Jaclyn Belczyk, Jurist; France court rules Google book search violates copyright laws:
"A French court ruled Friday that Google [corporate website] violated French copyright law through its book-scanning initiative [Google Books website]. The Parisian court fined Google €300,000 euros (USD $430,000) for digitizing books and making excerpts available on the web. The challenge was brought in 2006 by French publishing group La Martiniere, along with the French publisher's union Syndicat National de l'Edition (SNE) and the writers' society Societe des Gens de Lettres (SDGL) [websites, in French]. The head of the SNE expressed satisfaction [BBC report] with the verdict. Also this week, a Chinese court agreed to hear [FT report] a challenge to Google's digital books project.
While Friday's ruling is the first time a court has condemned Google's book scanning initiative, the company has also faced legal challenges in the US. Last year, Google agreed to settle [JURIST report] two copyright infringement lawsuits."
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/12/france-court-rules-google-book-search.php
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Libraries ask for oversight of Google books product; Reuters, 12/17/09
Reuters; Libraries ask for oversight of Google books product:
"The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries said that there was unlikely to be an effective competitor to Google's massive project in the near term.
It asked the government to urge the court to use its oversight authority to prevent abusive pricing of the online book project.
"The United States should carefully monitor implementation of the settlement, including the pricing of the institutional subscription," the library organizations said in their letter, which was dated December 15 but released on Thursday.
It was addressed to William Cavanaugh, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's antitrust division."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BG5AY20091217?type=artsNews
"The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries said that there was unlikely to be an effective competitor to Google's massive project in the near term.
It asked the government to urge the court to use its oversight authority to prevent abusive pricing of the online book project.
"The United States should carefully monitor implementation of the settlement, including the pricing of the institutional subscription," the library organizations said in their letter, which was dated December 15 but released on Thursday.
It was addressed to William Cavanaugh, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's antitrust division."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BG5AY20091217?type=artsNews
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Canada Also Getting Pushed By EU On Ridiculous Copyright Policies; TechDirt, 12/18/09
Mike Masnick, TechDirt; Canada Also Getting Pushed By EU On Ridiculous Copyright Policies:
"If you thought secrecy over ACTA was bad enough, apparently Canada and the EU are involved in equally secret negotiations on a separate treaty that has additional copyright implications that are just as bad, if not worse than what ACTA would require. As with ACTA, the details have just leaked, and they're pretty ridiculous. From Michael Geist's link above:
Copyright term extension. The current term of copyright law in Canada is life of the author plus 50 years. This is consistent with the term requirements under the Berne Convention. The EU is demanding that Canada add an additional 20 years by making the term life plus 70 years.
WIPO ratification. The EU is demanding that Canada respect the rights and obligations under the WIPO Internet treaties. The EU only formally ratified those treaties this week.
Anti-circumvention provisions. The EU is demanding that Canada implement anti-circumvention provisions that include a ban on the distribution of circumvention devices. There is no such requirement in the WIPO Internet treaties.
ISP Liability provisions. The EU is demanding statutory provisions on ISP liability where they act as mere conduits, cache content, or host content. ISPs would qualify for a statutory safe harbour in appropriate circumstances. There is no three-strikes and you're out language (which presumably originates with the U.S.).
Enforcement provisions. The EU is demanding that Canada establish a host of new enforcement provisions including measures to preserve evidence, ordering alleged infringers to disclose information on a wide range of issue, mandate disclosure of banking information in commercial infringement cases, allow for injunctive relief, and destruction of goods. There is also a full section on new border measures requirements.
Resale rights. The EU is demanding that Canada implement a new resale right that would provide artists with a royalty based on any resales of their works (subsequent to the first sale).
Making available or distribution rights. The EU is demanding that Canada implement a distribution or making available right to copyright owners...
Allowing countries to set their own copyright laws and policies is important. Because we've never had an evidence based copyright, and because there's growing evidence that draconian copyright laws can harm creative output, it would seem like a better solution would be to let different countries experiment with different copyright laws (or none at all...) to see what happens and what works best. Forcing all countries to align under identical copyright laws, entirely at the behest of a single industry, with provisions to regularly ratchet things up with no real review of the evidence seems immensely problematic."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091217/1233387410.shtml
"If you thought secrecy over ACTA was bad enough, apparently Canada and the EU are involved in equally secret negotiations on a separate treaty that has additional copyright implications that are just as bad, if not worse than what ACTA would require. As with ACTA, the details have just leaked, and they're pretty ridiculous. From Michael Geist's link above:
Copyright term extension. The current term of copyright law in Canada is life of the author plus 50 years. This is consistent with the term requirements under the Berne Convention. The EU is demanding that Canada add an additional 20 years by making the term life plus 70 years.
WIPO ratification. The EU is demanding that Canada respect the rights and obligations under the WIPO Internet treaties. The EU only formally ratified those treaties this week.
Anti-circumvention provisions. The EU is demanding that Canada implement anti-circumvention provisions that include a ban on the distribution of circumvention devices. There is no such requirement in the WIPO Internet treaties.
ISP Liability provisions. The EU is demanding statutory provisions on ISP liability where they act as mere conduits, cache content, or host content. ISPs would qualify for a statutory safe harbour in appropriate circumstances. There is no three-strikes and you're out language (which presumably originates with the U.S.).
Enforcement provisions. The EU is demanding that Canada establish a host of new enforcement provisions including measures to preserve evidence, ordering alleged infringers to disclose information on a wide range of issue, mandate disclosure of banking information in commercial infringement cases, allow for injunctive relief, and destruction of goods. There is also a full section on new border measures requirements.
Resale rights. The EU is demanding that Canada implement a new resale right that would provide artists with a royalty based on any resales of their works (subsequent to the first sale).
Making available or distribution rights. The EU is demanding that Canada implement a distribution or making available right to copyright owners...
Allowing countries to set their own copyright laws and policies is important. Because we've never had an evidence based copyright, and because there's growing evidence that draconian copyright laws can harm creative output, it would seem like a better solution would be to let different countries experiment with different copyright laws (or none at all...) to see what happens and what works best. Forcing all countries to align under identical copyright laws, entirely at the behest of a single industry, with provisions to regularly ratchet things up with no real review of the evidence seems immensely problematic."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091217/1233387410.shtml
Friday, December 18, 2009
Google Loses in French Copyright Case; New York Times, 12/18/09
Matthew Saltmarsh, New York Times; Google Loses in French Copyright Case:
"A French court ruled on Friday that Google infringed copyrights by digitizing books and putting extracts online without authorization, dealing a setback to its embattled book project.
The court in Paris ruled against Google after a publishing group, La Martinière, backed by publishers and authors, argued that the industry was being exploited by Google’s Book Search program, which was started in 2005.
The court ordered Google to pay over 300,000 euros, or $430,000, in damages and interest and to stop digital reproduction of the material. The company was also ordered to pay 10,000 euros a day in fines until it removed extracts of some French books from its online database.
Google said it believed that it had complied with French copyright law and that it planned to appeal the decision.
“We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S. — and improves access to books,” said Philippe Colombet, who is responsible for Google’s books partnership in France.
Mr. Colombet said he did not know whether the company would immediately remove the excerpts or pay the fine; Google’s lawyers were still examining the ruling. He also said there would be no impact on Google’s settlement with publishers and authors in the United States, an agreement that would allow the company the right to digitize, catalog and sell millions of books online that are under copyright protection."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/technology/companies/19google.html?_r=1&hpw
"A French court ruled on Friday that Google infringed copyrights by digitizing books and putting extracts online without authorization, dealing a setback to its embattled book project.
The court in Paris ruled against Google after a publishing group, La Martinière, backed by publishers and authors, argued that the industry was being exploited by Google’s Book Search program, which was started in 2005.
The court ordered Google to pay over 300,000 euros, or $430,000, in damages and interest and to stop digital reproduction of the material. The company was also ordered to pay 10,000 euros a day in fines until it removed extracts of some French books from its online database.
Google said it believed that it had complied with French copyright law and that it planned to appeal the decision.
“We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S. — and improves access to books,” said Philippe Colombet, who is responsible for Google’s books partnership in France.
Mr. Colombet said he did not know whether the company would immediately remove the excerpts or pay the fine; Google’s lawyers were still examining the ruling. He also said there would be no impact on Google’s settlement with publishers and authors in the United States, an agreement that would allow the company the right to digitize, catalog and sell millions of books online that are under copyright protection."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/technology/companies/19google.html?_r=1&hpw
Google Book Search violates French copyright law; Ars Technica, 12/18/09
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica; Google Book Search violates French copyright law:
Google owes €300,000 to a French publishing group after a court found the search and advertising giant liable for scanning La Martinière's books for use in Google Book Search without permission.
"Google's preferred way of indexing information—doing it without permission, relying on fair use or fair dealing laws—has run into yet another spot of trouble in Western Europe. A French court has just ruled that the advertising giant must pay €300,000 in damages to a French publishing group for scanning, indexing, and displaying snippets of its work as part of Google Book Search."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/google-book-search-violates-french-copyright-law.ars
Google owes €300,000 to a French publishing group after a court found the search and advertising giant liable for scanning La Martinière's books for use in Google Book Search without permission.
"Google's preferred way of indexing information—doing it without permission, relying on fair use or fair dealing laws—has run into yet another spot of trouble in Western Europe. A French court has just ruled that the advertising giant must pay €300,000 in damages to a French publishing group for scanning, indexing, and displaying snippets of its work as part of Google Book Search."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/google-book-search-violates-french-copyright-law.ars
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Chinese Writer Sues Google China; New York Times, 12/17/09
Edward Wong, New York Times; Chinese Writer Sues Google China:
"A Chinese writer has filed a lawsuit against Google China in Beijing, accusing the company of copyright infringement. The writer, Mian Mian, a novelist based in Shanghai, said Google China had scanned “Acid Lover,” a novel she had written, without notifying or paying her, according to China Daily, an official English-language newspaper. On Nov. 15, Google China deleted the book from its Web site, but passages from it still appear during keyword searches, Ms. Mian said. She is asking Google China to delete all passages and issue a public apology to her, and to pay her about $8,800 in compensation. She is the first individual writer in China to sue Google China."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/world/asia/17briefs-google.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=google%20china&st=cse
"A Chinese writer has filed a lawsuit against Google China in Beijing, accusing the company of copyright infringement. The writer, Mian Mian, a novelist based in Shanghai, said Google China had scanned “Acid Lover,” a novel she had written, without notifying or paying her, according to China Daily, an official English-language newspaper. On Nov. 15, Google China deleted the book from its Web site, but passages from it still appear during keyword searches, Ms. Mian said. She is asking Google China to delete all passages and issue a public apology to her, and to pay her about $8,800 in compensation. She is the first individual writer in China to sue Google China."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/world/asia/17briefs-google.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=google%20china&st=cse
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Music Business Heads Into Virtual World; New York Times; 12/16/09
Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller, New York Times; Music Business Heads Into Virtual World:
"It seems likely that the idea of music ownership will never go away, and that newer methods of accessing music will exist alongside old ones. Bobby Mohr, a 23-year-old music fan from Brooklyn who has accumulated 100 gigabytes of songs, keeps some of them on free Web-based storage services, so he can download tracks when he travels and burn them onto CDs to play in the car.
But Mr. Mohr is hesitant to abandon the idea of owning music altogether, citing the unreliability of wireless networks and the fact that his collection would be inaccessible at his job at a police oversight agency, where he is not allowed to use the Internet.
“I like having external hard drives that are troves of my music,” he said. “You just collect it, you have this library. You discover new genres every year and you go through it and look at what you have, and that’s nice.”
Bob Lefsetz, who writes an influential music industry newsletter, the Lefsetz Letter, acknowledged that some people bristle at the idea of not owning their music, but he compared them to people who once said they would never rent a videotape.
“If you ask anybody today, they’ll tell you, ‘I need to own it.’ But once you have these services, you get to the point of, ‘Why would I own it, because I have access to everything?’”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/technology/internet/16tune.html?em
"It seems likely that the idea of music ownership will never go away, and that newer methods of accessing music will exist alongside old ones. Bobby Mohr, a 23-year-old music fan from Brooklyn who has accumulated 100 gigabytes of songs, keeps some of them on free Web-based storage services, so he can download tracks when he travels and burn them onto CDs to play in the car.
But Mr. Mohr is hesitant to abandon the idea of owning music altogether, citing the unreliability of wireless networks and the fact that his collection would be inaccessible at his job at a police oversight agency, where he is not allowed to use the Internet.
“I like having external hard drives that are troves of my music,” he said. “You just collect it, you have this library. You discover new genres every year and you go through it and look at what you have, and that’s nice.”
Bob Lefsetz, who writes an influential music industry newsletter, the Lefsetz Letter, acknowledged that some people bristle at the idea of not owning their music, but he compared them to people who once said they would never rent a videotape.
“If you ask anybody today, they’ll tell you, ‘I need to own it.’ But once you have these services, you get to the point of, ‘Why would I own it, because I have access to everything?’”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/technology/internet/16tune.html?em
‘X-Men’ Piracy Investigation Leads F.B.I. to Arrest Man From the Bronx; New York Times, 12/16/09
Brooks Barnes, New York Times; ‘X-Men’ Piracy Investigation Leads F.B.I. to Arrest Man From the Bronx:
"After a nine-month hunt, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested a Bronx man on Wednesday suspected of posting an unfinished version of the 20th Century Fox movie “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” on the Web before it was released in theaters.
But the investigation into the source of the piracy, to find out who actually took the copy of the movie from the studio, is continuing and more arrests are possible, according to Laura Eimiller, an F.B.I. spokeswoman.
Gilberto Sanchez, 47, was arrested at his home at about 6 a.m., according to Ms. Eimiller. Mr. Sanchez was indicted last Thursday by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on charges of uploading the unfinished copy of the movie to a Web site, Megaupload.com, last spring.
If convicted, Mr. Sanchez faces three years in prison and a $250,000 fine or twice the gross gain or gross loss attributable to the offense, whichever is greater, according to the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles. Lisa E. Feldman, an assistant attorney from that office’s Cyber and Intellectual Property Crimes unit will prosecute the case. She said that Mr. Sanchez has been released on bail.
The unfinished version of “Wolverine” — missing many special effects and using temporary sound — was leaked to the Internet on March 31. Within hours, the $150 million movie, set to open on May 1, had been watched by thousands of people online, setting off a panic inside Fox about the potential box office impact.
Ultimately, Fox estimated that the file was downloaded 15 million times."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/business/media/17pirate.html?_r=1&hpw
"After a nine-month hunt, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested a Bronx man on Wednesday suspected of posting an unfinished version of the 20th Century Fox movie “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” on the Web before it was released in theaters.
But the investigation into the source of the piracy, to find out who actually took the copy of the movie from the studio, is continuing and more arrests are possible, according to Laura Eimiller, an F.B.I. spokeswoman.
Gilberto Sanchez, 47, was arrested at his home at about 6 a.m., according to Ms. Eimiller. Mr. Sanchez was indicted last Thursday by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on charges of uploading the unfinished copy of the movie to a Web site, Megaupload.com, last spring.
If convicted, Mr. Sanchez faces three years in prison and a $250,000 fine or twice the gross gain or gross loss attributable to the offense, whichever is greater, according to the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles. Lisa E. Feldman, an assistant attorney from that office’s Cyber and Intellectual Property Crimes unit will prosecute the case. She said that Mr. Sanchez has been released on bail.
The unfinished version of “Wolverine” — missing many special effects and using temporary sound — was leaked to the Internet on March 31. Within hours, the $150 million movie, set to open on May 1, had been watched by thousands of people online, setting off a panic inside Fox about the potential box office impact.
Ultimately, Fox estimated that the file was downloaded 15 million times."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/business/media/17pirate.html?_r=1&hpw
FBI arrests New York man for `Wolverine' piracy; Associated Press, 12/16/09
Associated Press; FBI arrests New York man for `Wolverine' piracy:
"The FBI has arrested a New York man indicted for illegally distributing pirated copies of the movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller says in a statement that Gilberto Sanchez was arrested at his Bronx home early Wednesday without incident. The 47-year-old Sanchez was indicted Dec. 10 by a Los Angeles federal grand jury for violation of federal copyright law.
He's expected to appear Wednesday before a U.S. magistrate judge in New York.
The indictment, unsealed after Wednesday's arrest, says Sanchez uploaded the copyrighted "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" to an Internet site last spring. He faces a possible three years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gross gain or gross loss attributable to the offense, whichever is greater."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jOwTp8ZWeiOljaF5_3FFE_f3s4AQD9CKGLJ80
"The FBI has arrested a New York man indicted for illegally distributing pirated copies of the movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller says in a statement that Gilberto Sanchez was arrested at his Bronx home early Wednesday without incident. The 47-year-old Sanchez was indicted Dec. 10 by a Los Angeles federal grand jury for violation of federal copyright law.
He's expected to appear Wednesday before a U.S. magistrate judge in New York.
The indictment, unsealed after Wednesday's arrest, says Sanchez uploaded the copyrighted "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" to an Internet site last spring. He faces a possible three years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gross gain or gross loss attributable to the offense, whichever is greater."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jOwTp8ZWeiOljaF5_3FFE_f3s4AQD9CKGLJ80
IT experts call for crackdown on copyright piracy; Daily Star (Lebanon), 12/16/09
Dana Halawi, Daily Star (Lebanon); IT experts call for crackdown on copyright piracy:
"Information Technology (IT) experts gathered on Tuesday at Ramada Hotel in Beirut to tackle challenges facing Lebanon’s IT industry due to lack of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection. “One of the main challenges facing this sector in Lebanon is the absence of effective entities tailored to the protection of IPR. This includes the challenge of issuing laws by the Lebanese government that are compatible with the international agreements signed by Lebanon for its accession to the World Trade Organization,” said Microsoft’s anti-piracy manager for North Africa, Eastern Mediterranean and Pakistan Aly Harakeh.
Respecting intellectual property rights is one of the basic conditions of joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). Lebanon is a signatory to several international agreements relating to intellectual property rights and started the process for accession to the WTO in 1999, but could not join because of its failure to properly implement the basic required conditions. The country’s accession application is still ongoing, according to the WTO website...
Sectors dependant on intellectual innovations are crucial to the Lebanese economy. Lebanon is on the top of Arab countries when it comes to intellectual innovations and arts, and these sectors can contribute a lot more to our economy than the core industries such as agriculture and manufacturing.
According to a report issued by the Institute of Finance, the industries in Lebanon which copyright applies to contribute 4.74 percent to GDP and 4.54 percent to employment. However, the report said, the core industries contribute 2.53 percent to GDP and 2.11 percent to employment.
The study said that the industries which copyright laws apply to generated $555.52 million of value added, generated from nine sectors including press and literature, music, theatrical productions, opera, motion pictures and video, radio and television, photography, software and databases, visual and graphic arts, advertising and copyright collecting societies.
A report issued by the Business Software Alliance said that the piracy rates in Lebanon reached 74 percent in 2008, while losses incurred from piracy activities reached $49 million in the same year."
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=3&article_id=109830
"Information Technology (IT) experts gathered on Tuesday at Ramada Hotel in Beirut to tackle challenges facing Lebanon’s IT industry due to lack of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection. “One of the main challenges facing this sector in Lebanon is the absence of effective entities tailored to the protection of IPR. This includes the challenge of issuing laws by the Lebanese government that are compatible with the international agreements signed by Lebanon for its accession to the World Trade Organization,” said Microsoft’s anti-piracy manager for North Africa, Eastern Mediterranean and Pakistan Aly Harakeh.
Respecting intellectual property rights is one of the basic conditions of joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). Lebanon is a signatory to several international agreements relating to intellectual property rights and started the process for accession to the WTO in 1999, but could not join because of its failure to properly implement the basic required conditions. The country’s accession application is still ongoing, according to the WTO website...
Sectors dependant on intellectual innovations are crucial to the Lebanese economy. Lebanon is on the top of Arab countries when it comes to intellectual innovations and arts, and these sectors can contribute a lot more to our economy than the core industries such as agriculture and manufacturing.
According to a report issued by the Institute of Finance, the industries in Lebanon which copyright applies to contribute 4.74 percent to GDP and 4.54 percent to employment. However, the report said, the core industries contribute 2.53 percent to GDP and 2.11 percent to employment.
The study said that the industries which copyright laws apply to generated $555.52 million of value added, generated from nine sectors including press and literature, music, theatrical productions, opera, motion pictures and video, radio and television, photography, software and databases, visual and graphic arts, advertising and copyright collecting societies.
A report issued by the Business Software Alliance said that the piracy rates in Lebanon reached 74 percent in 2008, while losses incurred from piracy activities reached $49 million in the same year."
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=3&article_id=109830
Europe Talks Tough On Piracy and Copyright; eWeek Europe, 12/15/09
Andrew Donoghue, eWeek Europe; Europe Talks Tough On Piracy and Copyright:
"European authorities have outlined plans to combat piracy and counterfeiting which includes plans to protect intellectual property across the region and the ratification of an international law on copyright in development since 1996.
The European Commission and member states met in Stockhom this week to discuss plans around the European Observatory for Counterfeiting and Piracy - an agency established last April. According to European authorities, the Observatory was created to help develp a "databank" of intelligence on how best to combat the threats posed to innovation in the region by piracy and counterfeiting.
"The EU is a world pacesetter for innovation, culture and creativity. It is time to put a stop to organised criminals freeloading on the ingenuity and hard work of the most resourceful businesses in the world. Counterfeiting and piracy is an affliction that is bringing criminality ever closer to our doors," said EC Internal Market and Services commissioner Charlie McCreevy.
McCreevy added that piracy threatens public safety and jobs in Europe."
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/europe-talks-tough-on-piracy-and-copyright-2773
"European authorities have outlined plans to combat piracy and counterfeiting which includes plans to protect intellectual property across the region and the ratification of an international law on copyright in development since 1996.
The European Commission and member states met in Stockhom this week to discuss plans around the European Observatory for Counterfeiting and Piracy - an agency established last April. According to European authorities, the Observatory was created to help develp a "databank" of intelligence on how best to combat the threats posed to innovation in the region by piracy and counterfeiting.
"The EU is a world pacesetter for innovation, culture and creativity. It is time to put a stop to organised criminals freeloading on the ingenuity and hard work of the most resourceful businesses in the world. Counterfeiting and piracy is an affliction that is bringing criminality ever closer to our doors," said EC Internal Market and Services commissioner Charlie McCreevy.
McCreevy added that piracy threatens public safety and jobs in Europe."
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/europe-talks-tough-on-piracy-and-copyright-2773
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
A Push in Law Schools to Reform Copyright; New York Times, 12/1/09
Nazanin Lankarani, New York Times; A Push in Law Schools to Reform Copyright:
"Since 2007, U.S. university students have been a prime target of a litigation campaign by the Recording Industry Association of America, or R.I.A.A., the music industry trade group that has found university campuses to be hives of file-sharing activity.
“The music industry is acting like a digital police force,” Charles Nesson, a Harvard law professor who defended Mr. Tenenbaum at trial with the assistance of law students, said in a phone interview from Boston. “Academia must get involved, to bring fairness to the process.”...
A report in June by the analysis firm Forrester Research said that 27 percent of peer-to-peer, or P2P, network music sharers in the United States last year were in the 18 to 24 age group and 43 percent in the 25 to 34 age group. File sharing, a largely clandestine activity, is hard to measure, but Forrester said that, based on admitted cases, it estimated the number of file-sharers, as a percentage of all Internet users, to be two to three times greater in Europe than in the United States.
“Downloading is so easy, and there is so much free content on the Internet, it is hard to distinguish between illegal downloading, streaming free content and copying from a friend’s laptop,” said Rana Nader, a recent law graduate of Université Panthéon-Assas, in Paris, who also has a law master’s degree in multimedia and information technology from Kings College in London.
“When the product is digital, it does not feel like stealing,” said Ms. Nader.
In the past decade, peer-to-peer technology companies have mutated endlessly and rapidly in cyberspace, becoming increasingly difficult to police.
In the 10 years since Napster first offered its P2P service, the ability to create, access and swap music in user-friendly MP3 format has revolutionized the music industry for a generation of musicians, producers and consumers.
But along with ease of access has come legal uncertainty and risk.
“Internet has helped develop new forms of amateur entertainment,” said Mr. Nesson. “You no longer need a ‘label’ to put out a good song. Soon, we will not be able to tell what is copyrighted and what isn’t. That is why defining the limits of copyright and public right is fundamental to the development of cyberspace.”
Law school teachers are active participants, in classrooms, in the courts and before legislative assemblies, in the debate on how to reform laws often dating from the age of vinyl.
“File sharing is the way music is accessed today,” said Daniel Gervais, professor of international intellectual property law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “Our students ask, ‘Why can’t we continue to do it, but pay for it?”’
Last August, Mr. Gervais, who is also affiliated with the University of Ottawa in Canada, received funding from the Ontario Province government to propose changes to Canadian copyright law to meet the needs of users of copyrighted material. Fifteen students are helping him to complete the project.
“We are making ourselves heard by the legislature and the courts,” Mr. Gervais said.
For law students, digital copyright has become a hot topic. “Since 2008, our annual seminar on music and digital copyright has been more than full,” Mr. Gervais said. “Students all file-share; they are all on Facebook and Twitter. Copyright is connected to their own reality.”
One idea under study is to assess a global license fee, to be collected and paid by the Internet service provider, permitting unlimited media usage. This approach “has wide support here,” he said.
The fee would be levied by the service providers as a voluntary flat tax, payable by customers who accessed music online via file-sharing networks, and would be earmarked for artists or other rights holders, replacing royalties. Effectively, that would turn the service providers into the online equivalent of royalty-collection societies like Broadcast Music Inc., a U.S. music performing rights organization, or its British, Dutch, French and German counterparts, which for years have collected fees for artists from radio stations, bars, clubs and other performance venues.
“If you add all the monthly fees collected in all major music markets, you could get a total above $20 billion a year, which added to other revenues from ticket, merchandise and other sales would match or surpass the music industry’s best years,” Mr. Gervais said.
Yet, if some academics and lawmakers are looking at ways to legalize the sharing of copyrighted digital material for noncommercial use, others prefer the opposite tack of more draconian punishment for “music piracy.”
French lawmakers have opted in particular to criminalize music file-sharing.
“To impose a global fee is problematic,” Frédéric Pollaud-Dulian, a professor at University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and a specialist in media law, said in a telephone interview. “Not all Internet users download copyrighted material. Also, to allow open access to copyrighted material deprives the copyright holders of control over their own work.”
The prevailing view in France, Professor Pollaud-Dulian said, remains that existing law should not be overhauled simply because new customs and practices, however widespread, do not fit. So, copyright laws should not be adjusted simply because people are using new technology to access music.
“We teach our students that illegally downloading music is a threat to creativity,” Professor Pollaud-Dulian said. “The work of an artist has monetary value. Being a musician is not a hobby.”
In October, the French Constitutional Council cleared the way for a controversial bill, known as Hadopi II, that empowers French courts to temporarily cut off the Internet access of copyright infringers or of individuals who fail to protect their broadband access line against illegal downloading.
“When you violate driving laws, your car is taken away,” said Mr. Pollaud-Dulian. “If you do not abide by hunting rules, your rifle is taken away. To say that depriving a user of Internet access infringes on a fundamental right is pure fantasy.”
Others view the loss of Internet access rights as an excessively punitive measure that violates a basic right, and a trademark of repressive regimes.
“In a democratic society, you need Internet access to participate in the sociopolitical process,” said Mr. Gervais. “Without it, you have less active and less informed citizens.”
According to Andrew Murray, a reader in law who specializes in cyberregulation and information technology law at the London School of Economics law department, the British government is consulting with law professors on a different version of the “three-strikes law.”
“We are looking at a measure where Internet access would be filtered or the user’s bandwidth cluttered to prevent downloading of copyrighted material,” said Mr. Murray, who also acts as an advisor to Creative Commons, a licensing organization created by Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Law School professor, that allows copyright holders to extend licenses to users.
Meanwhile, Mr. Nesson and his team of law students are preparing to appeal the judgment against Mr. Tenenbaum. — up to the Supreme Court if need be.
“If you are selling water in the desert and it starts to rain, what do you do? Go to the government and get them to ban rain, or do you sell something else?” Mr. Nesson said."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/business/global/02iht-riedmedia.html?scp=1&sq=copyright%20reform&st=cse
"Since 2007, U.S. university students have been a prime target of a litigation campaign by the Recording Industry Association of America, or R.I.A.A., the music industry trade group that has found university campuses to be hives of file-sharing activity.
“The music industry is acting like a digital police force,” Charles Nesson, a Harvard law professor who defended Mr. Tenenbaum at trial with the assistance of law students, said in a phone interview from Boston. “Academia must get involved, to bring fairness to the process.”...
A report in June by the analysis firm Forrester Research said that 27 percent of peer-to-peer, or P2P, network music sharers in the United States last year were in the 18 to 24 age group and 43 percent in the 25 to 34 age group. File sharing, a largely clandestine activity, is hard to measure, but Forrester said that, based on admitted cases, it estimated the number of file-sharers, as a percentage of all Internet users, to be two to three times greater in Europe than in the United States.
“Downloading is so easy, and there is so much free content on the Internet, it is hard to distinguish between illegal downloading, streaming free content and copying from a friend’s laptop,” said Rana Nader, a recent law graduate of Université Panthéon-Assas, in Paris, who also has a law master’s degree in multimedia and information technology from Kings College in London.
“When the product is digital, it does not feel like stealing,” said Ms. Nader.
In the past decade, peer-to-peer technology companies have mutated endlessly and rapidly in cyberspace, becoming increasingly difficult to police.
In the 10 years since Napster first offered its P2P service, the ability to create, access and swap music in user-friendly MP3 format has revolutionized the music industry for a generation of musicians, producers and consumers.
But along with ease of access has come legal uncertainty and risk.
“Internet has helped develop new forms of amateur entertainment,” said Mr. Nesson. “You no longer need a ‘label’ to put out a good song. Soon, we will not be able to tell what is copyrighted and what isn’t. That is why defining the limits of copyright and public right is fundamental to the development of cyberspace.”
Law school teachers are active participants, in classrooms, in the courts and before legislative assemblies, in the debate on how to reform laws often dating from the age of vinyl.
“File sharing is the way music is accessed today,” said Daniel Gervais, professor of international intellectual property law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “Our students ask, ‘Why can’t we continue to do it, but pay for it?”’
Last August, Mr. Gervais, who is also affiliated with the University of Ottawa in Canada, received funding from the Ontario Province government to propose changes to Canadian copyright law to meet the needs of users of copyrighted material. Fifteen students are helping him to complete the project.
“We are making ourselves heard by the legislature and the courts,” Mr. Gervais said.
For law students, digital copyright has become a hot topic. “Since 2008, our annual seminar on music and digital copyright has been more than full,” Mr. Gervais said. “Students all file-share; they are all on Facebook and Twitter. Copyright is connected to their own reality.”
One idea under study is to assess a global license fee, to be collected and paid by the Internet service provider, permitting unlimited media usage. This approach “has wide support here,” he said.
The fee would be levied by the service providers as a voluntary flat tax, payable by customers who accessed music online via file-sharing networks, and would be earmarked for artists or other rights holders, replacing royalties. Effectively, that would turn the service providers into the online equivalent of royalty-collection societies like Broadcast Music Inc., a U.S. music performing rights organization, or its British, Dutch, French and German counterparts, which for years have collected fees for artists from radio stations, bars, clubs and other performance venues.
“If you add all the monthly fees collected in all major music markets, you could get a total above $20 billion a year, which added to other revenues from ticket, merchandise and other sales would match or surpass the music industry’s best years,” Mr. Gervais said.
Yet, if some academics and lawmakers are looking at ways to legalize the sharing of copyrighted digital material for noncommercial use, others prefer the opposite tack of more draconian punishment for “music piracy.”
French lawmakers have opted in particular to criminalize music file-sharing.
“To impose a global fee is problematic,” Frédéric Pollaud-Dulian, a professor at University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and a specialist in media law, said in a telephone interview. “Not all Internet users download copyrighted material. Also, to allow open access to copyrighted material deprives the copyright holders of control over their own work.”
The prevailing view in France, Professor Pollaud-Dulian said, remains that existing law should not be overhauled simply because new customs and practices, however widespread, do not fit. So, copyright laws should not be adjusted simply because people are using new technology to access music.
“We teach our students that illegally downloading music is a threat to creativity,” Professor Pollaud-Dulian said. “The work of an artist has monetary value. Being a musician is not a hobby.”
In October, the French Constitutional Council cleared the way for a controversial bill, known as Hadopi II, that empowers French courts to temporarily cut off the Internet access of copyright infringers or of individuals who fail to protect their broadband access line against illegal downloading.
“When you violate driving laws, your car is taken away,” said Mr. Pollaud-Dulian. “If you do not abide by hunting rules, your rifle is taken away. To say that depriving a user of Internet access infringes on a fundamental right is pure fantasy.”
Others view the loss of Internet access rights as an excessively punitive measure that violates a basic right, and a trademark of repressive regimes.
“In a democratic society, you need Internet access to participate in the sociopolitical process,” said Mr. Gervais. “Without it, you have less active and less informed citizens.”
According to Andrew Murray, a reader in law who specializes in cyberregulation and information technology law at the London School of Economics law department, the British government is consulting with law professors on a different version of the “three-strikes law.”
“We are looking at a measure where Internet access would be filtered or the user’s bandwidth cluttered to prevent downloading of copyrighted material,” said Mr. Murray, who also acts as an advisor to Creative Commons, a licensing organization created by Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Law School professor, that allows copyright holders to extend licenses to users.
Meanwhile, Mr. Nesson and his team of law students are preparing to appeal the judgment against Mr. Tenenbaum. — up to the Supreme Court if need be.
“If you are selling water in the desert and it starts to rain, what do you do? Go to the government and get them to ban rain, or do you sell something else?” Mr. Nesson said."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/business/global/02iht-riedmedia.html?scp=1&sq=copyright%20reform&st=cse
Top Author Shifts E-Book Rights to Amazon.com; New York Times, 12/15/09
Brad Stone and Motoko Rich, New York Times; Top Author Shifts E-Book Rights to Amazon.com:
"Ever since electronic books emerged as a major growth market, New York’s largest publishing houses have worried that big-name authors might sign deals directly with e-book retailers or other new ventures, bypassing traditional publishers entirely.
Now, one well-known author is doing just that.
Stephen R. Covey, one of the most successful business authors of the last two decades, has moved e-book rights for two of his best-selling books from his print publisher, Simon & Schuster, a division of the CBS Corporation, to a digital publisher that will sell the e-books to Amazon.com for one year.
Amazon, maker of the popular Kindle e-reader and one of the biggest book retailers in the country, will have the exclusive rights to sell electronic editions of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” and a later work, “Principle-Centered Leadership.” Mr. Covey also plans to gradually make other e-books available exclusively to Amazon, which will promote them on its Web site.
The move promises to raise the already high anxiety level among publishers about the economics of digital publishing and could offer authors a way to earn more profits from their works than they do under the traditional system.
Mr. Covey is making his books available to Amazon through RosettaBooks, an electronic book publisher that primarily traffics in the older works of authors like Kurt Vonnegut and Virginia Woolf.
Arthur Klebanoff, chief executive of RosettaBooks, said that Mr. Covey would receive more than half of the net proceeds that RosettaBooks took in from Amazon on these e-book sales. In contrast, the standard digital royalty from mainstream publishers is 25 percent of net proceeds...
His move comes as publishers ratchet up their efforts to secure the digital rights to so-called backlist titles — books published many years, if not decades, ago. These books can be vitally important to publishing houses because they are reprinted year after year and provide a stream of guaranteed revenue without much extra marketing effort.
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” originally published in hardcover in 1989, is a steady seller for Simon & Schuster. This year alone, it has sold 136,000 copies in paperback, according to Nielsen BookScan, which generally tracks about 70 percent of sales.
Many authors and agents say that because the contracts for older books do not explicitly spell out electronic rights, they reside with the author. Big publishing houses argue that clauses like “in book form” or phrases that prohibit “competitive editions” preclude authors from publishing e-books through other parties.
Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for Simon & Schuster, declined to comment directly on Mr. Covey’s moves, but said, “Our position is that electronic editions of our backlist titles belong in the Simon & Schuster catalog, and we intend to protect our interests in those publications.”
Other publishers have moved to stake their claim on e-book rights for older titles. On Friday, Random House sent a letter to dozens of literary agents stating that on all backlist books, it retained “the exclusive right to publish in electronic book publishing formats.”...
The skirmish over e-books is part of a larger multidimensional chess match being played among publishers, authors, agents and book retailers. The big publishing houses hate the uniform e-book price of $9.99 that Amazon and others have set for newer titles. Although the retailers are subsidizing that price, executives say they believe that such pricing harms the market for more expensive hardcovers, and some publishers have reacted by announcing they will delay the publication of certain e-books by several months after they are made available in hardcover.
Last week, Simon & Schuster said it would delay by four months the e-book versions of 35 titles being published in hardcover from January to April. Both the Hachette Book Group and HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide have also indicated they will delay e-book editions.
Reacting to that move, Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, directly criticized Simon & Schuster and its chief executive, Carolyn Reidy.
“Simon & Schuster is backward-leaning,” Mr. Herdener said. “Carolyn wants to corral readers, force them to buy what they wouldn’t buy if they had a choice. It won’t work. The better approach is to embrace the evolution of the book and give customers what they want. Forward-leaning publishers are going to clean up.”
Mr. Rothberg, the Simon & Schuster spokesman, said that his company wasn’t trying to upset anyone. “The notion that we have done anything other than wholeheartedly embrace the digital revolution, whether it be for e-books, new formats, reaching out to our readers wherever they may be, and every other opportunity provided in the new digital era, is patently absurd,” he said.
He added, however, “We understand that there’s a lot at stake and we look forward to further discussions with Amazon about how to grow this business without making our discussions of a personal nature.”
Mike Shatzkin, the chief executive of Idea Logical, which advises publishers on digital strategy, said that publishers were trying to minimize Amazon’s outsize influence in the book business and preserve their own. “Publishers are trying to herd Amazon back into their corner and keep it there,” he said. “But I think that this is going to be a very difficult situation for the big publishers to control.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/technology/companies/15amazon.html?scp=1&sq=covey&st=cse
"Ever since electronic books emerged as a major growth market, New York’s largest publishing houses have worried that big-name authors might sign deals directly with e-book retailers or other new ventures, bypassing traditional publishers entirely.
Now, one well-known author is doing just that.
Stephen R. Covey, one of the most successful business authors of the last two decades, has moved e-book rights for two of his best-selling books from his print publisher, Simon & Schuster, a division of the CBS Corporation, to a digital publisher that will sell the e-books to Amazon.com for one year.
Amazon, maker of the popular Kindle e-reader and one of the biggest book retailers in the country, will have the exclusive rights to sell electronic editions of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” and a later work, “Principle-Centered Leadership.” Mr. Covey also plans to gradually make other e-books available exclusively to Amazon, which will promote them on its Web site.
The move promises to raise the already high anxiety level among publishers about the economics of digital publishing and could offer authors a way to earn more profits from their works than they do under the traditional system.
Mr. Covey is making his books available to Amazon through RosettaBooks, an electronic book publisher that primarily traffics in the older works of authors like Kurt Vonnegut and Virginia Woolf.
Arthur Klebanoff, chief executive of RosettaBooks, said that Mr. Covey would receive more than half of the net proceeds that RosettaBooks took in from Amazon on these e-book sales. In contrast, the standard digital royalty from mainstream publishers is 25 percent of net proceeds...
His move comes as publishers ratchet up their efforts to secure the digital rights to so-called backlist titles — books published many years, if not decades, ago. These books can be vitally important to publishing houses because they are reprinted year after year and provide a stream of guaranteed revenue without much extra marketing effort.
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” originally published in hardcover in 1989, is a steady seller for Simon & Schuster. This year alone, it has sold 136,000 copies in paperback, according to Nielsen BookScan, which generally tracks about 70 percent of sales.
Many authors and agents say that because the contracts for older books do not explicitly spell out electronic rights, they reside with the author. Big publishing houses argue that clauses like “in book form” or phrases that prohibit “competitive editions” preclude authors from publishing e-books through other parties.
Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for Simon & Schuster, declined to comment directly on Mr. Covey’s moves, but said, “Our position is that electronic editions of our backlist titles belong in the Simon & Schuster catalog, and we intend to protect our interests in those publications.”
Other publishers have moved to stake their claim on e-book rights for older titles. On Friday, Random House sent a letter to dozens of literary agents stating that on all backlist books, it retained “the exclusive right to publish in electronic book publishing formats.”...
The skirmish over e-books is part of a larger multidimensional chess match being played among publishers, authors, agents and book retailers. The big publishing houses hate the uniform e-book price of $9.99 that Amazon and others have set for newer titles. Although the retailers are subsidizing that price, executives say they believe that such pricing harms the market for more expensive hardcovers, and some publishers have reacted by announcing they will delay the publication of certain e-books by several months after they are made available in hardcover.
Last week, Simon & Schuster said it would delay by four months the e-book versions of 35 titles being published in hardcover from January to April. Both the Hachette Book Group and HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide have also indicated they will delay e-book editions.
Reacting to that move, Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, directly criticized Simon & Schuster and its chief executive, Carolyn Reidy.
“Simon & Schuster is backward-leaning,” Mr. Herdener said. “Carolyn wants to corral readers, force them to buy what they wouldn’t buy if they had a choice. It won’t work. The better approach is to embrace the evolution of the book and give customers what they want. Forward-leaning publishers are going to clean up.”
Mr. Rothberg, the Simon & Schuster spokesman, said that his company wasn’t trying to upset anyone. “The notion that we have done anything other than wholeheartedly embrace the digital revolution, whether it be for e-books, new formats, reaching out to our readers wherever they may be, and every other opportunity provided in the new digital era, is patently absurd,” he said.
He added, however, “We understand that there’s a lot at stake and we look forward to further discussions with Amazon about how to grow this business without making our discussions of a personal nature.”
Mike Shatzkin, the chief executive of Idea Logical, which advises publishers on digital strategy, said that publishers were trying to minimize Amazon’s outsize influence in the book business and preserve their own. “Publishers are trying to herd Amazon back into their corner and keep it there,” he said. “But I think that this is going to be a very difficult situation for the big publishers to control.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/technology/companies/15amazon.html?scp=1&sq=covey&st=cse
Stephen Covey's digital rights deal with Amazon startle New York publishers; Guardian, 12/15/09
Ed Pilkington, Guardian; Stephen Covey's digital rights deal with Amazon startle New York publishers:
"The scramble for survival in the New York publishing world provoked by the rise of the ebook has become so ruthless it makes the Wild West look like a Swiss finishing school. Authors and publishers are squabbling over rights, internet retailers are slugging it out with bookshops, and tech companies are climbing over each other to produce an ebook reader that can challenge Amazon's hit, the Kindle.
The latest blast of gunfire has come from one of America's leading authors in the highly lucrative market of business self-help books.
Stephen Covey has announced he is selling exclusive digital rights to two of his bestsellers – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Principle-Centered Leadership – to Amazon, bypassing the traditional publisher, Simon & Schuster, that has up to now handled all his output.
The move has put a chill over New York publishing houses already struggling to keep up with the ebook revolution. One of their big fears is that of becoming separated from their backlists, the titles that act as the cash cows of the industry, bringing in a steady and increasingly crucial income in the insecure digital world.
As jitters spread, some big publishers have moved to defend what they claim is theirs – the digital rights to the backlist.
Random House startled many in the book world this week by sending a letter to agents informing them that, in its view, the publishing house holds the exclusive rights to digital editions of the "vast majority" of its backlist titles. That made authors and their agents see red. They pointed to a ruling by the New York courts as far back as 2002 in which Random House itself failed in an attempt to block on ebook firm from publishing works by the late William Styron, author of Sophie's Choice, and Kurt Vonnegut. The ruling, upheld on appeal, found that copyright for books that were written before digital publishing existed, remained with the author.
Arthur Klebanoff, head of RosettaBooks, the ebook company that beat off Random House in 2002, secured Covey's exclusive deal this week with Amazon. He said: "We are very clear about this, the author controls the rights unless it is specified otherwise, and that was settled by the courts years ago...
The spat in the US stands in contrast to Britain, where publishers broadly accept that they do not have the rights to the ebook editions of older titles, and authors accept that they should avoid offering ebooks to other publishers.
"There is a kind of gentleman's agreement," said Anthony Goff, an agent with David Higham, who heads the trade association for literary agents in the UK...
As these behemoths fight it out in an increasingly ungainly display of muscle, the big question is what happens to authors and their readers, which is after all what the fuss is about.
Bestselling names such as Covey are likely to prosper, as will their fans who will benefit from knockdown prices. Amazon is selling some titles for as little as $7.99, massively below their paper price.
Less well-known authors have yet to reap any rewards."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/15/stephen-covey-amazon-ebook-deal
"The scramble for survival in the New York publishing world provoked by the rise of the ebook has become so ruthless it makes the Wild West look like a Swiss finishing school. Authors and publishers are squabbling over rights, internet retailers are slugging it out with bookshops, and tech companies are climbing over each other to produce an ebook reader that can challenge Amazon's hit, the Kindle.
The latest blast of gunfire has come from one of America's leading authors in the highly lucrative market of business self-help books.
Stephen Covey has announced he is selling exclusive digital rights to two of his bestsellers – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Principle-Centered Leadership – to Amazon, bypassing the traditional publisher, Simon & Schuster, that has up to now handled all his output.
The move has put a chill over New York publishing houses already struggling to keep up with the ebook revolution. One of their big fears is that of becoming separated from their backlists, the titles that act as the cash cows of the industry, bringing in a steady and increasingly crucial income in the insecure digital world.
As jitters spread, some big publishers have moved to defend what they claim is theirs – the digital rights to the backlist.
Random House startled many in the book world this week by sending a letter to agents informing them that, in its view, the publishing house holds the exclusive rights to digital editions of the "vast majority" of its backlist titles. That made authors and their agents see red. They pointed to a ruling by the New York courts as far back as 2002 in which Random House itself failed in an attempt to block on ebook firm from publishing works by the late William Styron, author of Sophie's Choice, and Kurt Vonnegut. The ruling, upheld on appeal, found that copyright for books that were written before digital publishing existed, remained with the author.
Arthur Klebanoff, head of RosettaBooks, the ebook company that beat off Random House in 2002, secured Covey's exclusive deal this week with Amazon. He said: "We are very clear about this, the author controls the rights unless it is specified otherwise, and that was settled by the courts years ago...
The spat in the US stands in contrast to Britain, where publishers broadly accept that they do not have the rights to the ebook editions of older titles, and authors accept that they should avoid offering ebooks to other publishers.
"There is a kind of gentleman's agreement," said Anthony Goff, an agent with David Higham, who heads the trade association for literary agents in the UK...
As these behemoths fight it out in an increasingly ungainly display of muscle, the big question is what happens to authors and their readers, which is after all what the fuss is about.
Bestselling names such as Covey are likely to prosper, as will their fans who will benefit from knockdown prices. Amazon is selling some titles for as little as $7.99, massively below their paper price.
Less well-known authors have yet to reap any rewards."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/15/stephen-covey-amazon-ebook-deal
US government looks to expand scientific open access policy; Ars Technica, 12/14/09
John Timmer, Ars Technica; US government looks to expand scientific open access policy:
The US government's Office of Science and Technology Policy is hosting a forum for debating an expansion of an open access policy, used by the National Institute of Health, that guarantees all publications derived from the agency's funding are available to the public within one year.
"Last Thursday, the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy launched a public forum to allow the public to provide feedback into a potential expansion of the US government's open access policy for scientific research. Right now, the National Institutes of Health is the only agency that requires recipients of its funding to make any scientific papers available to the public within a year of the publication date. For the next month, the OSTP will be soliciting feedback on whether and how the policy should be extended to other federal agencies...
One problem with the documents at the website is that they don't make a clear distinction between the publications that are based on research funded by federal agencies and the data behind the research itself. A more informative description of the different materials can be found in the Federal Register, which published the official request for input...
So, for the moment at least, the OSTP is focusing strictly on publications, and not on providing access to the raw data produced during the course of these studies (although that may be subject to separate disclosure policies, depending on the agency and material). It's a rather significant distinction to make, given the recent controversy over the availability of climate data that was used to produce several peer-reviewed studies.
In any case, the actual format of the material may ultimately be just as important as which agencies are included. The ability to ingest data from these publications and make it accessible to text mining and meta-analysis that crosses disciplines has the potential to open new avenues for research and provide a higher scientific return on the public's investment."
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/12/us-government-looks-to-expand-scientific-open-access-policy.ars
The US government's Office of Science and Technology Policy is hosting a forum for debating an expansion of an open access policy, used by the National Institute of Health, that guarantees all publications derived from the agency's funding are available to the public within one year.
"Last Thursday, the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy launched a public forum to allow the public to provide feedback into a potential expansion of the US government's open access policy for scientific research. Right now, the National Institutes of Health is the only agency that requires recipients of its funding to make any scientific papers available to the public within a year of the publication date. For the next month, the OSTP will be soliciting feedback on whether and how the policy should be extended to other federal agencies...
One problem with the documents at the website is that they don't make a clear distinction between the publications that are based on research funded by federal agencies and the data behind the research itself. A more informative description of the different materials can be found in the Federal Register, which published the official request for input...
So, for the moment at least, the OSTP is focusing strictly on publications, and not on providing access to the raw data produced during the course of these studies (although that may be subject to separate disclosure policies, depending on the agency and material). It's a rather significant distinction to make, given the recent controversy over the availability of climate data that was used to produce several peer-reviewed studies.
In any case, the actual format of the material may ultimately be just as important as which agencies are included. The ability to ingest data from these publications and make it accessible to text mining and meta-analysis that crosses disciplines has the potential to open new avenues for research and provide a higher scientific return on the public's investment."
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/12/us-government-looks-to-expand-scientific-open-access-policy.ars
Victoria Espinel Confirmed as U.S. Copyright Czar; Media Week, 12/4/09
Georg Szalai, Media Week, Victoria Espinel Confirmed as U.S. Copyright Czar:
"Industry representatives on Friday hailed a Thursday evening Senate vote that confirmed Victoria Espinel as the nation's first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator.
But they also called on Washington to help ensure her success in fighting intellectual property theft as President Obama's copyright czar.
"Intellectual property industries are an essential economic engine to the U.S. economy, and it is critical that the new IP Enforcement Coordinator now be given adequate resources to carry out her new responsibilities," said MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman.
He lauded Espinel as "a capable and experienced advocate for the artists and creators." She is a former assistant U.S. trade representative for intellectual property and innovation who also previously worked with the chief U.S. trade negotiator on IP issues before the World Trade Organization.
In a U.S. Chamber of Commerce blog post Friday, Rick Cotton, executive vp and general counsel at NBC Universal, also expressed hopes that the new top government post will have a big impact.
"Let's hope that today represents the high-water mark of IP theft," he said. Espinel's confirmation as the first IPEC "should help to see the tide begin to recede under the pressure of the Obama administration's commitment to protecting IP, producing new jobs and new industries that will benefit the nation for decades to come.""
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/broadband/e3i6b9aa596485fe24d89a9b45a4ad30a7f
"Industry representatives on Friday hailed a Thursday evening Senate vote that confirmed Victoria Espinel as the nation's first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator.
But they also called on Washington to help ensure her success in fighting intellectual property theft as President Obama's copyright czar.
"Intellectual property industries are an essential economic engine to the U.S. economy, and it is critical that the new IP Enforcement Coordinator now be given adequate resources to carry out her new responsibilities," said MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman.
He lauded Espinel as "a capable and experienced advocate for the artists and creators." She is a former assistant U.S. trade representative for intellectual property and innovation who also previously worked with the chief U.S. trade negotiator on IP issues before the World Trade Organization.
In a U.S. Chamber of Commerce blog post Friday, Rick Cotton, executive vp and general counsel at NBC Universal, also expressed hopes that the new top government post will have a big impact.
"Let's hope that today represents the high-water mark of IP theft," he said. Espinel's confirmation as the first IPEC "should help to see the tide begin to recede under the pressure of the Obama administration's commitment to protecting IP, producing new jobs and new industries that will benefit the nation for decades to come.""
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/broadband/e3i6b9aa596485fe24d89a9b45a4ad30a7f
Supplemental Notification of Authors and Publishers About Google Book Search Settlement Begins Today; PR Newswire, 12/14/09
PR Newswire, Supplemental Notification of Authors and Publishers About Google Book Search Settlement Begins Today:
"Distribution of the Supplemental Notice in the Google Book Search Settlement is now taking place. The Supplemental Notice summarizes the principal changes from the Original Settlement to the Amended Settlement. The Court overseeing the case preliminarily approved the Amended Settlement, and approved the Supplemental Notice, on November 19, 2009.
Please visit http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/ for detailed information, including the Supplemental Notice and revised key dates. The website is available in 36 languages.
The Court will hold a hearing on whether to grant final approval of the Amended Settlement on February 18, 2010.
SOURCE Google Book Search Settlement Administrator"
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/supplemental-notification-of-authors-and-publishers-about-google-book-search-settlement-begins-today-79212967.html
"Distribution of the Supplemental Notice in the Google Book Search Settlement is now taking place. The Supplemental Notice summarizes the principal changes from the Original Settlement to the Amended Settlement. The Court overseeing the case preliminarily approved the Amended Settlement, and approved the Supplemental Notice, on November 19, 2009.
Please visit http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/ for detailed information, including the Supplemental Notice and revised key dates. The website is available in 36 languages.
The Court will hold a hearing on whether to grant final approval of the Amended Settlement on February 18, 2010.
SOURCE Google Book Search Settlement Administrator"
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/supplemental-notification-of-authors-and-publishers-about-google-book-search-settlement-begins-today-79212967.html
Nicolas Sarkozy fights Google over classic books; Telegraph, 12/14/09
Henry Samuel, Telegraph; Nicolas Sarkozy fights Google over classic books:
Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to keep Google's hands off France's classic books and national treasures by spending £680 million making them available on the internet.
"The French president made the announcement amid a row between the internet giant and publishers, who claim Google has breached their copyright by scanning books for its online library Google Books.
Mr Sarkozy said the sum would go towards the "digitisation of the content of our museums, our libraries and our cinematographic heritage".
He added: "There is no question of letting this heritage go."
The package was part of his government's "grand loan" – a £31 billion spending spree he detailed on Monday aimed at boosting France's economic growth and competitiveness.
The pledge followed Mr Sarkozy's warning last week that he would not allow Google to carry out a massive literary land grab on French and other European literature.
"We are not going to be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is," he said.
"We are not going to be deprived of what generations and generations have produced in the French language just because we weren't capable of funding our own digitisation project."
Jean-Noël Jeanneney, a former chief of the national library recently warned recently that the French Revolution risked being given an "Anglo-Saxon" slant if Google prevailed – one in which "valiant British aristocrats triumphed over bloodthirsty Jacobins and the guillotine blotted out the rights of man."
Google, based in California, recently unveiled plans recently to scan books and make them digitally searchable online. It argues almost all the books digitised are in the public domain and that it will pay copyright on any still in private hands.
The Paris publishing group, La Martinière, took Google to court after it discovered the firm had scanned and archived books on which La Martinière holds the copyright. A ruling is expected on Friday. Seuil has also sued Google for copyright breach.
Marissa Maya, Google's number three last week last week denied stealing French heritage. "I think our service is very poorly understood," she said.
"The advantage of this work is precisely to conserve literature and allow people to access it. Right now we're simply the most advanced company in this area." In his speech at the Elysée yesterday, Mr Sarkozy said that public groups like Google could be part of the venture but the state would be very much in charge.
The money is expected to go to boosting Gallica, France's own book-scanning project, which is linked to Europeana, the EU's digital library."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6811462/Sarkozy-fights-Google-over-classic-books.html
Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to keep Google's hands off France's classic books and national treasures by spending £680 million making them available on the internet.
"The French president made the announcement amid a row between the internet giant and publishers, who claim Google has breached their copyright by scanning books for its online library Google Books.
Mr Sarkozy said the sum would go towards the "digitisation of the content of our museums, our libraries and our cinematographic heritage".
He added: "There is no question of letting this heritage go."
The package was part of his government's "grand loan" – a £31 billion spending spree he detailed on Monday aimed at boosting France's economic growth and competitiveness.
The pledge followed Mr Sarkozy's warning last week that he would not allow Google to carry out a massive literary land grab on French and other European literature.
"We are not going to be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is," he said.
"We are not going to be deprived of what generations and generations have produced in the French language just because we weren't capable of funding our own digitisation project."
Jean-Noël Jeanneney, a former chief of the national library recently warned recently that the French Revolution risked being given an "Anglo-Saxon" slant if Google prevailed – one in which "valiant British aristocrats triumphed over bloodthirsty Jacobins and the guillotine blotted out the rights of man."
Google, based in California, recently unveiled plans recently to scan books and make them digitally searchable online. It argues almost all the books digitised are in the public domain and that it will pay copyright on any still in private hands.
The Paris publishing group, La Martinière, took Google to court after it discovered the firm had scanned and archived books on which La Martinière holds the copyright. A ruling is expected on Friday. Seuil has also sued Google for copyright breach.
Marissa Maya, Google's number three last week last week denied stealing French heritage. "I think our service is very poorly understood," she said.
"The advantage of this work is precisely to conserve literature and allow people to access it. Right now we're simply the most advanced company in this area." In his speech at the Elysée yesterday, Mr Sarkozy said that public groups like Google could be part of the venture but the state would be very much in charge.
The money is expected to go to boosting Gallica, France's own book-scanning project, which is linked to Europeana, the EU's digital library."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6811462/Sarkozy-fights-Google-over-classic-books.html
Monday, December 14, 2009
Stanford Dissertations Moving from ProQuest to Google - An interview with Mimi Calter; Stanford University Libraries, 11/20/09
Mary Minow [Executive Editor of the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Website], via Stanford University Libraries; Stanford Dissertations Moving from ProQuest to Google - An interview with Mimi Calter [Assistant University Librarian & Chief of Staff for Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources]:
"Minow: Stanford is partnering with Google to make student dissertations available worldwide. What does Google bring to the table that simply using the Stanford Digital Repository on its own does not?
Calter: Google provides broad distribution. We'll be using the Stanford Digital Repository for preservation, and we'll be making the dissertations available through our online catalog, but working with Google dramatically increases the visibility of the materials. We think that visibility is an advantage for our students.
In the long run, we hope that other schools will join us in contributing their dissertations to Google, and that "Google Dissertations" will become the go-to resource for dissertations, theses and similar materials.
Minow: What is Stanford's policy on copyright and student dissertations? Are students required to give permission to the University to copy and distribute their dissertations?
Calter: Per Section 5.2 of the Research Policy Handbook (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/DoR/rph/5-2.html), Stanford's students retain copyright in works they create as part of their coursework, including dissertations. Therefore, Stanford does need the students' permission to preserve and distribute those dissertations. As part of the standard submission process, students grant Stanford a license to do so. It is a license only, and students retain full copyright in their work.
The submission process also allows students to apply a Creative Commons license to their work. We hope that this addition will raise awareness of the Creative Commons option, and further increase the accessibility of these materials.
Minow: I understand that this move away from ProQuest means that Stanford student work will no longer be included in Dissertation Abstracts unless the student makes an affirmative effort to submit to ProQuest. What are the implications for the broader research world of such a step?
Calter: It is a concern, but our sense is that the wide availability and visibility of the dissertations through the Stanford catalog and Google will more than compensate for the lack of a listing in Dissertation Abstracts.
Minow: Google has been harvesting electronic dissertations for several years. How does Stanford's submission of the dissertations differ from Google's past practices?
Calter: The submission process that Stanford is using is similar to the one that publishers are using for Google Book Search. So we'll be submitting metadata along with the dissertation files, and expect to have more descriptive listings than just titles."
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/commentary_and_analysis/2009_11_calter.html
"Minow: Stanford is partnering with Google to make student dissertations available worldwide. What does Google bring to the table that simply using the Stanford Digital Repository on its own does not?
Calter: Google provides broad distribution. We'll be using the Stanford Digital Repository for preservation, and we'll be making the dissertations available through our online catalog, but working with Google dramatically increases the visibility of the materials. We think that visibility is an advantage for our students.
In the long run, we hope that other schools will join us in contributing their dissertations to Google, and that "Google Dissertations" will become the go-to resource for dissertations, theses and similar materials.
Minow: What is Stanford's policy on copyright and student dissertations? Are students required to give permission to the University to copy and distribute their dissertations?
Calter: Per Section 5.2 of the Research Policy Handbook (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/DoR/rph/5-2.html), Stanford's students retain copyright in works they create as part of their coursework, including dissertations. Therefore, Stanford does need the students' permission to preserve and distribute those dissertations. As part of the standard submission process, students grant Stanford a license to do so. It is a license only, and students retain full copyright in their work.
The submission process also allows students to apply a Creative Commons license to their work. We hope that this addition will raise awareness of the Creative Commons option, and further increase the accessibility of these materials.
Minow: I understand that this move away from ProQuest means that Stanford student work will no longer be included in Dissertation Abstracts unless the student makes an affirmative effort to submit to ProQuest. What are the implications for the broader research world of such a step?
Calter: It is a concern, but our sense is that the wide availability and visibility of the dissertations through the Stanford catalog and Google will more than compensate for the lack of a listing in Dissertation Abstracts.
Minow: Google has been harvesting electronic dissertations for several years. How does Stanford's submission of the dissertations differ from Google's past practices?
Calter: The submission process that Stanford is using is similar to the one that publishers are using for Google Book Search. So we'll be submitting metadata along with the dissertation files, and expect to have more descriptive listings than just titles."
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/commentary_and_analysis/2009_11_calter.html
Public Knowledge Announces First Annual World's Fair Use Day (WFUD); Public Knowledge, 12/9/09
Mehan Jayasuriya, Public Knowledge; Public Knowledge Announces First Annual World's Fair Use Day (WFUD):
"We at Public Knowledge are thrilled to announce the first annual World's Fair Use Day (WFUD), a day-long celebration of creativity, innovation and remix culture to be held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on January 12th, 2010. Fair use is the legal right that allows creators to make limited uses of copyrighted materials for purposes like comment, criticism and education. At World's Fair Use Day, we'll demonstrate how fair uses of existing works, ranging from recontextualized audio mashups to documentary films, enrich our culture and contribute to the ongoing dialog on copyright. Speakers at the event will include Ben Huh (CEO of the Cheezburger Network, the publishing company behind ICanHasCheezburger and FailBlog), Dan Walsh (creator of the web comic "Garfield Minus Garfield"), Pennsylvania Congressman and mashup fan Mike Doyle, TechDirt founder Mike Masnick, mashup artist DJ Earworm and many more. The night before the main event, we'll kick things off with a "Movie Night," hosted by Mark Hosler of the pioneering audio collage band Negativland and featuring Brett Gaylor, director of RIP: A Remix Manifesto and Kembrew McLeod, director of Copyright Criminals. To view the full list of speakers and schedule and to RSVP, visit wfud.info."
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2806
"We at Public Knowledge are thrilled to announce the first annual World's Fair Use Day (WFUD), a day-long celebration of creativity, innovation and remix culture to be held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on January 12th, 2010. Fair use is the legal right that allows creators to make limited uses of copyrighted materials for purposes like comment, criticism and education. At World's Fair Use Day, we'll demonstrate how fair uses of existing works, ranging from recontextualized audio mashups to documentary films, enrich our culture and contribute to the ongoing dialog on copyright. Speakers at the event will include Ben Huh (CEO of the Cheezburger Network, the publishing company behind ICanHasCheezburger and FailBlog), Dan Walsh (creator of the web comic "Garfield Minus Garfield"), Pennsylvania Congressman and mashup fan Mike Doyle, TechDirt founder Mike Masnick, mashup artist DJ Earworm and many more. The night before the main event, we'll kick things off with a "Movie Night," hosted by Mark Hosler of the pioneering audio collage band Negativland and featuring Brett Gaylor, director of RIP: A Remix Manifesto and Kembrew McLeod, director of Copyright Criminals. To view the full list of speakers and schedule and to RSVP, visit wfud.info."
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2806
[OpEd] Twitter Tapping; New York Times, 12/13/09
[OpEd] New York Times; Twitter Tapping:
"The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.
Law enforcement is not saying a lot about its social surveillance, but examples keep coming to light. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of a man suspected of helping coordinate protests at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh by sending out messages over Twitter.
In some cases, the government appears to be engaged in deception. The Boston Globe recently quoted a Massachusetts district attorney as saying that some police officers were going undercover on Facebook as part of their investigations.
Wired magazine reported last month that In-Q-Tel, an investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, has put money into Visible Technologies, a software company that crawls across blogs, online forums, and open networks like Twitter and YouTube to monitor what is being said.
This month the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law sued the Department of Defense, the C.I.A. and other federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act to learn more about their use of social networking sites.
The suit seeks to uncover what guidelines these agencies have about this activity, including information about whether agents are permitted to use fake identities or to engage in subterfuge, such as tricking people into accepting Facebook friend requests.
Privacy law was largely created in the pre-Internet age, and new rules are needed to keep up with the ways people communicate today. Much of what occurs online, like blog posting, is intended to be an open declaration to the world, and law enforcement is within its rights to read and act on what is written. Other kinds of communication, particularly in a closed network, may come with an expectation of privacy. If government agents are joining social networks under false pretenses to spy without a court order, for example, that might be crossing a line.
A national conversation about social networking and other forms of online privacy is long overdue. The first step toward having it is for the public to know more about what is currently being done. Making the federal government answer these reasonable Freedom of Information Act requests would be a good start."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13sun2.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=twitter&st=cse
"The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.
Law enforcement is not saying a lot about its social surveillance, but examples keep coming to light. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of a man suspected of helping coordinate protests at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh by sending out messages over Twitter.
In some cases, the government appears to be engaged in deception. The Boston Globe recently quoted a Massachusetts district attorney as saying that some police officers were going undercover on Facebook as part of their investigations.
Wired magazine reported last month that In-Q-Tel, an investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, has put money into Visible Technologies, a software company that crawls across blogs, online forums, and open networks like Twitter and YouTube to monitor what is being said.
This month the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law sued the Department of Defense, the C.I.A. and other federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act to learn more about their use of social networking sites.
The suit seeks to uncover what guidelines these agencies have about this activity, including information about whether agents are permitted to use fake identities or to engage in subterfuge, such as tricking people into accepting Facebook friend requests.
Privacy law was largely created in the pre-Internet age, and new rules are needed to keep up with the ways people communicate today. Much of what occurs online, like blog posting, is intended to be an open declaration to the world, and law enforcement is within its rights to read and act on what is written. Other kinds of communication, particularly in a closed network, may come with an expectation of privacy. If government agents are joining social networks under false pretenses to spy without a court order, for example, that might be crossing a line.
A national conversation about social networking and other forms of online privacy is long overdue. The first step toward having it is for the public to know more about what is currently being done. Making the federal government answer these reasonable Freedom of Information Act requests would be a good start."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13sun2.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=twitter&st=cse
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Spying begins on UK web users; Short Sharp Science Blog, 12/9/09
Paul Marks, Short Sharp Science Blog; Spying begins on UK web users:
"We reported last week on plans to enforce copyright law by forcing internet service providers to spy on consumers to detect and report every piece of copied music, movies, e-books, games and software.
Now one UK ISP, Virgin Media, is trialling some of the technology needed to do that on about 1.6 million of its customers.
Provided by Detica, a subsidiary of defence firm BAE Systems, the system is being used to try and gauge the size of the alleged piracy problem.
CView, as the system is known, will take a snapshot of the scale of peer-to-peer music transfers over a few months.
It will do so by copying every packet of data that passes by, and looking for the digital signatures of data transferred using the popular bittorrent, gnutella, and edonkey file sharing protocols.
Whenever it finds a data packet that matches, it will extract the code these protocols use to identify the contents of the packet.
CView will then compare that code with a database of "musical fingerprints" to identify any music being shared, allowing it to work out if the data packet infringes copyright.
As a result, Virgin will find out how much file-sharing traffic is infringing copyright, and what the most-pirated tracks and albums are, the Register reports.
CView won't be able to finger individual users, because the IP addresses that identify each computer's connection will be stripped from every packet. But some Virgin customers are worried about the potential for it to be used for snooping at a later date.
CView's technology could conceivably be used to identify people accessing certain data, for example.
Or it could block certain content, in much the same way as China's "great firewall".
The anonymisation of the data in Virgin's assessment phase, and the fact that no humans see it, should mean the technology does not count as illegal interception, says Richard Clayton at the University of Cambridge's security lab.But he says on the security group's blog that "it may take some case law before anyone can say for sure"."
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/12/spying-begins-on-uk-web-users.html
"We reported last week on plans to enforce copyright law by forcing internet service providers to spy on consumers to detect and report every piece of copied music, movies, e-books, games and software.
Now one UK ISP, Virgin Media, is trialling some of the technology needed to do that on about 1.6 million of its customers.
Provided by Detica, a subsidiary of defence firm BAE Systems, the system is being used to try and gauge the size of the alleged piracy problem.
CView, as the system is known, will take a snapshot of the scale of peer-to-peer music transfers over a few months.
It will do so by copying every packet of data that passes by, and looking for the digital signatures of data transferred using the popular bittorrent, gnutella, and edonkey file sharing protocols.
Whenever it finds a data packet that matches, it will extract the code these protocols use to identify the contents of the packet.
CView will then compare that code with a database of "musical fingerprints" to identify any music being shared, allowing it to work out if the data packet infringes copyright.
As a result, Virgin will find out how much file-sharing traffic is infringing copyright, and what the most-pirated tracks and albums are, the Register reports.
CView won't be able to finger individual users, because the IP addresses that identify each computer's connection will be stripped from every packet. But some Virgin customers are worried about the potential for it to be used for snooping at a later date.
CView's technology could conceivably be used to identify people accessing certain data, for example.
Or it could block certain content, in much the same way as China's "great firewall".
The anonymisation of the data in Virgin's assessment phase, and the fact that no humans see it, should mean the technology does not count as illegal interception, says Richard Clayton at the University of Cambridge's security lab.But he says on the security group's blog that "it may take some case law before anyone can say for sure"."
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/12/spying-begins-on-uk-web-users.html
‘Missed Opportunity’ In File Sharing Case? Don’t Believe It; Wired, 12/8/09
David Kravets, Wired; ‘Missed Opportunity’ In File Sharing Case? Don’t Believe It:
"With the $675,000 judgment against Joel Tenenbaum now final, the inevitable finger pointing has begun.
Tenenbaum was only the second person in the nation to be sued by the RIAA for file sharing and to take the case all the way to jury trial, making it a closely watched case. It’s not surprising he lost, given that he admitted to sharing 30 songs on Kazaa and Limewire. But a few commentators have decided that Tenenbaum’s lawyer, Harvard’s Charles Nesson, is to blame for failing to offer the nuanced “fair use” defense invited by the judge...
What’s gone ignored, though, is that the defense invited by commentators and Judge Gertner wouldn’t have helped Nesson’s client in the least. Virtually none of the scenarios laid out in the ruling applied to 25-year-old Joel Tenenbaum, a classic copyright scofflaw who was neither space-shifting nor downloading music otherwise unavailable online.
“For the most part, he was downloading them and sharing them like the rest of the kids — and not particularly for sampling,” Nesson said in a telephone interview. “That is the bottom line.”...
Nesson’s performance wasn’t as stellar as it was in 1971, when he successfully defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case. Judge Gertner took the time to upbraid Nesson for his behavior.
“Defense counsel repeatedly missed deadlines, ignored rules, engaged in litigation over conduct that was plainly illegal (namely, the right to tape counsel and the Court without consent), and even went so far as to post the illegal recordings on the web,” Gertner wrote, adding that Nesson and his defense team of Harvard students mounted a “chaotic” defense.
But if he’d lied about the facts — making Ars Technica and the L.A. Times happy — his client would be no better off.
The other defendant to go against the RIAA before a jury is Jammie Thomas-Rasset. A Minnesota jury dinged her $1.92 million for 24 songs this summer after jurors concluded she lied on the stand, testifying that perhaps others, including her children, were the actual copyright scofflaws.
Copyright reform advocates are perennially frustrated that their perfectly reasonable ideas of what qualifies as “fair use” online don’t get a chance to be heard in court. That’s no coincidence — the RIAA isn’t going to take a case to trial if it might produce a pro-consumer ruling. But the armchair barristers blaming Nesson for failing to carry their reform message to the Tenenbaum court are misguided.
Regardless of whether the Copyright Act is flawed, or Nesson was out to lunch, the simple fact is the RIAA had Tenenbaum dead to rights."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/nesson-2/#more-11854
"With the $675,000 judgment against Joel Tenenbaum now final, the inevitable finger pointing has begun.
Tenenbaum was only the second person in the nation to be sued by the RIAA for file sharing and to take the case all the way to jury trial, making it a closely watched case. It’s not surprising he lost, given that he admitted to sharing 30 songs on Kazaa and Limewire. But a few commentators have decided that Tenenbaum’s lawyer, Harvard’s Charles Nesson, is to blame for failing to offer the nuanced “fair use” defense invited by the judge...
What’s gone ignored, though, is that the defense invited by commentators and Judge Gertner wouldn’t have helped Nesson’s client in the least. Virtually none of the scenarios laid out in the ruling applied to 25-year-old Joel Tenenbaum, a classic copyright scofflaw who was neither space-shifting nor downloading music otherwise unavailable online.
“For the most part, he was downloading them and sharing them like the rest of the kids — and not particularly for sampling,” Nesson said in a telephone interview. “That is the bottom line.”...
Nesson’s performance wasn’t as stellar as it was in 1971, when he successfully defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case. Judge Gertner took the time to upbraid Nesson for his behavior.
“Defense counsel repeatedly missed deadlines, ignored rules, engaged in litigation over conduct that was plainly illegal (namely, the right to tape counsel and the Court without consent), and even went so far as to post the illegal recordings on the web,” Gertner wrote, adding that Nesson and his defense team of Harvard students mounted a “chaotic” defense.
But if he’d lied about the facts — making Ars Technica and the L.A. Times happy — his client would be no better off.
The other defendant to go against the RIAA before a jury is Jammie Thomas-Rasset. A Minnesota jury dinged her $1.92 million for 24 songs this summer after jurors concluded she lied on the stand, testifying that perhaps others, including her children, were the actual copyright scofflaws.
Copyright reform advocates are perennially frustrated that their perfectly reasonable ideas of what qualifies as “fair use” online don’t get a chance to be heard in court. That’s no coincidence — the RIAA isn’t going to take a case to trial if it might produce a pro-consumer ruling. But the armchair barristers blaming Nesson for failing to carry their reform message to the Tenenbaum court are misguided.
Regardless of whether the Copyright Act is flawed, or Nesson was out to lunch, the simple fact is the RIAA had Tenenbaum dead to rights."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/nesson-2/#more-11854
Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind; Wired, 12/11/09
David Kravets, Wired; Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind:
"A broad swath of American enterprise ranging from major software makers to motion picture and music companies are joining forces to oppose a new international treaty that would make books more accessible to the blind.
On Monday, dozens of nations will meet in Geneva to consider adopting the WIPO Treaty for Sharing Accessible Formats of Copyrighted Works for Persons Who are Blind or Have other Reading Disabilities. The proposal (.pdf) before a subcommittee of the roughly 180 World Intellectual Property Organization members would sanction the cross-border sharing of DRM-protected digitized books that tens of thousands of blind and visually disabled people read with devices and tools like the Pac Mate, Book Port and Victor Reader.
“This treaty would be the first one that is not done for the copyright owner, but for the user of the works — for the blind to make a copyrighted work accessible,” says Manon Ress, a policy analyst at Knowledge Ecology International, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights lobby that helped spearhead the proposal.
But that prospect doesn’t sit well with American business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest lobby representing 3 million businesses, argues that the plan being proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, “raises a number of serious concerns,” (.pdf) chief among them the specter that the treaty would spawn a rash of internet book piracy.
The treaty also creates a bad precedent by loosening copyright restrictions, instead of tightening them as every previous copyright treaty has done, said Brad Huther, a chamber director. Huther concluded in a Dec. 2 letter to the U.S. Copyright office that the international community “should not engage in pursuing a copyright-exemption based paradigm.”
Echoing that concern, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry of America told the Copyright Office last month that such a treaty would “begin to dismantle the existing global treaty structure of copyright law, through the adoption of an international instrument at odds with existing, longstanding and well-settled norms.”
The proposal before the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights could free up thousands of book titles to millions of blind people in WIPO-member nations — without payment to the publisher.
Many WIPO nations, most in the industrialized world including England, the United States and Canada, have copyright exemptions that usually allow non-profit companies to market copyrighted works without permission. They scan and digitize books into the so-called universal Daisy format, which includes features like narration and digitized Braille.
The Daisy Corp. Consortium, a Swiss-based international agency, controls formatting worldwide and has some 100 companies under its direction across the globe. The largest catalog rests in the United States, in which three non-profits, including the Library of Congress, host some half million digital titles produced by federal grants and donations.
As it now stands, none of the nations may allow persons outside their borders to access these works, which are usually doled out for little or no charge. The treaty seeks to free up the cross-border sharing of the books for the blind.
“People who oppose copyright exemptions oppose exemptions on principle that there should be no exemptions of copyright law,” says George Kerscher, Daisy’s general secretary. “They should have sole right and discretion to do what they want with their intellectual property. To a great extent, the opposition to the treaty is based on that principle.”
To receive any reading materials, the blind and disabled must prove their condition, he said. In the United States, Knowledge Ecology International estimates about 5 percent of published books have been transformed to the Daisy format.
Google is the only major U.S. corporation to side with the blind in the international tussle. In filings with the Copyright Office, the company called for American copyright holders to see past their doctrinal opposition to weakening copyright protections.
“We are concerned that some of the comments are simply stating opposition to a larger agenda of limitations and exceptions,” (.pdf) Google’s chief copyright officer, William Paltry, wrote this month. “We believe this is an unproductive approach to solving what is a discrete, long-standing problem that affects a group that needs and deserves the protections of the international community.”
Not surprisingly, U.S. book publishers are the harshest critics of the proposal. The Association of American Publishers, which represents about 300 publishers large and small, argue the treaty is not necessary. The publishers suggest the blind and disabled should pay for their materials –- the only way the market for such products could flourish.
“Under the proposed draft treaty, where it appears that privileged copies could be made even where accessible versions were commercially available, copyright owners would have understandable doubts about the wisdom of investing in the production of accessible versions for the market,” the association’s vice president, Allan Adler, wrote the Copyright Office on Dec. 4.
“Under these circumstances, publishers not unreasonably hesitate and wonder whether they can expect such a market to flourish when potential customers would still have the option of relying upon a statutory exception to get an accessible version of a work without having to pay for it,” (.pdf) Adler added.
Dan Burke, a 52-year-old blind man from Montana and a self-described “book worm,” does not agree with the publishers.
Burke, a victim of a retinal disease that blinded him decades ago, often acquires books and poems at Bookshare, an online nonprofit offering about 60,000 titles in exchange for $50 in annual dues and other volunteer work. Burke says none of the rank-and-file commercially available e-readers, including the Kindle, are adequately equipped for the blind.
“You have to be able to see to use these, to turn the machine on and navigate menus,” says Burke.
Amazon, however, said this week that it would soon produce a blind-accessible Kindle, one with an audible menu and large font for the visually impaired.
But Amazon, the Kindle’s maker, gives book authors the option of disabling the read-aloud function, notes Burke, a board member for the National Federation of the Blind, which supports the treaty. The Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers, argued earlier this year that reading a book aloud counts as an unauthorized public performance.
“Information is what we want. Information is the power to become economically viable members of society,” Burke said. “This is a world in which if you don’t have money you usually don’t have access.”"
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/blind_block/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
"A broad swath of American enterprise ranging from major software makers to motion picture and music companies are joining forces to oppose a new international treaty that would make books more accessible to the blind.
On Monday, dozens of nations will meet in Geneva to consider adopting the WIPO Treaty for Sharing Accessible Formats of Copyrighted Works for Persons Who are Blind or Have other Reading Disabilities. The proposal (.pdf) before a subcommittee of the roughly 180 World Intellectual Property Organization members would sanction the cross-border sharing of DRM-protected digitized books that tens of thousands of blind and visually disabled people read with devices and tools like the Pac Mate, Book Port and Victor Reader.
“This treaty would be the first one that is not done for the copyright owner, but for the user of the works — for the blind to make a copyrighted work accessible,” says Manon Ress, a policy analyst at Knowledge Ecology International, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights lobby that helped spearhead the proposal.
But that prospect doesn’t sit well with American business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest lobby representing 3 million businesses, argues that the plan being proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, “raises a number of serious concerns,” (.pdf) chief among them the specter that the treaty would spawn a rash of internet book piracy.
The treaty also creates a bad precedent by loosening copyright restrictions, instead of tightening them as every previous copyright treaty has done, said Brad Huther, a chamber director. Huther concluded in a Dec. 2 letter to the U.S. Copyright office that the international community “should not engage in pursuing a copyright-exemption based paradigm.”
Echoing that concern, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry of America told the Copyright Office last month that such a treaty would “begin to dismantle the existing global treaty structure of copyright law, through the adoption of an international instrument at odds with existing, longstanding and well-settled norms.”
The proposal before the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights could free up thousands of book titles to millions of blind people in WIPO-member nations — without payment to the publisher.
Many WIPO nations, most in the industrialized world including England, the United States and Canada, have copyright exemptions that usually allow non-profit companies to market copyrighted works without permission. They scan and digitize books into the so-called universal Daisy format, which includes features like narration and digitized Braille.
The Daisy Corp. Consortium, a Swiss-based international agency, controls formatting worldwide and has some 100 companies under its direction across the globe. The largest catalog rests in the United States, in which three non-profits, including the Library of Congress, host some half million digital titles produced by federal grants and donations.
As it now stands, none of the nations may allow persons outside their borders to access these works, which are usually doled out for little or no charge. The treaty seeks to free up the cross-border sharing of the books for the blind.
“People who oppose copyright exemptions oppose exemptions on principle that there should be no exemptions of copyright law,” says George Kerscher, Daisy’s general secretary. “They should have sole right and discretion to do what they want with their intellectual property. To a great extent, the opposition to the treaty is based on that principle.”
To receive any reading materials, the blind and disabled must prove their condition, he said. In the United States, Knowledge Ecology International estimates about 5 percent of published books have been transformed to the Daisy format.
Google is the only major U.S. corporation to side with the blind in the international tussle. In filings with the Copyright Office, the company called for American copyright holders to see past their doctrinal opposition to weakening copyright protections.
“We are concerned that some of the comments are simply stating opposition to a larger agenda of limitations and exceptions,” (.pdf) Google’s chief copyright officer, William Paltry, wrote this month. “We believe this is an unproductive approach to solving what is a discrete, long-standing problem that affects a group that needs and deserves the protections of the international community.”
Not surprisingly, U.S. book publishers are the harshest critics of the proposal. The Association of American Publishers, which represents about 300 publishers large and small, argue the treaty is not necessary. The publishers suggest the blind and disabled should pay for their materials –- the only way the market for such products could flourish.
“Under the proposed draft treaty, where it appears that privileged copies could be made even where accessible versions were commercially available, copyright owners would have understandable doubts about the wisdom of investing in the production of accessible versions for the market,” the association’s vice president, Allan Adler, wrote the Copyright Office on Dec. 4.
“Under these circumstances, publishers not unreasonably hesitate and wonder whether they can expect such a market to flourish when potential customers would still have the option of relying upon a statutory exception to get an accessible version of a work without having to pay for it,” (.pdf) Adler added.
Dan Burke, a 52-year-old blind man from Montana and a self-described “book worm,” does not agree with the publishers.
Burke, a victim of a retinal disease that blinded him decades ago, often acquires books and poems at Bookshare, an online nonprofit offering about 60,000 titles in exchange for $50 in annual dues and other volunteer work. Burke says none of the rank-and-file commercially available e-readers, including the Kindle, are adequately equipped for the blind.
“You have to be able to see to use these, to turn the machine on and navigate menus,” says Burke.
Amazon, however, said this week that it would soon produce a blind-accessible Kindle, one with an audible menu and large font for the visually impaired.
But Amazon, the Kindle’s maker, gives book authors the option of disabling the read-aloud function, notes Burke, a board member for the National Federation of the Blind, which supports the treaty. The Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers, argued earlier this year that reading a book aloud counts as an unauthorized public performance.
“Information is what we want. Information is the power to become economically viable members of society,” Burke said. “This is a world in which if you don’t have money you usually don’t have access.”"
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/blind_block/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
Legal Battles Over E-Book Rights to Older Books; New York Times, 12/13/09
Motoko Rich, New York Times; Legal Battles Over E-Book Rights to Older Books:
"William Styron may have been one of the leading literary lions of recent decades, but his books are not selling much these days. Now his family has a plan to lure digital-age readers with e-book versions of titles like “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and Mr. Styron’s memoir of depression, “Darkness Visible.”
But the question of exactly who owns the electronic rights to such older titles is in dispute, making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry’s last remaining areas of growth.
Mr. Styron’s family believes it retains the rights, since the books were first published before e-books existed. Random House, Mr. Styron’s longtime publisher, says it owns those rights, and it is determined to secure its place — and continuing profits — in the Kindle era.
The discussions about the digital fate of Mr. Styron’s work are similar to the negotiations playing out across the book industry as publishers hustle to capture the rights to release e-book versions of so-called backlist books. Indeed, the same new e-book venture Mr. Styron’s family hopes to use has run into similar resistance from the print publisher of “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller.
On Friday, Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, sent a letter to dozens of literary agents, writing that the company’s older agreements gave it “the exclusive right to publish in electronic book publishing formats.”
Backlist titles, which continue to be reprinted long after their initial release, are crucial to publishing houses because of their promise of lucrative revenue year after year. But authors and agents are particularly concerned that traditional publishers are not offering sufficient royalties on e-book editions, which they point out are cheaper for publishers to produce. Some are considering taking their digital rights elsewhere, which could deal a financial blow to the hobbled publishing industry.
The tussle over who owns the electronic rights — and how much the authors should earn in digital royalties — potentially puts into play works by authors like Ralph Ellison and John Updike.
Some publishers have already made agreements with authors or their estates to release digital editions. All of Ernest Hemingway’s books, for example, are available in electronic versions from his print publisher, Scribner, a unit of Simon & Schuster.
But with only a small fraction of the thousands of books in print available in e-book form, there are many titles to be fought over.
“This is a wide open frontier right now,” said Maja Thomas, senior vice president for digital and audio publishing at the Hachette Book Group.
While most traditional publishers have included e-book rights in new author contracts for 15 years, many titles were originally published before e-books were explicitly included in contracts.
And with electronic readers like the Kindle from Amazon and the Nook from Barnes & Noble attracting new readers and sales of e-books growing exponentially, authors and publishers are trying to figure out how best to harness the new technology...
There is some precedent for arguments over e-book versions of backlist titles. In 2002, Random House sued RosettaBooks, an e-book publisher, for copyright infringement when Rosetta signed contracts with authors — including Mr. Styron — to release digital versions of previously published novels.
In its suit, Random House relied on wording in its contracts that granted it all rights to publish the works “in book form.” In its letter to agents on Friday, Random House invoked the same wording to defend its right to publish e-books of backlist titles.
In 2002, a federal judge in Manhattan denied Random House’s request for a preliminary injunction against RosettaBooks, ruling that “in book form” did not automatically include e-books. An appellate court similarly denied Random House’s request.
The case never went to trial. In a settlement, Random House granted Rosetta a license to release e-book versions of 51 titles. Under a different agreement with Mr. Styron, Rosetta also published two of his books, though its license to do so has since expired.
Agents say some authors and their estates are seeking alternative routes for e-books in part because they are dissatisfied with the digital royalty rate offered by most traditional publishers."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/media/13ebooks.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse
"William Styron may have been one of the leading literary lions of recent decades, but his books are not selling much these days. Now his family has a plan to lure digital-age readers with e-book versions of titles like “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and Mr. Styron’s memoir of depression, “Darkness Visible.”
But the question of exactly who owns the electronic rights to such older titles is in dispute, making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry’s last remaining areas of growth.
Mr. Styron’s family believes it retains the rights, since the books were first published before e-books existed. Random House, Mr. Styron’s longtime publisher, says it owns those rights, and it is determined to secure its place — and continuing profits — in the Kindle era.
The discussions about the digital fate of Mr. Styron’s work are similar to the negotiations playing out across the book industry as publishers hustle to capture the rights to release e-book versions of so-called backlist books. Indeed, the same new e-book venture Mr. Styron’s family hopes to use has run into similar resistance from the print publisher of “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller.
On Friday, Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, sent a letter to dozens of literary agents, writing that the company’s older agreements gave it “the exclusive right to publish in electronic book publishing formats.”
Backlist titles, which continue to be reprinted long after their initial release, are crucial to publishing houses because of their promise of lucrative revenue year after year. But authors and agents are particularly concerned that traditional publishers are not offering sufficient royalties on e-book editions, which they point out are cheaper for publishers to produce. Some are considering taking their digital rights elsewhere, which could deal a financial blow to the hobbled publishing industry.
The tussle over who owns the electronic rights — and how much the authors should earn in digital royalties — potentially puts into play works by authors like Ralph Ellison and John Updike.
Some publishers have already made agreements with authors or their estates to release digital editions. All of Ernest Hemingway’s books, for example, are available in electronic versions from his print publisher, Scribner, a unit of Simon & Schuster.
But with only a small fraction of the thousands of books in print available in e-book form, there are many titles to be fought over.
“This is a wide open frontier right now,” said Maja Thomas, senior vice president for digital and audio publishing at the Hachette Book Group.
While most traditional publishers have included e-book rights in new author contracts for 15 years, many titles were originally published before e-books were explicitly included in contracts.
And with electronic readers like the Kindle from Amazon and the Nook from Barnes & Noble attracting new readers and sales of e-books growing exponentially, authors and publishers are trying to figure out how best to harness the new technology...
There is some precedent for arguments over e-book versions of backlist titles. In 2002, Random House sued RosettaBooks, an e-book publisher, for copyright infringement when Rosetta signed contracts with authors — including Mr. Styron — to release digital versions of previously published novels.
In its suit, Random House relied on wording in its contracts that granted it all rights to publish the works “in book form.” In its letter to agents on Friday, Random House invoked the same wording to defend its right to publish e-books of backlist titles.
In 2002, a federal judge in Manhattan denied Random House’s request for a preliminary injunction against RosettaBooks, ruling that “in book form” did not automatically include e-books. An appellate court similarly denied Random House’s request.
The case never went to trial. In a settlement, Random House granted Rosetta a license to release e-book versions of 51 titles. Under a different agreement with Mr. Styron, Rosetta also published two of his books, though its license to do so has since expired.
Agents say some authors and their estates are seeking alternative routes for e-books in part because they are dissatisfied with the digital royalty rate offered by most traditional publishers."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/media/13ebooks.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Unsettled: Questions about the Google Book Search Settlement | Peer to Peer Review; Library Journal, 12/10/09
Barbara Fister, Library Journal; Unsettled: Questions about the Google Book Search Settlement Peer to Peer Review:
"The most striking change is that the agreement covers a much smaller universe of scanned books, only those published in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia or registered in the US copyright office. Jonathan Brand, author of the third update to the aptly-titled Guide to the Perplexed, estimates "perhaps as much as 50% of the titles in the research libraries partnering with Google are not in English; and most of these foreign language titles probably were published outside the U.S. and were not registered with the Copyright Office."
Other issues that remain problematic in this amended settlement were nicely summed up in a series of posts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Deep Links blog, all of them related to core library values...
At this point I am as ambivalent as ever about Google's extraordinary "moon shot." From the start, I was concerned, as Rory Litwin was, about the transformation of libraries' collections, developed over decades, into a monopolistic commercial venture, one that depends on lowering privacy barriers to function. I was hopeful, back then, that it might establish a new understanding of fair use that would be of benefit to other digitization projects. I didn't foresee the development of a registry that would enable unprecedented exploitation of books—the majority of published books—that linger in an uncertain copyright limbo.
I was then and still remain skeptical that GBS will transform the way most people tap into the knowledge found in books. For scholars who mine vast research libraries for obscure nuggets, it holds promise, and the limitations of poor scanning, inadequate metadata, and now the exclusion of most works in languages other than English are of serious concern. But for the undergraduates I serve, ones who find our academic library of 300,000 volumes intimidating, its sheer size is actually a drawback.
As Ranganathan said, the library is a living organism. I'll leave the Panglossian vision of the universal, final library to others and get back to tending my own garden."
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6711187.html
"The most striking change is that the agreement covers a much smaller universe of scanned books, only those published in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia or registered in the US copyright office. Jonathan Brand, author of the third update to the aptly-titled Guide to the Perplexed, estimates "perhaps as much as 50% of the titles in the research libraries partnering with Google are not in English; and most of these foreign language titles probably were published outside the U.S. and were not registered with the Copyright Office."
Other issues that remain problematic in this amended settlement were nicely summed up in a series of posts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Deep Links blog, all of them related to core library values...
At this point I am as ambivalent as ever about Google's extraordinary "moon shot." From the start, I was concerned, as Rory Litwin was, about the transformation of libraries' collections, developed over decades, into a monopolistic commercial venture, one that depends on lowering privacy barriers to function. I was hopeful, back then, that it might establish a new understanding of fair use that would be of benefit to other digitization projects. I didn't foresee the development of a registry that would enable unprecedented exploitation of books—the majority of published books—that linger in an uncertain copyright limbo.
I was then and still remain skeptical that GBS will transform the way most people tap into the knowledge found in books. For scholars who mine vast research libraries for obscure nuggets, it holds promise, and the limitations of poor scanning, inadequate metadata, and now the exclusion of most works in languages other than English are of serious concern. But for the undergraduates I serve, ones who find our academic library of 300,000 volumes intimidating, its sheer size is actually a drawback.
As Ranganathan said, the library is a living organism. I'll leave the Panglossian vision of the universal, final library to others and get back to tending my own garden."
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6711187.html
Friday, December 11, 2009
Chris Weitz Says 'New Moon' Bootlegging Arrest Is 'Terribly Unfair'; MTV.com, 12/9/09
Eric Ditzian, MTV.com; Chris Weitz Says 'New Moon' Bootlegging Arrest Is 'Terribly Unfair'
'I would like to do what I can to address this,' director says in e-mail.:
"There are those fans who were really excited about "New Moon," buying Robert Pattinson-emblazoned pillows and making elaborate scrapbooks for the stars, and then there are those fans who may have gone overboard in their excitement. Samantha Tumpach was busted in a Chicago movie theater for allegedly taping three minutes of the "Twilight" saga sequel inside a theater in late November and could face up to a three-year prison term for her actions; Tumpach has said she was essentially filming a home movie had no intention of distributing the footage.
Now Chris Weitz, the director of "New Moon," has come to Tumpach's defense, saying that the prospect of such a harsh sentence is unjust.
"Needless to say, the case seems to me terribly unfair and I would like to do what I can to address this," Weitz wrote in an e-mail to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Weitz also said that he's been in contact with Summit Entertainment, the studio behind the franchise, about his concerns but admitted there's little he can do since "the film is, after all, not my property."
Tumpach, 22, spent two days in jail following her arrest on a felony charge intended to dissuade bootleggers from recording films in a theaters and selling illegal copies. Last week, Tumpach told the Sun-Times she was recording her sister's surprise 29th birthday party celebrated with family members and shot three minutes of footage inside the theater. She said the recorded footage contained ads, previews and snippets of the film and that she had no intention of distributing the footage.
'There is, needless to say, a difference between trying to protect the copyright of a film and making an unfair example of someone who clearly seems not to have any intentions towards video piracy," Weitz said."
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1627907/story.jhtml
'I would like to do what I can to address this,' director says in e-mail.:
"There are those fans who were really excited about "New Moon," buying Robert Pattinson-emblazoned pillows and making elaborate scrapbooks for the stars, and then there are those fans who may have gone overboard in their excitement. Samantha Tumpach was busted in a Chicago movie theater for allegedly taping three minutes of the "Twilight" saga sequel inside a theater in late November and could face up to a three-year prison term for her actions; Tumpach has said she was essentially filming a home movie had no intention of distributing the footage.
Now Chris Weitz, the director of "New Moon," has come to Tumpach's defense, saying that the prospect of such a harsh sentence is unjust.
"Needless to say, the case seems to me terribly unfair and I would like to do what I can to address this," Weitz wrote in an e-mail to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Weitz also said that he's been in contact with Summit Entertainment, the studio behind the franchise, about his concerns but admitted there's little he can do since "the film is, after all, not my property."
Tumpach, 22, spent two days in jail following her arrest on a felony charge intended to dissuade bootleggers from recording films in a theaters and selling illegal copies. Last week, Tumpach told the Sun-Times she was recording her sister's surprise 29th birthday party celebrated with family members and shot three minutes of footage inside the theater. She said the recorded footage contained ads, previews and snippets of the film and that she had no intention of distributing the footage.
'There is, needless to say, a difference between trying to protect the copyright of a film and making an unfair example of someone who clearly seems not to have any intentions towards video piracy," Weitz said."
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1627907/story.jhtml
Thursday, December 10, 2009
How About “Downlifting” to Replace “Digital Piracy”?; Freakonomics Blog, 4/17/09
Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics Blog; How About “Downlifting” to Replace “Digital Piracy”?:
"We recently asked you to consider renaming “digital piracy” in light of recent actual piracy. The question appears to have some resonance, as it was picked up by The Guardian, The Washington Post, and others.
For my money, the best suggestion by far comes from a reader named Derek:
Downlifting. Download + shoplifting. Pretty accurate description that doesn’t imply violence. Plus there’s a little mental double-take with “down” and “lift.”"
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/how-about-downlifting-to-replace-digital-piracy/
"We recently asked you to consider renaming “digital piracy” in light of recent actual piracy. The question appears to have some resonance, as it was picked up by The Guardian, The Washington Post, and others.
For my money, the best suggestion by far comes from a reader named Derek:
Downlifting. Download + shoplifting. Pretty accurate description that doesn’t imply violence. Plus there’s a little mental double-take with “down” and “lift.”"
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/how-about-downlifting-to-replace-digital-piracy/
Not Yet the Season for a Nook; New York Times, 12/10/09
David Pogue, New York Times; Not Yet the Season for a Nook:
"“Well, here comes the hotly awaited Nook from Barnes & Noble: an electronic book reader in the style of the Amazon Kindle...
Over one million titles?” Yes, but well over half of those are junky Google scans of free, obscure, pre-1923 out-of-copyright books, filled with typos. (They’re also available for the Kindle, but Amazon doesn’t even count them).
Fact is, Amazon’s e-book store is still much better. Of the current 175 New York Times best sellers, 12 of them aren’t available for Kindle; 21 are unavailable for the Nook...
And the “loan e-books to friends?” part? You can’t lend a book unless its publisher has O.K.’ed this feature. And so far, B&N says, only half of its books are available for lending — only one-third of the current best sellers. (A LendMe icon on the B&N Web site lets you know when a book is lendable.) Furthermore, the book is gone from your own Nook during the loan period (a maximum of two weeks). And each book can be lent only once, ever...
So O.K., the Nook is a mess, clearly rushed out the door in hopes of stealing some of the Kindle’s holiday cheer. “We want to optimize everything quite a bit,” a product manager concedes. The first of many software fixes, B&N says, will arrive wirelessly on Nooks next week. The company also says that it’s working to bring the selection and pricing of its e-book catalog more in line with Amazon’s."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/technology/personaltech/10pogue.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=nook&st=cse
"“Well, here comes the hotly awaited Nook from Barnes & Noble: an electronic book reader in the style of the Amazon Kindle...
Over one million titles?” Yes, but well over half of those are junky Google scans of free, obscure, pre-1923 out-of-copyright books, filled with typos. (They’re also available for the Kindle, but Amazon doesn’t even count them).
Fact is, Amazon’s e-book store is still much better. Of the current 175 New York Times best sellers, 12 of them aren’t available for Kindle; 21 are unavailable for the Nook...
And the “loan e-books to friends?” part? You can’t lend a book unless its publisher has O.K.’ed this feature. And so far, B&N says, only half of its books are available for lending — only one-third of the current best sellers. (A LendMe icon on the B&N Web site lets you know when a book is lendable.) Furthermore, the book is gone from your own Nook during the loan period (a maximum of two weeks). And each book can be lent only once, ever...
So O.K., the Nook is a mess, clearly rushed out the door in hopes of stealing some of the Kindle’s holiday cheer. “We want to optimize everything quite a bit,” a product manager concedes. The first of many software fixes, B&N says, will arrive wirelessly on Nooks next week. The company also says that it’s working to bring the selection and pricing of its e-book catalog more in line with Amazon’s."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/technology/personaltech/10pogue.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=nook&st=cse
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Beyond 1923: Characteristics of Potentially In-copyright Print Books in Library Collections
Brian Lavoie, Lorcan Dempsey, D-Lib Magazine; Beyond 1923: Characteristics of Potentially In-copyright Print Books in Library Collections:
"Introduction
Issues of copyright and permissible use have swirled around efforts to digitize print book collections. Sharp debate has ensued over the circumstances in which creating a digital surrogate and making it accessible online runs afoul of copyright protections, and what remedies might be appropriate to compensate rights holders. Some digitization efforts, such as the Open Content Alliance, have restricted themselves to public domain materials; Google Books, on the other hand, has sought to reach agreement with copyright holders represented by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. A proposed class-action settlement,1 announced in October 2008, would create a Book Rights Registry responsible for administering and adjudicating the process of locating and compensating rights holders impacted by Google's digitization activities.
The Google book settlement provoked spirited discussion of its potential ramifications, mimicking the commotion that followed the announcement of the original Google Print for Libraries (later re-named Google Books) project in December 2004. Using data from the WorldCat bibliographic database,2 OCLC Research published an article in 2005 aimed at illuminating issues surrounding Google's plan to digitize the print book collections of five major research libraries. The present article is motivated by a similar purpose: to provide empirical context for the many discussions surrounding the digitization of in-copyright print books. The settlement has raised challenging questions regarding permissible use of print book titles published after 1923; many of these titles may eventually form a significant part of the Google book database should it come to pass.
Discussions of Google Books and other digitization efforts tend to treat in-copyright print books as an amorphous collection, with little elaboration or detail on what this important collection of materials actually looks like. How many titles are involved? What is the distribution of their publication dates? What general observations can be made about their content? This article examines these and other questions in regard to the collection of US-published print books represented in WorldCat. Many of these questions were posed to the authors in private inquiries; these inquiries, along with the keen interest in digitization that continues to spark debate on blogs and listservs, suggested that a general publication addressing the characteristics of in-copyright print books could provide helpful context for ongoing discussions.
The focus of this article is on print book titles that are either in-copyright or potentially in-copyright. Determining copyright status is, however, problematic. The nuances of US copyright law are quite complicated, but a useful simplification organizes print books into three categories of copyright status based on date of publication. Broadly speaking, works published before 1923 are considered in the public domain, and therefore unencumbered by copyright restrictions. The copyright status of books published between 1923 and 1963, however, is murkier. Under US copyright law, works published during this period with a copyright notice remain in copyright for 95 years after publication – if their copyright was renewed. If copyright was allowed to lapse, the work reverts to the public domain. Finally, books published after 1963 are, by and large, still in copyright.
In addition to copyright status, the question of orphan works has received much attention in regard to digitization activities. The United States Copyright Office defines an orphan work as "the situation where the owner of a copyrighted work cannot be identified and located by someone who wishes to make use of the work in a manner that requires permission of the copyright owner."3 While it is important to bear in mind that any in-copyright book can be an "orphan", in practice the prevalence of orphan works is likely to be skewed toward older, rather than recently published, materials.
The analysis that follows examines the characteristics of US-published print books, with an emphasis on books that are likely in copyright according to US copyright law.4 As with our earlier article, the analysis is based on data from the WorldCat database, which represents the aggregated collections of more than 70,000 libraries worldwide. The analysis focuses on three areas: the WorldCat aggregate collection of US-published print books; the subset of this collection published during or after 1923 – i.e., those potentially associated with copyright and/or orphan works issues; and the combined print book collection of three academic research library participants in Google Books – again, with an emphasis on materials that are potentially in copyright."
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november09/lavoie/11lavoie.html
"Introduction
Issues of copyright and permissible use have swirled around efforts to digitize print book collections. Sharp debate has ensued over the circumstances in which creating a digital surrogate and making it accessible online runs afoul of copyright protections, and what remedies might be appropriate to compensate rights holders. Some digitization efforts, such as the Open Content Alliance, have restricted themselves to public domain materials; Google Books, on the other hand, has sought to reach agreement with copyright holders represented by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. A proposed class-action settlement,1 announced in October 2008, would create a Book Rights Registry responsible for administering and adjudicating the process of locating and compensating rights holders impacted by Google's digitization activities.
The Google book settlement provoked spirited discussion of its potential ramifications, mimicking the commotion that followed the announcement of the original Google Print for Libraries (later re-named Google Books) project in December 2004. Using data from the WorldCat bibliographic database,2 OCLC Research published an article in 2005 aimed at illuminating issues surrounding Google's plan to digitize the print book collections of five major research libraries. The present article is motivated by a similar purpose: to provide empirical context for the many discussions surrounding the digitization of in-copyright print books. The settlement has raised challenging questions regarding permissible use of print book titles published after 1923; many of these titles may eventually form a significant part of the Google book database should it come to pass.
Discussions of Google Books and other digitization efforts tend to treat in-copyright print books as an amorphous collection, with little elaboration or detail on what this important collection of materials actually looks like. How many titles are involved? What is the distribution of their publication dates? What general observations can be made about their content? This article examines these and other questions in regard to the collection of US-published print books represented in WorldCat. Many of these questions were posed to the authors in private inquiries; these inquiries, along with the keen interest in digitization that continues to spark debate on blogs and listservs, suggested that a general publication addressing the characteristics of in-copyright print books could provide helpful context for ongoing discussions.
The focus of this article is on print book titles that are either in-copyright or potentially in-copyright. Determining copyright status is, however, problematic. The nuances of US copyright law are quite complicated, but a useful simplification organizes print books into three categories of copyright status based on date of publication. Broadly speaking, works published before 1923 are considered in the public domain, and therefore unencumbered by copyright restrictions. The copyright status of books published between 1923 and 1963, however, is murkier. Under US copyright law, works published during this period with a copyright notice remain in copyright for 95 years after publication – if their copyright was renewed. If copyright was allowed to lapse, the work reverts to the public domain. Finally, books published after 1963 are, by and large, still in copyright.
In addition to copyright status, the question of orphan works has received much attention in regard to digitization activities. The United States Copyright Office defines an orphan work as "the situation where the owner of a copyrighted work cannot be identified and located by someone who wishes to make use of the work in a manner that requires permission of the copyright owner."3 While it is important to bear in mind that any in-copyright book can be an "orphan", in practice the prevalence of orphan works is likely to be skewed toward older, rather than recently published, materials.
The analysis that follows examines the characteristics of US-published print books, with an emphasis on books that are likely in copyright according to US copyright law.4 As with our earlier article, the analysis is based on data from the WorldCat database, which represents the aggregated collections of more than 70,000 libraries worldwide. The analysis focuses on three areas: the WorldCat aggregate collection of US-published print books; the subset of this collection published during or after 1923 – i.e., those potentially associated with copyright and/or orphan works issues; and the combined print book collection of three academic research library participants in Google Books – again, with an emphasis on materials that are potentially in copyright."
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november09/lavoie/11lavoie.html
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
[OpEd] An opportunity missed to apply 'fair use' to file sharing; LA Times, 12/7/09
[OpEd] LA Times; An opportunity missed to apply 'fair use' to file sharing:
"Joel Tenenbaum set out to become the standard-bearer for people who fight back against Recording Industry Assn. of America lawsuits, but he has come to symbolize fighting back the wrong way. After he admitted on the stand to downloading and sharing 30 songs -- contrary to what he'd claimed in a deposition -- a federal jury found the Boston University graduate liable in August for copyright infringement and ordered him to pay the labels $675,000. Today, the U.S. District Court judge who presided over the case, Nancy Gertner, issued a formal ruling explaining why she had rejected Tenenbaum's "fair use" defense. In a crisp indictment of Tenenbaum's legal team (which was led by notable copyright expert Charles Nesson from Harvard Law School), Gertner said she was prepared to consider a more expansive fair-use defense than other courts had entertained, but the defense blew it."
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2009/12/an-opportunity-missed-to-apply-fair-use-to-file-sharing.html
"Joel Tenenbaum set out to become the standard-bearer for people who fight back against Recording Industry Assn. of America lawsuits, but he has come to symbolize fighting back the wrong way. After he admitted on the stand to downloading and sharing 30 songs -- contrary to what he'd claimed in a deposition -- a federal jury found the Boston University graduate liable in August for copyright infringement and ordered him to pay the labels $675,000. Today, the U.S. District Court judge who presided over the case, Nancy Gertner, issued a formal ruling explaining why she had rejected Tenenbaum's "fair use" defense. In a crisp indictment of Tenenbaum's legal team (which was led by notable copyright expert Charles Nesson from Harvard Law School), Gertner said she was prepared to consider a more expansive fair-use defense than other courts had entertained, but the defense blew it."
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2009/12/an-opportunity-missed-to-apply-fair-use-to-file-sharing.html
Streaming will never stop downloading; Guardian, 12/8/09
Cory Doctorow, Guardian; Streaming will never stop downloading:
Far from being a cure for the industry's woes, substituting streams for downloads wastes bandwidth, reduces privacy and slows innovation
"Someone convinced the record and movie and TV industries that there is way of letting someone listen to audio or watch video over the internet without making a copy. They call this "streaming" audio, and compare it to radio, and contrast it with "downloading", which they compare to buying a CD.
The idea that you can show someone a movie over the internet without making a copy has got lots of people in policy circles excited, since it seems to "solve the copyright problem". If services such as Hulu, Last.fm and YouTube can "play you a file" instead of "sending you a file", then we're safely back in the pre-Napster era. You can sell subscriptions to on-demand streaming, and be sure that your subscribers will never stop paying, since they don't own their favourite entertainment and will have to stump up in order to play it again.
There's only one problem: Streaming doesn't exist."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/dec/08/music-streaming-cory-doctorow
Far from being a cure for the industry's woes, substituting streams for downloads wastes bandwidth, reduces privacy and slows innovation
"Someone convinced the record and movie and TV industries that there is way of letting someone listen to audio or watch video over the internet without making a copy. They call this "streaming" audio, and compare it to radio, and contrast it with "downloading", which they compare to buying a CD.
The idea that you can show someone a movie over the internet without making a copy has got lots of people in policy circles excited, since it seems to "solve the copyright problem". If services such as Hulu, Last.fm and YouTube can "play you a file" instead of "sending you a file", then we're safely back in the pre-Napster era. You can sell subscriptions to on-demand streaming, and be sure that your subscribers will never stop paying, since they don't own their favourite entertainment and will have to stump up in order to play it again.
There's only one problem: Streaming doesn't exist."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/dec/08/music-streaming-cory-doctorow
Rereading: Paul Theroux on Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky; Guardian, 11/21/09
Paul Theroux, Guardian; Rereading: Paul Theroux on Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky:
"This article has been removed as our copyright has expired."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/21/paul-bowles-paul-theroux-rereading
"This article has been removed as our copyright has expired."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/21/paul-bowles-paul-theroux-rereading
Burning CDs checked out from the library: ripping or ripping off?; Chicago Tribune, 11/28/09
Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune; Burning CDs checked out from the library: ripping or ripping off?:
When you burn CDs checked out from the library onto your computer, are you ripping -- or ripping off? Defenders call it fair use; others call it piracy
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-1028-library-cdsoct28,0,2130763.story
When you burn CDs checked out from the library onto your computer, are you ripping -- or ripping off? Defenders call it fair use; others call it piracy
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-1028-library-cdsoct28,0,2130763.story
Monday, December 7, 2009
Feds Prosecuting More Counterfeiters, IP Pirates; Wired, 12/3/09
David Kravets, Wired; Feds Prosecuting More Counterfeiters, IP Pirates:
"Federal prosecutions of criminal counterfeiting and copyright infringement cases have jumped over the past five years, as have IP-related prison terms, according to a Justice Department report.
The congressionally required report reviewed dozens of cases involving counterfeited pharmaceutical drugs, toothpaste, oil pipeline couplings, sports jerseys, DVDs and software. Movie camcording was also included.
The increases in sentences and prosecutions came even though one-third fewer IP cases were referred to federal authorities for prosecution (.pdf). There were 565 referrals in 2004 and 365 in 2008, the last year for which figures were compiled, according to data compiled in The PRO-IP ACT First Annual Report 2008-2009.
That said, the number of actual prosecutions increased from 2004 to 2008, despite fewer forwarded cases. Prison sentences have varied but generally have also been getting more severe.
While more defendants are getting terms in the one- to five-year range, the number of defendants getting no time has increased as well, from 79 in 2004 to 107 last year. Just three defendants got more than five years in 2008, down from 16 the prior year.
The report was required under the PRO-IP Act, which President George W. Bush signed last year. The act, which aims to bolster the United States’ enforcement of intellectual property crimes worldwide, (.pdf) also created a so-called copyright czar.
The position is on par with the nation’s drug czar. Obama’s pick for the position, Victoria Espinel, has been approved by the Senate Judiciary and is waiting for confirmation by the full Senate."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/federal-counterfeiting-prosecutions/
"Federal prosecutions of criminal counterfeiting and copyright infringement cases have jumped over the past five years, as have IP-related prison terms, according to a Justice Department report.
The congressionally required report reviewed dozens of cases involving counterfeited pharmaceutical drugs, toothpaste, oil pipeline couplings, sports jerseys, DVDs and software. Movie camcording was also included.
The increases in sentences and prosecutions came even though one-third fewer IP cases were referred to federal authorities for prosecution (.pdf). There were 565 referrals in 2004 and 365 in 2008, the last year for which figures were compiled, according to data compiled in The PRO-IP ACT First Annual Report 2008-2009.
That said, the number of actual prosecutions increased from 2004 to 2008, despite fewer forwarded cases. Prison sentences have varied but generally have also been getting more severe.
While more defendants are getting terms in the one- to five-year range, the number of defendants getting no time has increased as well, from 79 in 2004 to 107 last year. Just three defendants got more than five years in 2008, down from 16 the prior year.
The report was required under the PRO-IP Act, which President George W. Bush signed last year. The act, which aims to bolster the United States’ enforcement of intellectual property crimes worldwide, (.pdf) also created a so-called copyright czar.
The position is on par with the nation’s drug czar. Obama’s pick for the position, Victoria Espinel, has been approved by the Senate Judiciary and is waiting for confirmation by the full Senate."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/federal-counterfeiting-prosecutions/
Colleges Should Protect Humanists in Fair-Use Cases; Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/6/09
Carol Loeb Shloss, Chronicle of Higher Education; Colleges Should Protect Humanists in Fair-Use Cases:
"Did you see the news item that a Stanford professor had won a six-figure settlement from the James Joyce estate? That was me.
I am happy about the outcome of the lawsuit, but I'm also concerned for other humanities scholars working on projects that might leave them exposed to the same kinds of legal pressures and risks that I faced, risks that their colleges usually don't cover.
To make a labyrinthine saga short, in September I won $240,000 from the Joyce estate to cover legal fees incurred in the battle to publish a Web site containing evidence deleted from my book Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003). The estate threatened to sue first me and then the publisher if the book included quotes from Joyce's writing. I edited out important material from Joyce's notebooks, and the publisher took out even more evidence. With help from Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society's Fair Use Project, and other counsel, I went to court and, in 2007, won the rights to quote the documents on an online site.
But my legal victory obscures several major questions that should concern every humanities scholar on American college campuses. What role should colleges play in protecting their faculty in potential copyright disputes? Why should copyrights, when they are generated by faculty members, be excluded from university risk-management policies? Why does a special Fair Use Project like the one at Stanford have to exist at all? The underlying lack of protections exposed by this case indicates that humanities scholars throughout the country would benefit from a restructuring of university risk management.
In 2007 when the first stage of the Shloss vs. the Estate of James Joyce settlement was reached, Lessig, the founder of the Stanford Fair Use Project, said: "We will continue to defend academics threatened by overly aggressive copyright holders, as well as other creators for whom the intended protections of 'fair use' do not work in practice. I am hopeful that this is the last time this defendant will be involved in an action like this. But it is only the first time that we will be defending academics in these contexts."
The Fair Use Project is exemplary. But without it, I would have been exposed to threats that the university claimed belonged solely on my shoulders. The back story illustrates the structural inequalities that leave others in my position vulnerable, for I was receiving threatening letters from the Joyce estate long before I began to work with the Fair Use Project.
In such circumstances, one might assume that humanities scholars are covered by the university's risk-management department, whose purpose, at least at Stanford, is "for humanitarian, social, legal, and financial reasons," to "protect the health and safety of members of the community." The mission statement reveals that "in order to fulfill these objectives, we will consider all types of risks, including but not limited to natural risks, environmental risks, political risks, compliance risks, economic/business risks, social risks, and technological risks."
But that list, in my case, excluded the risks of publishing books. Although the university covered hazards related to "property, casualty, workers' compensation, crime, boilers, machinery, bonds, builder's risk, overseas programs, athletic programs, travel accident, etc.," and although the university routinely covered its medical faculty and researchers, humanities scholarship was considered by the general counsel to be outside its scope. There were two invisible categories for faculty members: one classification for medicine and the sciences and another for writers of books. Producers of patents were covered for their inventions. The only recourse for producers of copyrights was a media-perils insurance policy, purchased at the writer's personal expense.
Stanford is not alone in its approach to protecting humanities scholarship. Other college administrations also omit explicit references to protection of book publishing in their risk-management policies. They define risk as threats to a university's ability to "achieve its objectives," and cite strategic, compliance, operational, technological, and other such categories, or even specific areas of liability like aircraft, alcohol, automobiles, boilers, builder's risk, business travel, and so on. But you won't generally find explicit mention of risk to humanities scholars. Why not? Isn't producing knowledge a university objective?
One might argue, as did the general counsel of Stanford University in letters to me in 2003, that this is an appropriate policy because writers of books in the humanities are only expressing an opinion or a point of view. The university, as an institution, has no obligation to defend any attitude held by a single individual. Or one might contend that patents have a greater claim to institutional protection because university property is usually involved in generating inventions. Without the equipment in laboratories, scientists or engineers could not fulfill the demands of their experiments. Their work innately involves overhead that the university has assumed in the interest of progress. Or, more cynically, one might consider that patents usually generate income for the university, jobs for graduate-student assistants, and recognition in the corporate, industrial, and military worlds.
But such views ignore the degree to which colleges benefit from the work of humanities scholars, the implicit cost of creating a "two-tiered" faculty, and the extent to which academe's founding principles are put to the test by distinguishing between copyrights and patents.
When the work of a humanist is prohibited by an overly zealous copyright holder, as it was in Shloss v. the Estate of James Joyce, what is at stake is freedom of inquiry, not just the defense of an opinion or a point of view. Humanistic research is not simply a personal pursuit, but the very condition of any scholar's employment and as such inseparable from her or his professional duties. Why should it matter what field a faculty member belongs to? Invention is invention, discovery is discovery, and progress in human understanding isn't, or at least shouldn't be, limited to what contributes most to corporate, industrial, or military advantage.
If colleges are not simply handmaidens of financial profit, but authentic in their claim to be impartial proponents of progress, then the humanities, which speak in the voice of copyright, must be honored and protected with the same structures of risk management that govern the sciences. If colleges claim benefit, as they do, from the prestige of humanistic endeavors, then colleges should shield the risks incurred by those contributing to those benefits. They should not leave a large portion of the faculty unprotected. It is this general failing that is the precondition of the Stanford Fair Use Project. Were this not the case, there would have been no reason for Lessig to say to me, "This should not be happening to you." For it would not have happened.
Carol Loeb Shloss is a consulting professor of English at Stanford University. She is author of Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), supplemental material for which can be found at http://www.lucia-the-authors-cut.info."
http://chronicle.com/article/Colleges-Should-Protect/49306/?key=SD5zJVRobXAfYXsweHIWKCcBa395Jx0qPCJHZXkaZlBQ
"Did you see the news item that a Stanford professor had won a six-figure settlement from the James Joyce estate? That was me.
I am happy about the outcome of the lawsuit, but I'm also concerned for other humanities scholars working on projects that might leave them exposed to the same kinds of legal pressures and risks that I faced, risks that their colleges usually don't cover.
To make a labyrinthine saga short, in September I won $240,000 from the Joyce estate to cover legal fees incurred in the battle to publish a Web site containing evidence deleted from my book Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003). The estate threatened to sue first me and then the publisher if the book included quotes from Joyce's writing. I edited out important material from Joyce's notebooks, and the publisher took out even more evidence. With help from Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society's Fair Use Project, and other counsel, I went to court and, in 2007, won the rights to quote the documents on an online site.
But my legal victory obscures several major questions that should concern every humanities scholar on American college campuses. What role should colleges play in protecting their faculty in potential copyright disputes? Why should copyrights, when they are generated by faculty members, be excluded from university risk-management policies? Why does a special Fair Use Project like the one at Stanford have to exist at all? The underlying lack of protections exposed by this case indicates that humanities scholars throughout the country would benefit from a restructuring of university risk management.
In 2007 when the first stage of the Shloss vs. the Estate of James Joyce settlement was reached, Lessig, the founder of the Stanford Fair Use Project, said: "We will continue to defend academics threatened by overly aggressive copyright holders, as well as other creators for whom the intended protections of 'fair use' do not work in practice. I am hopeful that this is the last time this defendant will be involved in an action like this. But it is only the first time that we will be defending academics in these contexts."
The Fair Use Project is exemplary. But without it, I would have been exposed to threats that the university claimed belonged solely on my shoulders. The back story illustrates the structural inequalities that leave others in my position vulnerable, for I was receiving threatening letters from the Joyce estate long before I began to work with the Fair Use Project.
In such circumstances, one might assume that humanities scholars are covered by the university's risk-management department, whose purpose, at least at Stanford, is "for humanitarian, social, legal, and financial reasons," to "protect the health and safety of members of the community." The mission statement reveals that "in order to fulfill these objectives, we will consider all types of risks, including but not limited to natural risks, environmental risks, political risks, compliance risks, economic/business risks, social risks, and technological risks."
But that list, in my case, excluded the risks of publishing books. Although the university covered hazards related to "property, casualty, workers' compensation, crime, boilers, machinery, bonds, builder's risk, overseas programs, athletic programs, travel accident, etc.," and although the university routinely covered its medical faculty and researchers, humanities scholarship was considered by the general counsel to be outside its scope. There were two invisible categories for faculty members: one classification for medicine and the sciences and another for writers of books. Producers of patents were covered for their inventions. The only recourse for producers of copyrights was a media-perils insurance policy, purchased at the writer's personal expense.
Stanford is not alone in its approach to protecting humanities scholarship. Other college administrations also omit explicit references to protection of book publishing in their risk-management policies. They define risk as threats to a university's ability to "achieve its objectives," and cite strategic, compliance, operational, technological, and other such categories, or even specific areas of liability like aircraft, alcohol, automobiles, boilers, builder's risk, business travel, and so on. But you won't generally find explicit mention of risk to humanities scholars. Why not? Isn't producing knowledge a university objective?
One might argue, as did the general counsel of Stanford University in letters to me in 2003, that this is an appropriate policy because writers of books in the humanities are only expressing an opinion or a point of view. The university, as an institution, has no obligation to defend any attitude held by a single individual. Or one might contend that patents have a greater claim to institutional protection because university property is usually involved in generating inventions. Without the equipment in laboratories, scientists or engineers could not fulfill the demands of their experiments. Their work innately involves overhead that the university has assumed in the interest of progress. Or, more cynically, one might consider that patents usually generate income for the university, jobs for graduate-student assistants, and recognition in the corporate, industrial, and military worlds.
But such views ignore the degree to which colleges benefit from the work of humanities scholars, the implicit cost of creating a "two-tiered" faculty, and the extent to which academe's founding principles are put to the test by distinguishing between copyrights and patents.
When the work of a humanist is prohibited by an overly zealous copyright holder, as it was in Shloss v. the Estate of James Joyce, what is at stake is freedom of inquiry, not just the defense of an opinion or a point of view. Humanistic research is not simply a personal pursuit, but the very condition of any scholar's employment and as such inseparable from her or his professional duties. Why should it matter what field a faculty member belongs to? Invention is invention, discovery is discovery, and progress in human understanding isn't, or at least shouldn't be, limited to what contributes most to corporate, industrial, or military advantage.
If colleges are not simply handmaidens of financial profit, but authentic in their claim to be impartial proponents of progress, then the humanities, which speak in the voice of copyright, must be honored and protected with the same structures of risk management that govern the sciences. If colleges claim benefit, as they do, from the prestige of humanistic endeavors, then colleges should shield the risks incurred by those contributing to those benefits. They should not leave a large portion of the faculty unprotected. It is this general failing that is the precondition of the Stanford Fair Use Project. Were this not the case, there would have been no reason for Lessig to say to me, "This should not be happening to you." For it would not have happened.
Carol Loeb Shloss is a consulting professor of English at Stanford University. She is author of Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), supplemental material for which can be found at http://www.lucia-the-authors-cut.info."
http://chronicle.com/article/Colleges-Should-Protect/49306/?key=SD5zJVRobXAfYXsweHIWKCcBa395Jx0qPCJHZXkaZlBQ
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