OPEN ACCESS WEEK @ Pitt, 2014

OPEN ACCESS WEEK @ Pitt, 2014

"Open Access Week, a global event now entering its seventh year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they've learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research."

Celebrating Open Access Week: Research Should Be Free, Available, and Open; Electronic Frontier Foundation, 10/20/14

Electronic Frontier Foundation; Celebrating Open Access Week: Research Should Be Free, Available, and Open:

"Welcome to the eighth annual Open Access Week! We're joining an international community—researchers and students, doctors and patients, librarians and activists—to celebrate free and open access to knowledge. This is also a time to discuss the barriers and costs of keeping research and information locked up with restrictive licenses and publisher paywalls.

This week, we'll be blogging daily about various aspects of open access, as well as ways to get involved in the movement. Visit this page throughout the week to find a list of all our blog posts. If you have further questions, be sure to tune in on Thursday at 10 a.m. PT for a reddit AmA, where we’ll be joined by fellow advocates and researchers."

"Copy Me" episode 3: "Early Copyright History"; BoingBoing.net, 10/13/14

Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net; "Copy Me" episode 3: "Early Copyright History" :

"Alex writes, "It features censorship, hangings, dissent and criticism, a whole bunch of state and church control, angry queens, sad Stationers, and, of course, our terrible culprit: the printing press.""

Conservatives' copyright law changes could backfire; CBC, 10/14/14

Kady O'Malley, CBC News; Conservatives' copyright law changes could backfire:

"It's not hard to imagine the Conservative advertising department working overtime to come up with a new ad centred on a clip of Trudeau's now infamous comments.

If done right — and until Trudeau came along, that ad department had an excellent track record, at least as far as demolishing the credibility of Liberal leaders — a campaign focusing on Trudeau's most ungainly on-camera moments of late could at least start to make up for the time and money wasted in trying to depict him as Canada's new Prince of Pot.

But last spring, representatives from Canada's major broadcasters — CBC, Radio Canada, CTV, Rogers and Shaw, owner of Global — served notice to all political parties that they were seriously considering imposing a collective blackout on ads making use of their proprietary footage without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Under that policy, if the Conservative Party can't strike a deal with one of the networks that happened to be filming Trudeau at the time, they would likely find the ad blocked from the airwaves."

YouTube Has Paid $1 Billion to Copyright Holders Since 2007; NBCNews.com, 10/14/14

NBCNews.com; YouTube Has Paid $1 Billion to Copyright Holders Since 2007:

"YouTube has paid out a cool $1 billion to copyright holders since 2007, the company confirmed to NBC News. It's all part of YouTube's Content ID program, which, according to a Google spokesperson, scans 400 years' worth of content every single day for potential copyright issues...

The majority of Content ID's 500-plus partners decide to monetize instead of ban those videos, according to Google, which could explain why the entertainment industry shifted from complaining about YouTube to awarding it a Primetime Engineering Emmy Award in 2013."

Readers Debate Online Piracy and the Future of Digital Entertainment; New York Times, 9/29/14

Jenna Wortham, New York Times; Readers Debate Online Piracy and the Future of Digital Entertainment:

"On Sunday, The New York Times published the story of a popular — and illegal — website that let people stream and download movies and television shows at their leisure. The site was taken offline in 2010 by the federal government, and the administrators behind the site were charged with conspiracy and copyright infringement. Nearly all served time in prison. The article touched a nerve among Times readers, eliciting hundreds of reactions about copyright infringement and intellectual property, and how the digital world complicates both.

Here is a sampling of their comments..."

Supreme Court won’t intervene in Shuster-DC fight over Superman; ComicBookResources.com, 10/6/14

Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; Supreme Court won’t intervene in Shuster-DC fight over Superman:

"The U.S. Supreme Court this morning declined to intervene in the copyright dispute between the Joe Shuster Estate and DC Comics, effectively ending the long, and frequently bitter, battle over who owns Superman.

By denying the estate’s petition, the justices let stand a November 2013 ruling by the Ninth Circuit that Shuster’s nephew is prevented by a 1992 agreement with DC from reclaiming the artist’s stake in the first Superman story under a clause of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act.

At issue was a now 22-year-old deal in which the Shuster estate relinquished all claims to the property in exchange for “more than $600,000 and other benefits,” which included paying Shuster’s debts following his death earlier that year and providing his sister Jean Peavy and brother Frank Shuster with a $25,000 annual pension."