

So federal Judge Robert Patterson’s decision left “ample room for the creation of reference guides to literary works,” Band wrote, suggesting that “The decision also provides a clear roadmap for how to avoid infringement claims.”

That, said Rapoport, is what Vander Ark and RDR did. “The author added 600 original commentaries,” Rapoport said, adding, “We benefited enormously from the fact that a lot of people in the library community and media realized that there was something wrong about trying to stop a reference book.”"

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6672607.html?industryid=47354

The Restless Giant (Lawsuit); James Grimmelmann's Laboratorium Blog, 7/23/09

James Grimmelmann's Laboratorium Blog; The Restless Giant (Lawsuit):

"The Google Book Search case appears to be gradually waking from its long summers’ nap. Objections and comments, which had slowed to a crawl in June and July, have started to pick up again...

There’s also been a sudden spike of activity on the policy front. Three essays of note have crossed my radar.

First, the EFF launched today a privacy campaign targeted at Google, asking it to commit to reader privacy protections as part of implementing the settlement. They’ve sent a letter to Google’s Eric Schmidt laying out their concern...

Second, Bernard Lang, a French computer scientist with an interest in digital copyright, has written a paper on the settlement from an international perspective, with special emphasis on orphan works. He assesses the settlement against the “three-step test” for assessing whether national exceptions and limitations on copyright are permissible under international copyright treaties...

Third, David Balto, a fellow at the Center for America Progress and a prominent antitrust attorney, has a long post at the American Constitution Society’s blog responding to my Issue Brief on the settlement. He critiques my analysis of the antitrust risks and praises the settlement".

http://laboratorium.net/archive/2009/07/23/the_restless_giant_lawsuit

Expanding Access to Books: Implications of the Google Books Settlement Agreement; MIT PressLog, 7/23/09

MIT PressLog; Expanding Access to Books: Implications of the Google Books Settlement Agreement:

"On Wednesday, the Boston Public Library hosted a lively panel on the Google Book Search settlement, the approval for which is currently in the hands of the court. Authors, librarians, publishers, scholars, and other stakeholders packed the Rabb Lecture Hall to hear firsthand about the particulars of the settlement and how it would impact them."

http://mitpress.typepad.com/mitpresslog/2009/07/expanding-access-to-books-implications-of-the-google-books-settlement-agreement-.html

The Google Books settlement and privacy: frequently asked questions; Inside Google Books Blog, 7/23/09

Inside Google Books Blog; The Google Books settlement and privacy: frequently asked questions:

"The following are some questions we've heard about privacy and Google's proposed settlement agreement with authors and publishers, which is still subject to approval by the court. We've addressed many of them here, and may update this document as our product plans evolve. For more on privacy and the agreement, take a look at our blog post. "

http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-books-settlement-and-privacy.html

Legal advocates push for Google Books privacy; CNet News, 7/23/09

Elinor Mills via CNet News; Legal advocates push for Google Books privacy:

"Google should promise to protect the privacy of consumers with its Book Search service, the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Samuelson Law Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley Law said in a letter to the search giant on Thursday.

"Under its current design, Google Book Search keeps track of what books readers search for and browse, what books they read, and even what they 'write' down in the margins," the groups wrote in a letter (PDF) to Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.

"Given the long and troubling history of government and third-party efforts to compel libraries and booksellers to turn over records about readers, it is essential that Google Books incorporate strong privacy protections in both the architecture and policies of Google Book Search," the letter said. "Without these, Google Books could become a one-stop shop for government and civil-litigant fishing expeditions into the private lives of Americans.""

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10294519-93.html

Amazon Chief Says Erasing Orwell Books Was ‘Stupid’; New York Times Bits Blog, 7/23/09

Vindu Goel via New York Times Bits Blog; Amazon Chief Says Erasing Orwell Books Was ‘Stupid’:

"On Thursday, Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, posted a statement on a customer forum, publicly apologizing for his company’s handling of the situation:

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of ‘1984′ and other novels on Kindle. Our ’solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.”

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/amazon-chief-says-erasing-orwell-books-was-stupid/?hp

10 sites to help you navigate the new world of music; CNN.com, 7/23/09

John D. Sutter via CNN.com; 10 sites to help you navigate the new world of music:

"Online music is confusing these days.

Web sites are giving people new ways to find and enjoy music.

It's hard to tell what's legal when once-defunct sites like KaZaA and Napster --former bastions of illegal downloads -- crawl out of the grave with legit subscription plans.

And digital music offerings are expanding.

Instead of buying CDs or downloading songs, younger consumers appear to be shifting toward streaming music online and on mobile devices.

That's partly because music streaming services like Pandora are largely free, and also because younger people aren't as tied to the idea that music must be owned to be enjoyed, said Russ Crupnick, a senior industry analyst at NPD Entertainment, which conducts market research.

In a survey released earlier this year, NPD Group found the number of teens streaming music online jumped from 34 percent in 2007 to 52 percent in 2008. CD sales and music downloads dropped over the same period.

It's unclear which online music models will survive, said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, the nonprofit that collects royalties for recording companies and artists.
But some music industry experts say the shifting landscape of digital music could help save struggling musicians and record companies.

Rich Bengloff, president of the American Association of Independent Music, said power is in the hands of consumers.

"To survive, music labels must get revenue from multiple sources, with the consumers deciding which of these sources they want to use to access music," he said in an e-mail. "These sources need to include streaming services like Pandora, SomaFM, Yahoo, etc. and subscription services like Napster and Rhapsody.

"These services are good for the industry as long as artists who create the music and the music labels that invest in that music creation receive fair compensation."

To help you sort through the many options, CNN.com compiled a list of 10 sites that are rethinking how people access music on the Internet."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/23/online.music.kazaa/index.html

Why did Big Brother remove paid-for content from Amazon's Kindles?; Guardian, 7/22/09

Bobbie Johnson via Guardian; Why did Big Brother remove paid-for content from Amazon's Kindles?: Kindle users were left seething when Amazon removed paid-for content from their devices, while the Popfly and GeoCities services are to close. How did we lose control of the digital products we use?:

""Amazon offered a product, which I legally purchased, and had in my possession until their electronic burglar stole it from me," said another affected user. "Amazon has no right to go into my Kindle's memory and delete something without my knowledge or permission."

Why were people so offended? Customers weren't really angry about the gadget, or the legality of the booksin question – they were furious with the sleight of hand Amazon performed by secretly removing them from their machines. They were aggrieved because they thought they had bought the books when in fact, it turned out, they were merely renting them.

"We have long been concerned that digital rights management is essentially tricking people," says Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the campaign group based in San Francisco. "It's creating a situation where people think they've purchased something – in the way you might purchase a pair of shoes, for example. But from the perspective of the seller, and often from the perspective of the law, it's quite a lot less."

Digital wrongs

No wonder Amazon customers were so annoyed: it's as if they walked into a bookshop to pick up a new best-seller, only to discover later that the shop was actually a library and they had to give it back.

In the past, arguments over these sorts of issues have focused heavily on the use of digital rights management (DRM), the copy protection software that makes it difficult to rip DVDs to your computer, for example, even for personal use.

But the Kindle debacle is more than just book-banning or copyright infringement. There is something even more pernicious going on: not only do these systems restrict your ability to do what you want with your media – they also change the basic DNA of the thing you're purchasing.

So what exactly are we buying into these days?

"If you think of a book as a piece of data, the idea that you own it but then it can be zapped or taken away at any time – I think that's extremely counter-intuitive," says Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet law at Harvard Law School, who has been watching the situation closely. "Yet it's the way the architecture can work, unless we build in protections."

In his 2008 book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, Zittrain warned that devices to store data and code are increasingly becoming information appliances that are controlled by the manufacturer, not the user – precisely the situation the Kindle has presented...

Ed Felten, professor of computer science at Princeton University, says the problem is a "lack of transparency".

"If customers had known this sort of thing were possible, they would have spoken up against it," he wrote on his blog, Freedom to Tinker."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/22/kindle-amazon-digital-rights

Seizing mobile phones in cinemas will not win the war on piracy; Guardian, 7/22/09

Cory Doctorow via Guardian; Seizing mobile phones in cinemas will not win the war on piracy: Studios are concerned at critics pirating movies, but the data on the phones they are asked to surrender is far more sensitive:

"If you go to a preview screening in Leicester Square – a privilege given to press, entertainment industry VIPs and punters who win phone-in prizes – you'll be asked to leave your mobile phone in a bag behind a counter at the front of the cinema.

The film industry says this is a necessary precaution against the hypothetical losses that would result should someone use a mobile phone to "camcord" (record from the audience) a pre-release movie and leak it online. The film Wolverine (panned by 63% of critics, according to Rotten Tomatoes, which also reports a $177,288,905 box office gross to date) is often cited as an example of how a film can be harmed by pre-release leaks. Also cited is Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) research claiming the majority of pirate movies on the internet and sold on the street start as camcordered movies.

Which brings us to the other theoretical risk of leaving hundreds of phones in the safekeeping of a cinema, out of your sight for two or three hours. From sim cloning (copying the sim so other phones can listen to your voicemail and make calls billed to you) to data theft, the risks are enormous. Think of the data storage on your phone - that potential 64GB on a postage-stamp-sized SD card. That's enough to carry around libraries' worth of information. Add contact information - personal phone numbers for all the people in the lives of everyone at the movie, including ministers of state and other VIPs who are routinely invited to previews. Then consider confidential diaries, photos, voice memos, your search history ..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/22/piracy-film-mobile-phones

German beer-hall yodel goes to court in Munich; Guardian, 7/23/09

Kate Connolly via Guardian; German beer-hall yodel goes to court in Munich:

"To the uninitiated it sounds rather like a cry for help from an Alpine goatherd who has trapped his hand in a barn door.

In the world of German folk music, however, it amounts to one of the most popular and lucrative refrains in the yodelling repertoire.

The money-spinning power of "horlla-rü-di-ri, di-ri, di-ri", the famous chorus of the Kufsteinlied, which is capable of making even the hardiest of lederhosen-clad Germans go weak at the knees, has been keenly felt this week in a Munich courtroom battle over who owns the copyright.

The heirs of Karl Ganzer, the Austrian composer of the 63-year-old beer-hall hit which is said to be Europe's most-played folk song, were yesterday successful in their attempts to sue the music publisher Egon Frauenberger, who claimed he had written the song's refrain and therefore had a right to a twelfth of the royalties.

The song is a staple of beer festival gatherings such as Munich's Oktoberfest as well as folk music shows which, because of their enduring popularity, are a mainstay of primetime television across the German-speaking world.

Royalties must be paid each time the song is performed in public."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/23/beer-hall-yodel-royalties-munich