Caribbean Nation Gets an International Go-Ahead to Break U.S. Copyright Laws; New York Times, 1/28/13

Annie Lowrey, New York Times; Caribbean Nation Gets an International Go-Ahead to Break U.S. Copyright Laws: "Trade experts said that Antigua and Barbuda’s plan for retribution seemed designed to provoke American filmmakers and recording artists into pushing for Congress to allow foreign Internet gambling sites to serve American customers. They also noted that it was the United States that had pushed for the unusual “cross-retaliation” mechanism at the W.T.O., where trade violations that hurt one industry could be countered with trade actions against a completely different industry."

Playing Whac-a-Mole With Piracy Sites; New York Times, 1/28/13

Ben Sisario and Tanzina Vega, New York Times; Playing Whac-a-Mole With Piracy Sites: "This month, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab released a report that ranked 10 ad networks on the amount of business they do with sites suspected of engaging in piracy, with Google and Yahoo placing high on the list. Ad networks use advanced computer algorithms to place ads on Web sites. They can be run by agencies, publishers or others. The implicit criticism of the report is that the operators of these networks know which sites traffic in copyright infringement and therefore could keep ads — and ad money — away from them if they wanted to."

As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle; New York Times, 1/28/13

Ben Sisario, New York Times; As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle: "A decade after Apple revolutionized the music world with its iTunes store, the music industry is undergoing another, even more radical, digital transformation as listeners begin to move from CDs and downloads to streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube. As purveyors of legally licensed music, they have been largely welcomed by an industry still buffeted by piracy. But as the companies behind these digital services swell into multibillion-dollar enterprises, the relative trickle of money that has made its way to artists is causing anxiety at every level of the business."

A Right to Unlock Cellphones Fades Away; New York Times, 1/25/13

Brian X. Chen, New York Times; A Right to Unlock Cellphones Fades Away: "Your right to unlock your cellphone is about to expire. Cellphone carriers say this is for your own good — and theirs. Unlocking a cellphone enables it to work on a wireless carrier other than the one you bought it from. If an AT&T iPhone were unlocked, for example, it could be used on T-Mobile USA’s network. In October, the Library of Congress decided to invalidate a copyright exemption for unlocking cellphones. This exemption expires Saturday, making the act of unlocking a cellphone potentially illegal, unless it is authorized by a carrier."

Public Universities to Offer Free Online Classes for Credit; New York Times, 1/23/13

Tamar Lewin, New York Times; Public Universities to Offer Free Online Classes for Credit: "In an unusual arrangement with a commercial company, dozens of public universities plan to offer an introductory online course free and for credit to anyone worldwide, in the hope that those who pass will pay tuition to complete a degree program. The universities — including Arizona State, the University of Cincinnati and the University of Arkansas system — will choose which of their existing online courses to convert to a massive open online course, or MOOC, in the new program, called MOOC2Degree. The proliferation of free online courses from top universities like Harvard and Stanford over the past year has prompted great interest in online learning. But those courses, so far, have generally not carried credit."

A Year After the Closing of Megaupload, a File-Sharing Tycoon Opens a New Site; New York Times, 1/20/13

Jonathan Hutchison, New York Times; A Year After the Closing of Megaupload, a File-Sharing Tycoon Opens a New Site: "At 6:48 a.m. local time Sunday, the Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom opened his new file-storage Web site to the public — one year to the minute after the police raided the mansion he rents in New Zealand. The raid was part of a coordinated operation with the F.B.I. that also shut down Megaupload, the file-sharing business he had founded. Mr. Dotcom faces charges in the United States of pirating copyrighted material and money laundering and is awaiting an extradition hearing in New Zealand. But on Sunday, he said his focus was on the new site, which was already straining under heavy traffic within two hours of its introduction. In the first 14 hours of the site’s operation, more than half a million people registered to use it, Mr. Dotcom said."

A Revamped Myspace Site Faces a Problem With Rights; New York Times, 1/20/13

Ben Sisario, New York Times; A Revamped Myspace Site Faces a Problem With Rights: "The new Myspace, which like the old MySpace lets people listen to huge numbers of songs free, has won early praise for its sleek design. But while it has said its intention is to help artists, it may already have a problem with some of the independent record labels that supply much of its content. Although Myspace boasts the biggest library in digital music — more than 50 million songs, it says — a group representing thousands of small labels says the service is using its members’ music without permission."

NIH Access Policy Gains Teeth; Library Journal, 1/16/13

Meredith Schwartz, Library Journal; NIH Access Policy Gains Teeth: "Soon, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will explicitly link grant funding to the successful submission of a final peer-review manuscript to the PubMed Central repository, in an attempt to increase compliance with the Institute’s public access mandate. The exact date on which the new policy will go into effect hasn’t yet been announced, but Dr. Sally Rockey, NIH’s Deputy Director for Extramural Research, said on November 16, 2012, “We are giving funded organizations at least five months to prepare for our new process,” which would place the change at about mid-April or thereafter. The public access policy itself isn’t new: it was introduced on a voluntary basis in 2005, and made mandatory in 2008. But mandatory in theory didn’t always add up to compliance in practice: according to a 2012 report from the President’s National Science and Technology Council [PDF], fully a quarter of papers based on NIH-funded research are not submitted to PubMed Central."

Unlocking the Riches of HathiTrust; American Libraries, 1/16/13

American Libraries; Unlocking the Riches of HathiTrust: "The constitutionality of digital fair use was upheld this past October, when US District Court Judge Harold Baer summarily dismissed the Authors Guild’s year-old lawsuit against the HathiTrust library collaborative to block the use of its growing repository of millions of full-text book scans. Calling the project “the enduring work of libraries,” HathiTrust Executive Director John Wilkin told American Libraries the organization continues to plan “more and better” uses of its scanned content. An appeal is pending. Meantime, blogerati Karen Coyle, Barbara Fister, and James Grimmelmann shared with AL how they see this decision shaping the future of sharing digitally preserved print materials."

Verizon Copyright Alert System Would Throttle Internet Speeds Of Repeat Online Pirates; HuffingtonPost.com, 1/11/13

Gerry Smith, HuffingtonPost.com; Verizon Copyright Alert System Would Throttle Internet Speeds Of Repeat Online Pirates: "Under Verizon's proposed program, subscribers accused of copyright infringement will receive a series of alerts, which critics of such programs call "six strikes." After the first two offenses, Verizon will send emails to subscribers with a link allowing them to see if illegal file-sharing is operating on their computers and how to remove it, according to the leaked document, which was confirmed as authentic by a Verizon spokesman. After the next two offenses, Verizon will redirect subscribers' browsers to a website where they must acknowledge receiving the alerts and watch a short video about "the consequence of copyright infringement," according to the document. After the fifth and sixth notices, accused copyright violators have the option of either accepting slower Internet speeds for two to three days or asking an arbitrator to review whether they are guilty of Internet piracy -- for the price of $35. If the arbitrator rules in the user's favor, the $35 is refunded and his or her Internet speeds go untouched. Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden said the leaked document was "a discussion draft" and had not been finalized."

“Buffy vs Edward” remix unfairly removed by Lionsgate; ArsTechnica.com, 1/9/13

Jonathan McIntosh, ArsTechnica.com; “Buffy vs Edward” remix unfairly removed by Lionsgate: "Buffy vs Edward has now been offline for 3 weeks. Over the past year, before the takedown, the remix had been viewed an average of 34,000 times per month. Since none of YouTube’s internal systems were able to prevent this abuse by Lionsgate and our direct outreach to the content owner hit a brick wall, with the help of New Media Rights I have now filed an official DMCA counter-notification with YouTube. Lionsgate has 14 days to either allow the remix back online or sue me. We will see what happens."

Irish Newspapers Budge Slightly: Now Say Links Don't Require Payment, But Snippets...; TechDirt.com, 1/9/13

Mike Masnick,, TechDirt.com; Irish Newspapers Budge Slightly: Now Say Links Don't Require Payment, But Snippets... : "Meanwhile, the lawyers representing the charity have noticed that NLI appears to have backtracked ever so slightly and are now saying that "links alone" are not infringement, but if you include any text, you've gone over the line."

Chinese Man Pleads Guilty in Copyright Violation Case; New York Times, 1/8/13

Andrew Martin, New York Times; Chinese Man Pleads Guilty in Copyright Violation Case: "Mr. Li, who was based in Chengdu, paid a network of computer experts to scour the Internet to find commercial software they could “crack,” meaning they bypassed security protocols designed to prevent unauthorized access or reproduction. Ultimately, Mr. Li offered more than 2,000 pirated software products that could be used as applications in the military, engineering, space exploration, mathematics and explosive simulation, and sold them at a fraction of their retail price, which federal prosecutors said was over $100 million... On Monday, he pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Delaware to one count of conspiring to steal copyrighted software. He faces a maximum of five years in prison...Edward J. McAndrew, one of the prosecutors on the case, said Mr. Li’s arrest was among the largest criminal copyright cases to be successfully prosecuted by the government. "

Sony Issues Dylan CDs to Extend Copyright; New York Times, 1/7/13

Allan Kozinn, New York Times; Sony Issues Dylan CDs to Extend Copyright: "In an unusual response to provisions in a new European copyright law, scheduled to take effect by 2014, Sony Music has released a compilation of early Bob Dylan recordings that is bound to become one of his most collectible albums. “The 50th Anniversary Collection,” which carries a subtitle — “The Copyright Extension Collection, Vol. 1” — that explains its purpose, was rushed to only a handful of record shops in Germany, France, Sweden and Britain just after Christmas."

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."

Stallone did not copy screenplay for "The Expendables": judge; Reuters, 12/27/12

Jonathan Stempel, Reuters; Stallone did not copy screenplay for "The Expendables": judge: "A federal judge has reaffirmed his decision to dismiss a lawsuit accusing actor Sylvester Stallone of copying someone else's screenplay to make his popular 2010 movie "The Expendables." U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan on Thursday rejected claims of copyright infringement damages by Marcus Webb, who contended that the movie's screenplay contained 20 "striking similarities" to his own "The Cordoba Caper.""

Game of Thrones most pirated TV show; Guardian, 12/24/12

Mark Sweney, Guardian; Game of Thrones most pirated TV show: "Game of Thrones was the most-pirated TV show of the year, with a single episode being illegally downloaded by more people than typically watch the hit programme in the US. HBO's Game of Thrones, which in the UK is aired on Sky Atlantic, knocked off last year's "winner", serial killer show Dexter to be named the most-pirated TV show of 2012. The annual report, by news site TorrentFreak, found that one episode of Game of Thrones was downloaded 4.28m times."

UK copyright laws to be freed up and parody laws relaxed; Guardian, 12/20/12

Mark Sweney, Guardian; UK copyright laws to be freed up and parody laws relaxed: "The government is to scrap an archaic law that makes it illegal for music fans to download a legally-purchased CD onto a laptop, smartphone or MP3 player, and has rejected calls from record companies for a tax to cover lost sales as a result. Vince Cable, the business secretary, unveiled the plans on Thursday in a 52-page report detailing a freeing up of the UK's intellectual property and copyright laws. Cable, responding to the Hargreaves report on the future of intellectual property published last year, proposed changes including making "format shifting" legal and relaxing parody laws to allow comedians, broadcasters and other content creators more scope."

WIPO To Negotiate Treaty For The Blind In June; ‘Still Some Distance To Travel’ ; Intellectual Property Watch, 12/18/12

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch; WIPO To Negotiate Treaty For The Blind In June; ‘Still Some Distance To Travel’ : "In a swift 15 minute session this morning delegates at the World Intellectual Property Organization extraordinary assembly agreed to convene a high-level meeting in Morocco in June to finalise a treaty on international exceptions to copyrights on books in special formats for visually impaired people."

Alicia Keys Sued Over 'Girl on Fire': Is It Based on a Blogger's Ear?; Hollywood Reporter, 12/17/12

Eriq Gardner, Hollywood Reporter; Alicia Keys Sued Over 'Girl on Fire': Is It Based on a Blogger's Ear? : "Alicia Keys' "Girl on Fire" is featured prominently in a current American Express commercial and this week sits at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. It's also the subject of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed last week in California federal court. The plaintiff is Earl Shuman, an accomplished songwriter who in 1962 co-authored the composition, "Lonely Boy," a song that reached No. 2 on Billboard's chart in 1970 after being recorded by Eddie Holman as "Hey There Lonely Girl."

Staffer axed by Republican group over retracted copyright-reform memo; ArsTechnica.com, 12/6/12

Timothy B. Lee, ArsTechnica.com; Staffer axed by Republican group over retracted copyright-reform memo: "The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives, has told staffer Derek Khanna that he will be out of a job when Congress re-convenes in January. The incoming chairman of the RSC, Steve Scalise (R-LA) was approached by several Republican members of Congress who were upset about a memo Khanna wrote advocating reform of copyright law. They asked that Khanna not be retained, and Scalise agreed to their request."

Feeling the Heat, Yoga Chain Bows to Bikram, Despite Federal Ruling; New York Times, 12/10/12

Andy Newman, New York Times; Feeling the Heat, Yoga Chain Bows to Bikram, Despite Federal Ruling: "A popular New York-based chain of yoga studios accused by Bikram Yoga of copyright infringement has decided to let go, despite a Copyright Office ruling that supported its position. The chain, Yoga to the People, has agreed to stop offering its high-temperature classes that are patterned after Bikram Yoga in order to settle a federal lawsuit filed by Bikram, according to a joint press release issued by both parties last week. But Yoga to the People’s founder, Greg Gumucio, said on Monday that he was not getting out of the hot-yoga business: Yoga to the People is working on a new sequence that will also be offered in a super-heated room and incorporate some poses from the sequence popularized by Bikram’s founder, Bikram Choudhury, but will also include other poses... Correction: December 10, 2012 An earlier version of this post stated erroneously that the federal Copyright Office did not specifically mention Bikram yoga in its ruling that a sequence of exercises cannot be copyrighted. In fact, the the Copyright Office did cite Bikram yoga as an example of an uncopyrightable exercise sequence."

eBooks For Libraries Web Site Relaunches, Focus is Now Public Awareness About Issues; Library Journal,12/11/12

Gary Price, Library Journal; eBooks For Libraries Web Site Relaunches, Focus is Now Public Awareness About Issues: "The eBooks For Libraries web site, sponsored by Library Renewal and the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Kansas, has relaunched and will now provide public awareness and news about ebooks for libraries. David Lee King writes, “Our goal isn’t to complain, but to share information about the current ebook landscape, and how it affects libraries. We’ll explain current issues, and what they actually MEAN for libraries.”"

Richard O'Dwyer's two-year extradition ordeal ends in New York; Guardian, 12/6/12

Adam Gabbatt, Guardian; Richard O'Dwyer's two-year extradition ordeal ends in New York: "A British student's two-year fight to avoid extradition to the US ended in less than five minutes on Thursday, when Richard O'Dwyer signed an agreement in a New York court to avoid prosecution and a potential 10-year jail term for breaking copyright laws with the file-sharing website he set up as a teenager."

Publishers brace for authors to reclaim book rights in 2013; paidContent, org, 11/27/12

Jeff John Roberts, paidContent.org; Publishers brace for authors to reclaim book rights in 2013: "Termination rights are not a new idea and have been the subject of famous court cases involving John Steinbeck, Lassie and Superman. The difference is that these older cases are based on a pre-1978 law that often required an author to exercise renewal rights which, in many cases, the author had signed away. The new law has fewer such loopholes and will also mean that what has been a drip-drip of old copyright cases could turn into a flood as nearly every book published after 1978 becomes eligible for termination. The 1978 law also means a threat to the back list of titles that are a cash cow for many publishers."

Posting A Parody Video? Read This First.; Library Journal, 11/29/12

Meredith Schwartz, Library Journal; Posting A Parody Video? Read This First: "While Good Morning America’s film crew was at the library, the show received Sony’s statement above, which Good Morning America, the library, or both interpreted to mean that they now had permission to show the video on YouTube and other third party sites, not just the library website. While that interpretation may have been overly broad, it was apparently good enough for YouTube: according to Giannella, the library didn’t have to re-upload the video, it is now available again at the original URL. Ironically, in an instance of the Streisand Effect, the main result of the temporary blockage has been to gain a far bigger viewership for “Read It” than it ever would have had otherwise."

Beastie Boys call for sampling lawsuit to be dismissed; Guardian, 11/29/12

Sean Michaels, Guardian; Beastie Boys call for sampling lawsuit to be dismissed: "In the Beastie Boys' response to the lawsuit, filed on Monday, they questioned the two-decade gap between their albums' release and TufAmerica's complaint. "Plaintiff is attempting to sidestep the Copyright Act's three-year statute of limitations," their lawyers wrote, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Although TufAmerica argued that the samples are "concealed … [to] the casual listener" and were only detectable "after conducting a careful audio analysis", the hip-hop crew said this means their work is sufficiently different and they should be exempt from damages."

HathiTrust Verdict Could Transform University Access for the Blind; Library Journal, 11/7/12

Meredith Schwartz, Library Journal; HathiTrust Verdict Could Transform University Access for the Blind: "Now that the HathiTrust verdict has held that digitizing works for the purpose of providing access to the blind and print-disabled is not only a fair but a transformative use, schools can feel safer hanging onto those scans until the next student who needs them comes along, and can spend their efforts on improving them or scanning more books, instead of doing the same bare minimum of texts over and over. And Goldstein believes making the text available to sighted persons to crowdsource the manual work would also be fair use. Even more revolutionary than just keeping their own book scans, the Honorable Harold Baer, Jr., held that the University of Michigan libraries can be considered an authorized Chafee entity. That means the library could make digitized collections available not just to the university’s own blind and print disabled students, or even to blind and print disabled students at other colleges, but to any American who qualifies as blind or print disabled under the Chafee amendment."

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 Fires a Rare Public Salvo Over Aggregators; New York Times, 11/28/12

Kevin J. O'Brien, New York Times; Google Fires a Rare Public Salvo Over Aggregators: "That all changed this week when Google fired a rare public broadside against a proposal that would force it and other online aggregators of news content to pay German newspaper and magazine publishers to display snippets of news in Web searches. The proposed ancillary copyright law, which is to have its first reading Friday in the lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag, has ignited a storm of hyperbole pitting Google and local Web advocates against powerful publishers including Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bild and Die Welt."

[Video] How did Richard O'Dwyer strike a deal to avoid extradition?, 11/28/12

[Video: 1 min. 49 sec.] James Ball, Guardian; How did Richard O'Dwyer strike a deal to avoid extradition? : "Guardian data journalist James Ball explains how Richard O'Dwyer, the university student who created a website which linked to programmes and films online for free, has reached an agreement to avoid extradition to the US over copyright infringement allegations. In June, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launched a campaign with the Guardian in defence of O'Dwyer."

Case Against UCLA For Streaming Licensed DVDs To Students Dismissed Yet Again; TechDirt.com, 11/26/12

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Case Against UCLA For Streaming Licensed DVDs To Students Dismissed Yet Again: "A few years ago we wrote about how UCLA professors were barred from continuing an existing program in which they had streamed properly licensed DVDs to students. The lawsuit came from the Association for Information Media and Equipment (AIME). We noted that one of the key aspects of "fair use" is supposed to be that it allows for educational use, and it seemed ridiculous that any such streaming wasn't fair use. After thinking it over, UCLA decided to stand up for itself and put the videos back online. AIME sat on this for eight or nine months and finally sued, arguing that its contract with the University meant that UCLA had given up its fair use rights, and that even if it was fair use, it was a breach of contract. A year ago, the judge dismissed the case, mostly focusing on the question of whether or not AIME even had standing to sue and whether or not, as a state university, UCLA could hide behind a sovereign immunity claim. AIME filed a new (amended) complaint against UCLA... which basically restated everything it had lost over, and then added a few claims. The court apparently was not impressed. It just dismissed the case all over again with prejudice, meaning that AIME can't just refile."

After Father’s Objection, Play About Amy Winehouse Is Canceled; New York Times, 11/26/12

James C. McKinley, Jr., New York Times; After Father’s Objection, Play About Amy Winehouse Is Canceled: "The Royal Theater in Denmark has canceled a play about Amy Winehouse because Mitch Winehouse, the singer’s father, is blocking use of her music and photographs of her, The Associated Press reported."

Wikipedia founder hails extradition deal with US and calls for law reform; Guardian, 11/28/12

Lizzy Davies, James Ball, Owen Bowcott, Guardian; Wikipedia founder hails extradition deal with US and calls for law reform: "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has called for a review of Anglo-US extradition arrangements after a legal agreement struck by Sheffield Hallam student Richard O'Dwyer to avoid extradition to America on copyright charges. Wales, who launched a campaign with the Guardian against O'Dwyer's extradition that garnered more than 250,000 signatures, welcomed a settlement announced in the high court on Wednesday morning, and called for reform to prevent similar cases in future... O'Dwyer faced up to 10 years in prison in the US over copyright charges relating a website he set up, TVShack.net, which allowed users to share links to free places to watch TV and movies."

WIPO Committee Finishes A Step Closer To Treaty For Visually Impaired; Intellectual Property Watch, 11/24/12

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch; WIPO Committee Finishes A Step Closer To Treaty For Visually Impaired: "After a long week of discussions, delegates at the World Intellectual Property Organization last night adopted a working draft text that could become a treaty or other instrument providing copyright exceptions for visually impaired people, and agreed to send the text to the WIPO extraordinary General Assembly next month. Country delegates and visually impaired representatives hailed a constructive atmosphere and progress achieved this week, but a number of delegations highlighted the fact that much more work will be needed to reach final agreement on remaining outstanding issues."

Republicans' brief flash of intellectual property insight; Guardiian, 11/23/12

Dan Gillmor, Guardian; Republicans' brief flash of intellectual property insight: "A small outburst of policy sanity broke out from Republican party circles last weekend. Even though it was stamped out immediately, it's sparking a renewed conversation about the state of what we call "intellectual property" – a concept so warped these days that it begs for reconsideration. An organization called the House Republican study committee published a policy brief, "Three Myths About Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it" – a document that called the current copyright system what it is: a grotesque abuse of corporate and government power designed to enrich a few big entertainment companies at just about everyone else's expense. Please read it and come back. As you saw, the brief, by staff member Derek S Khanna, makes a strong case that we have far too much protection for copyrighted materials, and that this protection hinders copyright's original purpose, namely to "promote the progress of science and useful arts"."

Building a Digital Public Library of America; Library Journal, 11/26/12

John Palfrey, Library Journal; Building a Digital Public Library of America: "...how can the DPLA provide access to knowledge in a digital era, given the restrictions of the copyright act and the related constraints of contract law and digital rights management technology? The law is often seen as a constraint to the work of libraries today. In the digital era, many librarians feel that they cannot carry out their mission under the current legal regime. The DPLA as an institution will always respect copyright interests, but it also will take on the role of advocate for libraries in terms of making the most of what the law permits. Dedicated volunteers, many of them top experts in their respective fields, have spent hundreds of hours in meetings talking about each of these questions, among others, and coming up with initial answers to inform the project’s launch. The answers to these big questions, and many others, will be addressed in part through the April, 2013 launch of the DPLA initiative. Each of these essential questions will also be the topic of a future column here in Library Journal in the months to come."

Podcast [2 hours, 3 minutes], Robert Darnton and Susan Flannery: "Digitizing the Culture of Print: The Digital Public Library of America and Other Urgent Projects", 11/2/12

Podcast [2 hours, 3 minutes], Robert Darnton and Susan Flannery: "Digitizing the Culture of Print: The Digital Public Library of America and Other Urgent Projects" : ""The role of the library in the digital age is one of the compelling questions of our era. How are libraries coping with the promise and perils of our impending digital future? What urgent initiatives are underway to assure universal access to our print inheritance and to the digital communication forms of the future? How is the very idea of the library changing? These and related questions will engage our distinguished panelists, who represent both research and public libraries and two of whom serve on the steering committee for the Digital Public Library of America. Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard, Director of the Harvard University Library and one of America's most distinguished historians. He serves on the steering committee of the Digital Public Library of America and has been a trustee of the New York Public Library since 1995. In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books, Darnton defended a NYPL plan to liquidate some branches in the system while renovating the main Fifth Avenue branch. The essay sparked a number of responses. In November of last year, Darnton provided a status report on the DPLA. Darnton is the author of many influential books including The Case for Books, Past, Present, and Future and The Great Cat Massacre. Susan Flannery is director of libraries for the City of Cambridge and past president of the Massachusetts Library Association."

University Consortium to Offer Small Online Courses for Credit; New York Times, 11/15/12

Hannah Seligson, New York Times; University Consortium to Offer Small Online Courses for Credit: "Starting next fall, 10 prominent universities, including Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwestern, will form a consortium called Semester Online, offering about 30 online courses to both their students — for whom the classes will be covered by their regular tuition — and to students elsewhere who would have to apply and be accepted and pay tuition of more than $4,000 a course."

On the Hobbit trail in New Zealand; Guardian, 11/16/12

Rebecca Nicholson, Guardian; On the Hobbit trail in New Zealand: "People involved with Middle Earth-related tours talk wearily of copyright back-and-forths with the Tolkien estate and with New Line Cinema; it was, initially, hard for them to market anything local as an official Lord of the Rings experience. There's very much a sense that the tourism which followed the films' release took all parties by surprise, and they're preparing for it properly this time."

You Can’t Say That on the Internet; New York Times, 11/16/12

Evgeny Morozov, New York Times; You Can’t Say That on the Internet: "Thanks to Silicon Valley, our public life is undergoing a transformation. Accompanying this digital metamorphosis is the emergence of new, algorithmic gatekeepers, who, unlike the gatekeepers of the previous era — journalists, publishers, editors — don’t flaunt their cultural authority. They may even be unaware of it themselves, eager to deploy algorithms for fun and profit. Many of these gatekeepers remain invisible — until something goes wrong... The limitations of algorithmic gatekeeping are on full display here. How do you teach the idea of “fair use” to an algorithm? Context matters, and there’s no rule book here; that’s why we have courts."

Creation and copyright law: the case of 3D printing; Conversation, 11/8/12

Matthew Rimmer, Conversation; Creation and copyright law: the case of 3D printing: "In Australia, the developers of 3D printing face certain risks and uncertainties in respect to litigation under Australian copyright law. Australia does not have a broad, open-ended, flexible defence of fair use, like the United States. Instead, Australia has the much more narrow defence of fair dealing. The permitted purposes for fair dealing include research and study; criticism and review; reporting the news; and parody and satire. The developers of 3D printing would struggle to obtain protection under the defence of fair dealing – outside educational applications within Australian universities. As such, the developers behind 3D printing would be loath to establish their operations in Australia. They would be vulnerable to copyright law suits. Such entrepreneurs would be better off sheltering under the protection afforded by the defence of fair use in the United States. No wonder MakerBot and Solidoodle are based in Brooklyn, not Sydney. Given our comparative disadvantage in the digital economy, with our strict and draconian copyright laws, Australia would be well-advised to revise its copyright laws and adopt a defence of fair use, which is flexible enough to accommodate the emergence of 3D printing."

YouTube videos make people money, but songwriters rarely see any of it; Guardian, 11/13/12

Helienne Lindvall, Guardian; YouTube videos make people money, but songwriters rarely see any of it: "Naturally, songwriters prefer to concentrate on creating music instead of trying to decipher why their digital royalties are so low. But I decided to enquire further, and discovered that the deeper you look into the nature of digital licensing deals, the murkier the waters and that even people working at music companies were confused about them. To begin to understand why, first of all one needs to understand that the copyrights to each record are divided into two categories: the master rights for the recording, which belong to the record label/artist, and the rights to the composition, which belong to the publisher/songwriter. As YouTube marries video and audio, it requires both a performance licence and a mechanical synch licence for each category for each song. Many record labels I spoke to were shocked by how little the songwriters in my article got paid for YouTube videos."

Google Presses Fair Use Case in Book Scanning Appeal; Library Journal, 11/12/12

Gary Price, Library Journal; Google Presses Fair Use Case in Book Scanning Appeal: "On November 9, Google asked a federal appeals court to reverse the May ruling that the Authors Guild’s long running case against Google Books could go forward as a class action. In August, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided to allow Google to appeal for decertifying the case as a class action...Since the last time Google sought dismissal of the Guild case, in July, Google’s side has been strengthened by the ruling in the Guild’s case against the HathiTrust, for allowing Google to digitize their holdings and putting them to several uses."

The Fight for Free Information: Liberate Our Cultural Assets from Economic Prisons; Library Journal, 11/12/12

John N. Berry III, Library Journal; The Fight for Free Information: Liberate Our Cultural Assets from Economic Prisons: "A huge, much more important question lurks over the entire struggle. We have to participate in the ongoing effort to decide whether the digital brave new world into which we are moving will offer people more freedom of access to information and entertainment, or confine our intellectual resources in a maze of impenetrable legal walls that could ultimately end much of the intellectual freedom we have enjoyed through the print era. Is technology liberating information, or will it allow special interests to use the law to deny access to it? Currently there are many attempts to create models for a digital information future. In most of them, the concept of a book collection is replaced by a universal online catalog of digitized works that everyone can simply tap for downloading onto their own devices. The problem is that many will not be able to afford the fees for such access. Proposed models that require us to pay for each use of our intellectual resources are far more plentiful than those that let us pay once for all of our uses of them."

Authors Guild Appeals HathiTrust Decision, Library Copyright Alliance Issues Statement; Library Journal, 11/9/12

Gary Price, Library Journal; Authors Guild Appeals HathiTrust Decision, Library Copyright Alliance Issues Statement: "On November 8, the Authors Guild appealed the verdict in its case against the HathiTrust to the U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit. The Guild had filed suit against the Trust in 2011, alleging that the Trust’s digitization efforts constituted copyright infringement. However, on October 10, Judge Baer of the United States District Court Southern District of New York found overwhelmingly in favor of HathiTrust."

Could US Election Result Reverse Ever-Stronger Copyright Protection?; Intellectual Property Watch, 11/7/12

Intellectual Property Watch; Could US Election Result Reverse Ever-Stronger Copyright Protection? : "US voters returned President Obama for four more years, and kept his party’s dominance of the US Senate as well as the opposition party’s dominance of the House of Representatives. While the Obama administration has generally allied itself with copyright interests, some see the possibility of a reversal in the US Congress of a trend toward stronger copyright protection."

US Makes New Exemptions To Digital Millennium Copyright Act Provision; Intellectual Property Watch, 11/1/12

Maricel Estavillo, Intellectual Property Watch; US Makes New Exemptions To Digital Millennium Copyright Act Provision: "The United States has made new exemptions to a provision in its copyright law that prohibits the circumvention of technological measures to gain access to protected digital works. The Federal Register notice of the new exemptions is here [pdf]. As part of the triennial review of Section 1201(a)(1)(B) of the US Copyright Act, the Librarian of Congress approved the following “classes of work” to be allowed effective 28 October..."

Artist who sued Twitter over copyright declares victory—via settlement; ArsTechnica.com, 11/2/12

Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica.com; Artist who sued Twitter over copyright declares victory—via settlement: "Two months ago, an artist named Christopher Boffoli sued Twitter for copyright infringement because, he said, the company refused to take down copies of his artwork uploaded to Twitter by its users. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, sites like Twitter are granted a "safe harbor" against prosecution as long as they take copyrighted content down when they are notified of its existence. Boffoli, who made a popular series of photographs of miniature figures posed on and near food, sent Twitter numerous requests to take his artwork off the site, and many of them were ignored..."The matter was settled amicably out of court and I'm pleased to say that we had a productive conversation about copyright, and that I'm satisfied with the outcome," Boffoli told Ars via e-mail."

Aliens Have Landed, Hoping To License All Of Humanity's Music; All Songs Considered, 7/9/12

Bob Boilen, All Songs Considered; Aliens Have Landed, Hoping To License All Of Humanity's Music: "This just in: Aliens from pretty far away have been listening to music from Earth for the past 35 years. As it turns out, the planet's only redeeming quality is our music. From a legal standpoint this is great news, the biggest copyright violation since forever. That's the first thing you want to know about Rob Reid's smart and wacky novel Year Zero, out this week."