Copyright Week; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Copyright Week

Open Access Movement Demands More: 2015 in Review; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 1/2/16

Elliot Harmon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Open Access Movement Demands More: 2015 in Review:

"In October 2015, all six editors of the linguistics journal Lingua quit at once, along with its 31-member editorial board. The walkout brought mainstream attention to a debate that has been brewing for years over the future of academic publishing.

Elsevier—Lingua’s publisher—classifies it as a hybrid journal. By default, Lingua is available only to subscribers (or to institutions that purchase access to journals in bulk). Individual writers can choose to have their articles shared openly if they pay an additional fee. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with those fees—most major open journals have article processing charges, as do many closed journals. But Lingua’s editors believed that their journal’s fee was prohibitively high and didn’t correspond to increased support from Elsevier. The same team is planning to launch a new journal next year with the growing open access publisher Ubiquity Press.

In a lot of ways, what happened at Lingua is emblematic of something that’s been happening all year. If 2014 was the year that the open access movement became mainstream, then this is the year we stopped compromising with closed publishers.

One of the biggest tactics the open access movement can use to effect change is encouraging research funders to adopt open access policies—that is, policies that require that any work they fund be shared openly. Creative Commons reports that in 2015, five major foundations adopted policies requiring any research they fund to be published under an open license: the Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Vancouver Foundation."

Dutch lead European push to flip journals to open access; Nature, 1/6/16

Declan Butler, Nature; Dutch lead European push to flip journals to open access:

"The Netherlands is leading what it hopes will be a pan-European effort in 2016 to push scholarly publishers towards open-access (OA) business models: making more papers free for all users as soon as they are published.

In 2014, publishers worldwide made 17% of new papers OA immediately on publication, up from 12% in 2011 (see ‘Growth of open access’). But most papers are still locked behind paywalls when they are first published. The Dutch government, which took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union council of ministers this month, has declared furthering OA to be one of its top priorities...

A major driving force for the Dutch and British deals was to combat the expensive and controversial ‘hybrid’ business models that have been adopted by many subscription journals worldwide. Hybrid journals collect subscriptions but allow authors to make individual papers open for a fee. They charge higher fees, on average, than do fully OA journals, yet scientists who want OA papers often choose to publish with them because they are generally more established or prestigious than many recently launched OA journals."

U.S. Top Court to Examine How Government Agency Reviews Patents; Reuters via New York Times, 1/15/16

Reuters via New York Times; U.S. Top Court to Examine How Government Agency Reviews Patents:

"The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether a federal agency's procedures have made it too easy to successfully cancel patents after agreeing on Friday to decide a case involving a vehicle speedometer that alerts drivers if they are speeding.

The nine justices will hear an appeal filed by Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC, whose speedometer patent was invalidated in a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review procedure after being challenged by GPS device maker Garmin Ltd in 2012.

Companies that are frequent targets of patent suits, including Apple Inc and Google Inc, have taken advantage of the patent office procedure, known as inter partes review (IPR), in unexpectedly high numbers since it was put in place in 2012.

These reviews allow anyone to challenge the validity of a patent far more cheaply and quickly than in a U.S. federal court.

The high court justices will now consider whether the patent office is improperly interpreting the patents that come before it in the reviews. Critics say this leads to a high rate of patent cancellations."

Fan-made ‘X-Men: Danger Room Protocols’ calls in the Sentinels; ComicBookResources.com, 1/19/16

Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; Fan-made ‘X-Men: Danger Room Protocols’ calls in the Sentinels:

"Wolverine and Jean Grey team up against the Sentinels in the premiere episode of the animated web series X-Men: Danger Room Protocols, a fan tribute to the 1990s cartoon and comics.

Announced earlier this month, the biweekly project by Joel Furtado is exactly as advertised: Classic X-Men are placed by Professor X into teams of two and put through their paces in the Danger Room.

Anne Frank's diary caught in fierce European copyright battle; Guardian, 1/18/16

Alison Flood, Guardian; Anne Frank's diary caught in fierce European copyright battle:

"In a letter to Ertzscheid sent in late December, the foundation asks him to “cease and desist” from making The Diary of a Young Girl available online, to “immediately” announce he was “misinformed” about the copyright in the diary, to compensate damages, and to pay €1,000 each day he does not comply with the instructions, or risk court proceedings.

Ertzscheid went ahead, however, describing it as a “gift”. “This first of January 2016, 70 years after the death of Anne Frank, because this is enough time and because it is legal, this diary, her diary, enters the public domain. It belongs to everyone. And it is up to each of us to weigh its importance,” he wrote."

Yosemite to Rename Several Iconic Places; Outside, 1/14/16

Christopher Solomon, Outside; Yosemite to Rename Several Iconic Places:

"The outgoing company also trademarked “Yosemite National Park” for merchandising purposes, said Gediman. Will you be able to buy a Yosemite T-shirt at the gift shop come March 1? “That’s something that remains to be determined,” he said.

The announcement is the latest drama in a long legal dispute between the park service and the concessionaire, DNC Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, Inc. And it comes as the agency kicks off the centennial celebration year of America’s national parks system—when the park service would rather be feting America’s parks, not painting over signs at one of its marquee locations.

The news angered some park watchers.

“It’s a really unfortunate situation where the National Park Service is being held hostage by a corporate concessionaire who clearly does not have the public interest at heart,” said Amy Trainer, executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin. “I think this is pretty outrageous that the park service, because of a 50-plus-million-dollar lawsuit, is forced to change these historic namesakes,” Trainer said. “It’s a tragedy.”...

The federal government might find some relief, however, in a law Congress passed in late 2014 that allows the government to keep a name that’s historically associated with a building or structure that is either on, or eligible, to be included on the National Register of Historic Places, says Sitzmann."

Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law; Future Tense, 1/13/16

Kyle Wiens, Future Tense; Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law:

"These hard-won exemptions last only until the next rulemaking. (That’s how unlocking your cellphone went from legal to illegal, before Congress stepped in.) In three years, proponents will have to find a way to do this all over again. This is not sustainable process—not for participants and not for the Copyright Office.

It’s time to level the playing field. Let’s make these exemptions less restrictive and shift the burden of proof a little. Instead of making supporters go to extreme lengths to show that an exemption is absolutely necessary, how about asking the opposition to show that an exemption is absolutely unnecessary? At the very least, Congress should remove the expiration date on exemptions. Once granted, exemptions should be permanent.

I’m a repairman. I recognize broken things when I see them. I got into this fight because I wanted to help people repair their broken stuff. Turns out, copyright law is the thing that was broken all along."

David Bowie Wasn't Just An Incredible Music Visionary, But An Internet & Business Model Visionary Too; Techdirt.com, 1/11/16

Mike Masnick, Techdirt.com; David Bowie Wasn't Just An Incredible Music Visionary, But An Internet & Business Model Visionary Too:

All the way back in 1996, he was the first major musician to release music only on the internet, launching the single for "Telling Lies" as a direct download off of his website, and announcing it in an online chat session. Yes, nearly 20 years ago, Bowie embraced internet distribution for his music."

European Union: European Commission On Harmonisation Of EU Copyright Rules; Mondaq.com, 1/11/16

Peter L'Ecluse and Thibaut D'hulst, Mondaq.com; European Union: European Commission On Harmonisation Of EU Copyright Rules:

"As announced in its 2016 Work Programme (See, VBB on Business Law, Volume 2015, No. 10, p. 15, available at www.vbb.com), the European Commission presented on 9 December 2015 its vision on a further harmonisation of EU copyright rules as part of its Digital Single Market Strategy (the "Communication"). To achieve a wide availability of creative contents across the European Union while maintaining a high level of protection for right holders, the European Commission considers it necessary to have a higher level of harmonisation and adapt copyright rules to new technological realities. To achieve this goal, the European Commission focuses on the following courses of action."

U.S. Marshalls raid a Chinese hoverboard maker’s booth at CES; Digital Trends, 1/8/16

Ed Oswald, Digital Trends; U.S. Marshalls raid a Chinese hoverboard maker’s booth at CES:

"The company sent a cease-and-desist letter to Changzhou in December, but received no response. Future Motion’s lawyer told Bloomberg that his company again tried to reach out the day before the show opened, but failed to achieve any resolution. On Wednesday, Future Motion filed a request with a federal judge to bar Changzhou from displaying its version, which the judge approved, and the result was Thursday’s raid.

As far as we can tell, this is the first time a seizure of this magnitude has happened on the floor of CES. The show itself actually has policies intended to discourage disputes on the show floor, including prohibiting “loud” disputes, and limiting the number of company representatives (two employees, a translator, and a lawyer) who can approach another company’s booth over an intellectual property infringement claim."

The new way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat ‘score’; Washington Post, 1/10/16

Justin Jouvenal, Washington Post; The new way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat ‘score’ :

"Police officials say such tools can provide critical information that can help uncover terrorists or thwart mass shootings, ensure the safety of officers and the public, find suspects, and crack open cases. They say that last year’s attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., have only underscored the need for such measures.

But the powerful systems also have become flash points for civil libertarians and activists, who say they represent a troubling intrusion on privacy, have been deployed with little public oversight and have potential for abuse or error. Some say laws are needed to protect the public."

Monkey Has No Rights to Its Selfie, Federal Judge Says; New York Times, 1/8/16

Mike McPhate, New York Times; Monkey Has No Rights to Its Selfie, Federal Judge Says:

"“A monkey, an animal-rights organization and a primatologist walk into federal court to sue for infringement of the monkey’s claimed copyright. What seems like the setup for a punch line is really happening.”

Judge Orrick explained from the bench on Wednesday that he had no authority to extend such rights to animals.

“This is an issue for Congress and the president,” he said, according to Ars Technica. “If they think animals should have the right of copyright, they’re free, I think, under the Constitution, to do that.”"

‘The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet,’ by Justin Peters; New York Times Book Review, 1/8/16

Stephen Witt, New York Times Book Review; ‘The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet,’ by Justin Peters:

"By the end of “The Idealist,” Peters has dropped the pretension of neutrality and taken up Swartz’s crusade. This is fine, I think — it wouldn’t be a good biography if it didn’t have a point of view. But in the final pages, as Peters dons the sports coat of the history lecturer and draws a lame comparison between Aaron Swartz and Noah Webster, he disappoints once again. It’s the whole book in microcosm: superb when it focuses on its subject, unnecessary when it veers away."

New York Public Library Invites a Deep Digital Dive; New York Times, 1/6/16

Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times; New York Public Library Invites a Deep Digital Dive:

"But the game is what you might call a marketing teaser for a major redistribution of property, digitally speaking: the release of more than 180,000 photographs, postcards, maps and other public-domain items from the library’s special collections in downloadable high-resolution files — along with an invitation to users to grab them and do with them whatever they please.

Digitization has been all the rage over the past decade, as libraries, museums and other institutions have scanned millions of items and posted them online. But the library’s initiative (nypl.org/publicdomain), which goes live on Wednesday, goes beyond the practical questions of how and what to digitize to the deeper one of what happens next...

A growing number of institutions have been rallying under the banner of “open content.” While the library’s new initiative represents one of the largest releases of visually rich material since the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam began making more than 200,000 works available in high-quality scans free of charge in 2012, it’s notable for more than its size.

“It’s not just a data dump,” said Dan Cohen, the executive director of the Digital Public Library of America, a consortium that offers one-stop access to digitized holdings from more than 1,300 institutions.

The New York Public has “really been thinking about how they can get others to use this material,” Mr. Cohen continued. “It’s a next step that I would like to see more institutions take.”

Most items in the public-domain release have already been visible at the library’s digital collections portal. The difference is that the highest-quality files will now be available for free and immediate download, along with the programming interfaces, known as APIs, that allow developers to use them more easily."

Comic Book Recalls Effort to Expose ‘Mein Kampf’; New York Times, 12/30/15

George Gene Gustines, New York Times; Comic Book Recalls Effort to Expose ‘Mein Kampf’ :

"The 70-year copyright on Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” expired on Thursday in Germany. And a comic book released last month sheds light on a legal battle over the book that occurred in America in 1939. The comic, “The Book That Hitler Didn’t Want You to Read,” tells the story of how Alan Cranston — then a journalist, and years later a California senator — produced his own version of Hitler’s book, only to be sued by Hitler.

“I was aware of the efforts of young Alan Cranston to warn the free world of the dangers that Hitler represented,” said Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, which produced the comic. “It seemed to me that Cranston’s story could be an effective vehicle to convey the new controversy over ‘Mein Kampf’ that would be starting after Dec. 31.”"

Patent Litigation Up in 2015, Despite Efforts to Rein it In; Wall Street Journal, 1/4/16

Ashby Jones, Wall Street Journal; Patent Litigation Up in 2015, Despite Efforts to Rein it In:

"According to the report, released Monday by RPX Corp., NPEs filed over 3,600 patent cases in 2015. NPEs, also referred to derisively by some as “patent trolls,” buy up patents and seek to make money from them through licensing and litigation.

NPEs filed 3,604 cases last year, a sharp increase over 2014, in which NPEs filed 2,891. The number was down slightly from 2013, in which NPEs filed 3,733 lawsuits.

The authors of the study acknowledge that the uptick is somewhat counterintuitive.

In recent years, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have all taken steps to curb litigation based on patents, especially those relating to computer software. Critics argue that many of these patents should not have been awarded in the first place.

The 2011 America Invents Act — Congress’s first overhaul of the patent laws in decades — established a new tribunal, called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

The PTAB allows a company embroiled in a lawsuit to skip the question of whether it infringed a patent and challenge whether the patent should have been issued in the first place."

Controversial artist Richard Prince sued for copyright infringement; Guardian, 1/4/16

Mahita Gajanan, Guardian; Controversial artist Richard Prince sued for copyright infringement:

"Richard Prince, a New York-based artist whose work often involves appropriating that of others, has been sued for copyright infringement by Donald Graham, a photographer who claims Prince knowingly reproduced his photo Rastafarian Smoking a Joint without seeking permission.

Artnet reports that Graham filed a complaint on 30 December against Prince, the Gagosian Gallery – where Prince’s New Portraits exhibition ran between September and October 2014 – and Lawrence Gagosian, the gallery owner.

The New Portraits collection featured 37 inkjet prints on canvas of what Prince called “screen saves” of Instagram posts, according to the complaint. The only modification to the images by Prince, besides blowing them up in size, are in comments underneath the pictures comprised of emojis and bizarre sentences. The pieces sold for up to $100,000 at New York’s Frieze art fair, where they caused considerable controversy.

One woman in the photographs, Doe Deere, a member of the SuicideGirls burlesque collective, posted on Instagram that she had been told the picture of her had been sold for $90,000. Prince, as is his custom, had not asked permission to use the images."

TPP trade deal pits Pittsburgh against Philadelphia; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/3/16

Tracie Mauriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; TPP trade deal pits Pittsburgh against Philadelphia:

"Pittsburgh manufactures the products. Philadelphia ships them around the world.

One city stands to gain from expanding trade into the Pacific Rim while the other has much to lose, their mayors say.

That’s why Philadelphia’s outgoing mayor, Michael Nutter, has been helping the White House stump for the Trans-Pacific Partnership while Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto stands opposed...

Mr. Peduto acknowledges that the trade deal might be good for some industries, but says any benefits are outweighed by harm it would do to the steel industry."