A right to repair: why Nebraska farmers are taking on John Deere and Apple; Guardian, March 6, 2017

Olivia Solon, Guardian; 

A right to repair: why Nebraska farmers are taking on John Deere and Apple

"Kyle is one of many farmers in the US fighting for the right to repair their equipment. He and others are getting behind Nebraska’s “Fair Repair” bill, which would require companies to provide consumers and independent repair shops access to service manuals, diagnostic tools and parts so they aren’t limited to a single supplier. They have an unlikely ally: repair shops for electronic items like iPhones, tablets and laptops who struggle to find official components and information to fix broken devices. This means the bill could benefit not just farmers but anyone who owns electronic goods. There’s also a benefit to the environment, as it would allow for more refurbishment and recycling instead of sending equipment to the landfill.

Nebraska is one of eight states in the US – including Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wyoming, Tennessee and Kansas – seeking to pass “right to repair” legislation. All eyes will be on the Cornhusker state when the bill has its public hearing on 9 March, because its unique “unicameral legislature” (it’s the only state to have a single parliamentary chamber) means laws can be enacted swiftly. If this bill, officially named LB67, gets through, it may lead to a domino effect through the rest of the US, as happened with a similar battle over the right to repair cars."

China’s theft of U.S. trade secrets under scrutiny; Science, February 28, 2017

Mara Hvistendahl, Science; 

China’s theft of U.S. trade secrets under scrutiny

"When it comes to intellectual property (IP) theft, there’s the rest of the world, and then there’s China, a new report says. In 2015, mainland China and Hong Kong accounted for 87% of counterfeit goods seized by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. China’s share of trade secrets theft, though harder to track, is not far behind, claims the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property in Washington, D.C., a bipartisan nongovernmental group co-chaired by former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., who served as U.S. ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011.

Stolen trade secrets, pirated software, and counterfeiting cost the United States between $225 billion and $600 billion per year, the commission estimates...

Scholars often take issue with efforts to put a price tag on IP theft... 

Also up for debate is how best to address IP theft. The Obama administration pursued a strategy heavy on prosecutions of Chinese-born U.S. scientists (see here, here, and here), along with symbolic moves against overseas offenders, such as the 2014 indictment of five members of a People’s Liberation Army hacking unit. Policy tools improved under Obama went “largely unused,” the report said. For instance, a 2015 law enabling the president to sanction foreign countries, companies, and individuals for IP theft has not yet been invoked."

The day of Trump toilets and condoms in China may have just ended. Here's why that's controversial; Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2017

Jessica Meyers, Los Angeles Times; 
The day of Trump toilets and condoms in China may have just ended. Here's why that's controversial

"Could Trump benefit from the decision?

Some analysts believe investors, wary about the delicate relationship between China and the U.S., will veer away from anything bearing Donald Trump’s name. But two chief ethics lawyers under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama argue China could still use Trump’s ties to his family empire to influence policies.

They’re part of a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York that alleges the president’s foreign business connections violate the Constitution.

“We should be seriously concerned about Mr. Trump’s ethical standards,” [Haochen] Sun [director of the Law and Technology Center at the University of Hong Kong and a specialist in intellectual property law] said. “The registration carries the message that Trump is still doing business.”

Patent Data – The Modern Investor’s Crystal Ball; Intellectual Property Watch, March 6, 2017

Sirena Rubinoff, Intellectual Property Watch; 

Patent Data – The Modern Investor’s Crystal Ball

"What if there was a crystal ball that could tell you where and when to invest your money? It sounds like science fiction, but engineers at MIT have actually developed a formula that can predict future events in tech development. The formula is based on a combination of big data from patent applications and smart analytics which, when put together, can estimate how fast a technology is advancing.

Why patent applications?

If you want to know where technology is headed, a great place to look is in a patent application database like the USPTO. One of the qualifications for getting a patent granted is “novelty,” which means new, similar innovations won’t appear anywhere else. Once enough data is collected from the database, it can be used to map out and predict unique advancements in specific areas of technology."

Peer-review activists push psychology journals towards open data; Nature, March 1, 2017

Gautam Naik, Nature; 

Peer-review activists push psychology journals towards open data

"An editor on the board of a journal published by the prestigious American Psychological Association (APA) has been asked to resign in a controversy over data sharing in peer review.

Gert Storms — who says he won’t step down — is one of a few hundred scientists who have vowed that, from the start of this year, they will begin rejecting papers if authors won’t publicly share the underlying data, or explain why they can’t.

The idea, called the Peer Reviewers’ Openness Initiative, was launched by psychologists hoping to increase transparency in a field beset by reports of fraud and dubious research practices. And the APA, which does not ask that data be made available to peer reviewers or shared openly online, seems set to become an early testing ground for the initiative’s influence. With Storms’ situation still unresolved, the society’s council of editors will discuss whether it should change its policies at a meeting in late March."

U.S. Withdrawal from TPP Impact on Intellectual Property; Inside Counsel, March 3, 2017

Amanda Ciccatelli, Inside Counsel; 

U.S. Withdrawal from TPP Impact on Intellectual Property

"Further, the U.S. withdrawal from the TPP may have major global implications for IP rights. As the TPP was being negotiated, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was slowly progressing in the background. The RCEP is a Chinese- and Indian-led alternative to TPP that includes all seven of the Asian and Oceanic states in TPP, plus South Korea, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia. 

“But the RCEP is almost certain to provide less protection for IP rights – especially pharmaceutical patent rights – than the TPP would have,” Rich said. “India and China are traditionally hostile to strong pharmaceutical patent protections of the type found under U.S. law, calling such patent protections ‘evergreening.’ “So, the rejection of the TPP is likely to allow an alternative, less protective paradigm for international IP rights to arise in its place.”"

LDS Church goes after MormonLeaks, accuses website of ‘copyright’ violation; Salt Lake Tribune, March 3, 2017

Christopher Smart, Salt Lake Tribune; 

LDS Church goes after MormonLeaks, accuses website of ‘copyright’ violation

"The website — which has generated headlines by posting purloined papers on topics ranging from how much Mormon apostles are paid to rules for missionary phone calls home — recently circulated a PowerPoint presentation highlighting issues that could lead members away from the fold.

On Wednesday, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints threatened legal action against MormonLeaks, alleging that the site published copyright material. The PowerPoint was posted on www.docdroid.net, a YouTube-like hosting site for documents, but was removed after the church sent its letter."

Lou Reed Archives Head to New York Public Library; New York Times, March 2, 2017

Ben Sisario, New York Times; 

Lou Reed Archives Head to New York Public Library

"Ms. Anderson said that the library’s mandate of making its collections available to the public was central to her decision to place the archive there. But she also felt that it all simply belonged in New York.

“Lou is kind of Mr. New York,” Ms. Anderson said. “This is the city he loved the most. It doesn’t make any sense for him to be anywhere else. Then, what’s the best place in New York? This is the best place in New York.”

She also giggled a little, and made a mock librarian’s shush, as she added: “I just love that somebody who is so loud is in the New York Public Library.”"

Privacy Laws and Listener Data in the Music Industry; Inside Counsel, March 2, 2017

Adrian J. Perry and Sari Sharoni, Inside Counsel; 

Privacy Laws and Listener Data in the Music Industry

"Whether and how state privacy laws across the United States apply to the collection and sharing of listener preference data could have a profound effect on not only the ability of music streaming services to deliver their content to listeners, but on the future of music and the music industry generally.

A recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decision, in which the court dismissed a proposed class action suit against Pandora for disclosure of listener music preferences in violation of Michigan's Preservation of Personal Privacy Act (PPPA), shed light on the uncertainty looming over the music industry from the prospect of state privacy law placing constraints on the alienability of this valuable data.

The Michigan PPPA, in relevant part, prohibits a business engaged in selling, renting, or lending sound recordings from knowingly disclosing to anyone information that personally identifies a particular customer as having purchased, leased, rented, or borrowed those sound recordings from that business. The question before the Ninth Circuit was whether this statute could be construed to prohibit Pandora, a music streaming service with both paid and ad-supported unpaid options, from disclosing listener preference data."

Stupid Patent of the Month: IBM Patents Out-of-Office Email; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), February 28, 2017

Daniel Nazer, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Stupid Patent of the Month: IBM Patents Out-of-Office Email

"Update: March 1, 2017 Today IBM told Ars Technica that it "has decided to dedicate the patent to the public" and it filed a formal disclaimer at the Patent Office making this dedication. While this is just one patent in IBM's massive portfolio, we are glad to learn that it has declared it will not enforce its patent on out-of-office email.

On January 17, 2017, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted IBM a patent on an out-of-office email system. Yes, really.

United States Patent No. 9,547,842 (the ’842 Patent),“Out-of-office electronic mail messaging system,” traces its history to an application filed back in 2010. That means it supposedly represents a new, non-obvious advance over technology from that time. But, as many office workers know, automated out-of-office messages were a “workplace staple” decades before IBM filed its application. The Patent Office is so out of touch that it conducted years of review of this application without ever discussing any real-world software."

Trademark Quality Chat Webinar on Tuesday, March 14, 2017 12 noon - 1 PM ET

Trademark Alert

Webinar on Trademark Quality Review Program The USPTO’s Patent Quality Chat webinar series continues on March 14 from noon-1 p.m. ET with a guest chat on Trademarks and quality. Our chat will present insight into the Trademark Quality Review program, which reviews the work of trademark examining attorneys. During the webinar you can email questions about the Trademark Quality Review program to our speakers at patentquality@uspto.gov. Join the chat to hear our insight, ask your trademark questions, and suggest improvements to the Trademark Quality Review program. Enhancing the quality of our work and processes is part of the USPTO’s continuous quality improvement efforts in partnership with our stakeholders. Date Topic Speaker Tuesday, March 14 Noon-1 p.m. ET Guest Chat: Trademarks and Quality Presentation Slides (coming soon) Video (coming Soon) Kevin Peska Managing Attorney, Office of Trademark Quality Review and Training Donald Fingeret Senior Staff Attorney, Office of Trademark Quality Review and Training

Richmond-based Red Eye Cookie Co. gets sued over trademark issue by national cookie delivery chain; Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 1, 2017

Dean Seal, Richmond Times-Dispatch; 

Richmond-based Red Eye Cookie Co. gets sued over trademark issue by national cookie delivery chain

"Started by a University of Pennsylvania undergraduate out of his dorm room in 2003, Insomnia Cookies maintains more than 100 stores throughout the country, including locations in Richmond and Charlottesville, among others in Virginia.

According to the suit, Insomnia has used a distinctive design mark since its early days, which prominently features a crescent moon dotted with what appears to be chocolate chips, giving the impression of a cookie with a bite taken out of it.

Red Eye began in March 2014 on West Grace Street near Virginia Commonwealth University’s academic campus. It moved in August 2015 to its current location at 935 W. Grace St., roughly 240 feet from Insomnia Cookies’ own Richmond location, which opened in January 2015.

Red Eye’s logo also features a crescent moon, which is colored dark red.

Each company sells freshly baked cookies, baked goods, milk, coffee and ice cream, and both offer late-night delivery — typically to college students.

The lawsuit states that Insomnia and Red Eye “are very similar, if not identical” and continues that “the companies operate in the same markets; the companies target the same customers; the companies advertise and promote their goods and services in the same or similar media; and Red Eye is using one or more marks that feature a crescent moon design as the dominant design element of those marks.”

Toy giant Hasbro is trying to trademark the smell of Play-Doh; Independent, March 1, 2017

John Wadsworth, Independent; 

Toy giant Hasbro is trying to trademark the smell of Play-Doh

"While it is rare for smells to be successfully trademarked in the US, it is not unheard of. According to Mr Curtis, the first was a flowery scent used on yarn, registered in 1990.

Mr Curtis added that it is near impossible to trademark smells in the UK and EU, due to the difficulty of proving members of the public share recognition of a particular scent.

“What is a smell? How do you describe it? A smell is subtly different to different people,” he said."

DISNEY, LUCASFILM TRADEMARK MYSTERIOUS NEW STAR WARS TITLE; Comic Book Resources, February 28, 2017

Brett White, Comic Book Resources; DISNEY, LUCASFILM TRADEMARK MYSTERIOUS NEW STAR WARS TITLE

"Star Wars fans may soon become familiar with a new branch of the franchise, if a recent trademark filing is any indication. Max Palas of the site Star Wars Post reported that a trademark has been filed for the title “Star Wars: Rivals.”...

io9 did their own research and noted that Lucasfilm and Disney filed two trademark applications for “Star Wars: Rivals” on February 23, 2017. One application is for “education and entertainment services,” while the other covers, well, pretty much everything else..."

Breitbart News filed for trademark rights to term 'Big Gay Hate Machine' under Steve Bannon leadership; New York Daily News, February 28, 2017

Adam Edelman, New York Daily News; 

Breitbart News filed for trademark rights to term 'Big Gay Hate Machine' under Steve Bannon leadership

"Alt-right news website Breitbart, under the leadership of Stephen Bannon, filed to acquire the trademark rights to the term "Big Gay Hate Machine,” documents obtained by the Daily News show.

Breitbart News filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the offensive term on May 20, 2015, according to records from the office...

The application for the trademark was abandoned on March 4, 2016 and the right to the trademark on the term was forfeited."

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, February 24, 2017

Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright

"Next week the latest round of secret negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) kicks off in Kobe, Japan. Once the shy younger sibling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the recent death of the TPP has thrust RCEP further into the spotlight, and raised the stakes both for its sixteen prospective parties, and for lobbyists with designs to stamp their own mark on the text's intellectual property and e-commerce chapters.

Our last analysis of RCEP pointed out some of the ways in which the then-current leaked text represented an improvement on the TPP, but how other parts of it—including those on copyright enforcement—repeated its mistakes and failed to seize opportunities for improvement. This week, over 60 copyright scholars released an open letter that sets out their views of what negotiators ought to do in order to address these problems...

The RCEP negotiators evidently haven't taken the failure of the TPP to heart, or they would be doing more to ensure that their negotiations are inclusive, transparent, and strike a fair balance between the interests of copyright owners and those of the public."

Copy This: Vatican Stakes Out Rights to Pope Francis' Image; Associated Press via New York Times, February 26, 2017

Associated Press via New York Times; 

Copy This: Vatican Stakes Out Rights to Pope Francis' Image

""The pope's image rights are no different from those of any other famous celebrity and so it's not surprising that the Vatican is giving notice that it will protect its (intellectual property) rights as necessary," said Nick Kounoupias, the founder of an intellectual property consultancy in London. "What will be interesting to see, however, is how vigorously these rights are pursued, given who the IP owner is.""

Second Internet of Things National Institute; American Bar Association, Washington, DC, May 10-11, 2017

Second Internet of Things National Institute

"A game-changer has emerged for businesses, policymakers, and lawyers, and it's called the "Internet of Things" (IoT). It's one of the most transformative and fast-paced technology developments in recent years. Billions of vehicles, buildings, process control devices, wearables, medical devices, drones, consumer/business products, mobile phones, tablets, and other "smart" objects are wirelessly connecting to, and communicating with, each other - and raising unprecedented legal and liability issues.

Recognized as a top new law practice area, and with global spending projected to hit $1.7 trillion by 2020, IoT will require businesses, policymakers, and lawyers (M&A, IP, competition, litigation, health law, IT/outsourcing, and privacy/cybersecurity) to identify and address the escalating legal risks of doing business in a connected world. Join us in Washington, D.C., on May 10 - 11, 2017, for our second IoT National Institute, which will feature:

Overviews and demos of the powerful technology driving the legal and liability issues

Practical guidance and the latest insights on the product liability, mass tort, big data, privacy, data security, intellectual property, cloud, and regulatory issues raised by IoT

Dynamic new additions: a mock trial, a tabletop exercise, a corporate counsel roundtable, and niche issue mini-updates.

Two full days of CLE credit (including ethics credit), plus two breakfasts, two lunches (with keynote speakers), and a cocktail reception.

Our distinguished faculty includes prominent legal and technical experts and thought-leaders from companies, government entities, universities, think-tanks, advocacy organizations, and private practice. Organized by the American Bar Association's Section of Science & Technology Law, the IoT National Institute offers an unparalleled learning and networking opportunity. With billions of devices and trillions of dollars in spending, IoT is a rapidly growing market that everyone wants to get in on."

CRISPR Patent Ruling: 3 Different Takes; KQED, February 23, 2017

Lindsey Hoshaw, KQED; 

CRISPR Patent Ruling: 3 Different Takes

"The Feb. 15 ruling from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office let Berkeley’s rival–the Broad Institute jointly owned by Harvard and MIT–keep its existing patents issued in 2014. UC Berkeley has yet to say whether or not it will appeal...

So what’s next? Only Berkeley knows; the university has said it will “carefully consider all options.”

Science journalists are abuzz about what this means for biotech. Here’s a sampling of what they’re saying:"

Google accuses a former top engineer of stealing trade secrets and taking them to Uber; Washington Post, February 23, 2017

Brian Fung, Washington Post; Google accuses a former top engineer of stealing trade secrets and taking them to Uber

"Google is suing Uber and alleging that a former employee engaged in a “concerted plan” to steal trade secrets related to the search giant's self-driving car technology.

In a blog post Thursday, Google's self-driving car subsidiary, Waymo, said that a former top executive who later went to work for Uber illegally downloaded troves of proprietary data onto an external hard drive before taking the information to his new employer."

Today in History; Associated Press via Washington Post, February 24, 2017

Associated Press via Washington Post; Today in History

"One year ago:..President Barack Obama nominated Carla Hayden, longtime head of Baltimore’s library system, to be the 14th Librarian of Congress; Hayden became the first woman and the first African-American to hold the position."

The Story Behind Trump’s Chinese Trademark; The Atlantic, February 22, 2017

Jeremy Venook, The Atlantic; 

The Story Behind Trump’s Chinese Trademark

"None of this definitively proves that Trump and China did not execute a straight-up swap, with Trump receiving a trademark and China receiving renewed adherence to the One China Policy. Nor does the mere coincidence of Trump receiving his trademark so shortly after speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping represent the smoking gun his critics desire. Instead, what the story demonstrates is just how much the president’s financial dealings complicate any understanding of the motivations behind his policy decisions: Whether on purpose or by mere coincidence, the outcome of a decade-long legal dispute is now inextricably linked, in the public imagination if not in fact, to a high-profile question of international diplomacy. And it highlights the way accusations of corruption often exist not in obvious acts of self-dealing or one-to-one trades but in shades of gray, with cross-cutting motives and well-timed coincidences that almost never definitively prove payoffs but that nevertheless continually suggest malfeasance."

Public Knowledge Launches Copyright Educational Video Based on Frozen’s “Let it Go”; Public Knowledge, February 22, 2017

Shiva Stella, Public Knowledge; 

Public Knowledge Launches Copyright Educational Video Based on Frozen’s “Let it Go”

"Today, Public Knowledge proudly released its new copyright educational video entitled, “Let Them Go.” The video is a parody of the well-known Disney song “Let It Go,” with revised lyrics that educate viewers on important topics in copyright, namely copyright term extension, intermediary liability, and fair use. Clips throughout the video also illustrate numerous fair uses and other adaptations of “Let It Go.”"

Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week; Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Monday, February 20 through Friday, February 24, 2017

Association of Research Libraries (ARL); 

Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week: 

Monday, February 20 through Friday, February 24, 2017

"Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week is an annual celebration of the important doctrines of fair use and fair dealing. It is designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, celebrate successful stories, and explain these doctrines."

Washington signed into law the first copyright law; Daily Record, February 22, 2017

Daily Record; 

Washington signed into law the first copyright law

"On May 31, 1790, President Washington signed the Copyright Act of 1790 into law. ...[T]he legislation was the first law protecting copyright in the United States...

Copies of the law bearing Washington’s signature were re-printed in newspapers throughout the country."

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 22, 2017

Tracie Mauriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency

"If you wanted to know who visited the White House, how much the president’s secretary is paid, or which state has the most federally funded teaching positions, the information was just a few clicks away. With a bit more technical knowledge, you could explore public data sets to analyze the president’s budget, or look for trends in government spending.

No more.

Dozens of data sets disappeared last week from Open.WhiteHouse.gov, a website the Obama administration created to promote government transparency.

Visitors to the website now and find a message saying “check back for new data.” But it isn’t clear when any new data will be posted, and government watchdogs aren’t confident that it will ever happen.

“We are working to open up the new sites,” White House press aide Helen Ferre emailed in response to questions. She did not respond to follow-up questions about the content of the “new sites,” whether they will include visitor logs, why data sets were removed, and when aides will post new information...

The data the Obama administration provided hasn’t been deleted. Rather it’s been preserved by the National Archives in accordance with a law that prohibits federal data from being destroyed. Find it at https://open.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/...

The data is no longer in a user-friendly format. Users have to have the technical knowledge to unpack zipfiles and must have software that can handle large files with millions of rows of data."

From Trump the Nationalist, a Trail of Global Trademarks; New York Times, February 21, 2017

Danny Hakim and Sui-Lee Wee, New York Times; 

From Trump the Nationalist, a Trail of Global Trademarks

"The trademarks are the natural outgrowth of a global-spanning strategy. Like any businessman, Mr. Trump has long sought to protect his brand and products legally with trademarks, whether by registering a board game he once tried to sell, slogans like “Make America Great Again” or simply the name “Trump.”

But the trail of trademarks offers further clues to his international business ties, which leave the president vulnerable to potential conflicts of interest, or at least perception challenges. The Chinese government’s trademark announcement last week came just days after Mr. Trump retreated from challenging China’s policy on Taiwan in a call with China’s president, Xi Jinping.

The Times review of nine databases identified nearly 400 foreign trademarks registered to Trump companies since 2000 in 28 countries, among them New Zealand, Egypt and Russia, as well as the European Union. There are most likely many more trademarks, because there is no central repository of all trademarks from every country. The Trump Organization has been filing trademarks for decades, and has said that it has taken out trademarks in more than 80 countries."

T Bone Burnett Delivers Scathing Message to Copyright Office, Urging Reform: 'Our Culture Is At Stake'; Billboard, February 21, 2017

Dan Rys, Billboard; 

T Bone Burnett Delivers Scathing Message to Copyright Office, Urging Reform: 'Our Culture Is At Stake'

"T Bone Burnett today submitted a five minute video to the U.S. Copyright Office that issued a scathing critique of current copyright laws, taking aim at "mega corporations and web moguls" that "are enriching themselves off the artistic, cultural and economic value everyone else creates," and urging Congress to fix a copyright system that he says threatens the ability of artists and creators to make a living.

At issue is section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) signed in 1998, which includes the "safe harbor" provisions that protect digital service providers such as YouTube from copyright infringement litigation by outlining a system to deal with illegal copyrighted material uploaded to its platform. Burnett, who serves on the advisory board of the Content Creators Coalition (c3) and submitted the video on behalf of the organization, says the current safe harbors provision has failed, allowing the internet to become a "digital black hole.""

[Excerpt from transcript of T Bone Burnett remarks]

The false prophets of the internet may have imagined an egalitarian, open source, creative wonderland, but what we got instead was an exploitative digital black hole that benefits a handful of mega corporations and web moguls. They are enriching themselves off the artistic, cultural and economic value everyone else creates."

THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS AND THE GREATNESS OF HUMILITY; New Yorker, February 19, 2017

Sarah Larson, New Yorker; 

THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS AND THE GREATNESS OF HUMILITY

"The new Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden, is highly motivated to make this library, and all libraries, a favorite object of the people. Hayden is the first person of color, and the first woman, to lead the Library of Congress; she is also the first actual librarian to lead it since 1974. Her predecessor, Dr. James Billington, a distinguished Russia scholar appointed by Ronald Reagan, was beloved for his intellect but criticized for mismanagement; he neglected, for many years, to appoint a chief information officer, which was required by law, and he also didn’t use e-mail. Hayden, a former head of the American Library Association, revitalized and modernized Baltimore’s twenty-two-branch Enoch Pratt Free Library system. President Obama nominated her, in 2010, to be a member of the National Museum and Library Services Board, and, last year, to become Librarian of Congress...

Like many librarians, Hayden is a big believer in the rights of all people to educate themselves, and in the importance of open access to information online. (This inclusive spirit has become more urgent nationally in recent weeks: see “Libraries Are for Everyone,” a multilingual meme and poster campaign, created by a Nebraska librarian, Rebecca McCorkindale, to counter the forces of fake news and fearmongering.) In September, Hayden gave a swearing-in speech in which she described how black Americans “were once punished with lashes and worse for learning to read.” She said that, “as a descendent of people who were denied the right to read, to now have the opportunity to serve and lead the institution that is our national symbol of knowledge is a historic moment.”...

I thought of the drafts of Lincoln’s first Inaugural Address that a curator in the Inaugurations exhibit had shown me. Lincoln had originally ended his speech with a challenge to the South: “Shall it be peace or sword?” William Henry Seward had suggested an edit that pushed Lincoln toward a more conciliatory tone, and the phrase “guardian angel of the nation.” Lincoln turned that into the sublime “better angels of our nature,” an appeal to our common humanity. Our greatest President was also, possibly, our greatest reviser—a cutter and paster who questioned his imperfect ideas, accepted input, made them better, and kept all of his drafts, so that history could learn not just from his speeches but from the workings of his mind. The contents of the library, like Hayden herself, often directed my attention to the systems by which progress is made and recorded."

Supporting Open Access; Library Journal, February 20, 2017

John Parsons, Library Journal; 

Supporting Open Access

"AN OPEN CONVERSATION

Both Taylor and Schiff agreed that scholars and researchers need to be a significant part of the Open Access discussion. “Librarians like myself are very much Open Access advocates,” Taylor observed, “but it’s important for us to keep an open mind. We need to listen to what our researchers, scholars, students, and administrators want.” She cautioned against giving only the positive benefits of Open Access for institutions, without understanding the concerns and reservations of those doing the research.

“It’s important to get correct information out there,” Schiff added, “but it’s important to get scholars to jump into the conversation. For example, it would be great if scholars were more involved in discussing the economic challenges in the scholarly communication world. Librarians are naturally involved because our budgets are a huge part of that mix. But we’re paying for the work of scholars. They not only need to be more informed about how their work is part of this economic ecosystem, they also need to advocate for how they think that ecosystem should be sustained—and how resources should be allocated.”"

‘All of our federal data assets are currently at risk’ — here’s how people are trying to protect them; FedScoop, February 19, 2017

Samantha Ehlinger, FedScoop; 

‘All of our federal data assets are currently at risk’ — here’s how people are trying to protect them

"A group of coders, librarians, scientists, storytellers and others passionate about data came together at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., this weekend to preserve federal data that some worry could disappear under different Trump administration priorities. The goal of the DataRescueDC event: store federal climate and environmental data that is “vulnerable under an administration that denies the fact of ongoing climate change.”

But while fear of losing federal scientific data during the Trump administration has galvanized work across the country to preserve reputable copies of key data, during Saturday’s events experts involved in the project said that it also highlights the need for creating an official infrastructure for safeguarding federal data.

“We talk a lot in this country about our failing infrastructure, and it’s really obvious when drinking water supplies are dangerous to the people who drink them. And it’s really obvious when a bridge collapses over the Mississippi river. But what was not really obvious, I think, until this juncture that we are now at is how incredible vulnerable our infrastructure for federal data is. Like, there isn’t one really. It’s totally just absent in many — in very powerful ways,” said Bethany Wiggin, founding director of the University of Pennsylvania Program in Environmental Humanities, which is facilitating Data Refuge."

Information Access and the 800-Pound Gorilla; Inside Higher Ed, February 20, 2017

Bryn Geffert, Inside Higher Ed; 

Information Access and the 800-Pound Gorilla

"The first copyright statute, enacted in 1790, allowed authors to retain copyright in their work for 14 years. And they could, if they desired, renew that copyright for an additional 14 years. Congress believed that a maximum period of 28 years offered the “limited” protections authorized by the U.S. Constitution to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

Under the original statute, the Library of Congress, my library and any library in the world could digitize and disseminate without charge Miller’s, Flexner’s and Furtwangler’s studies of Hamilton to the homeschooled fifth-grader, to my 15-year old son, to the high school student in rural Arkansas, to the college student at a state university and to the scholar in Niger.

We have now, today, the technology to achieve the vision endorsed by our new (and possibly best) librarian of Congress -- a vision ostensibly shared by her admiring senatorial colleagues who, though they agree on little else, appear to agree on this.

What we lack and what we need is an old law -- an old law to serve new technology.

But first we need our new chief librarian to point at the gorilla, yell for Congress’s attention and beg the legislators who confirmed her to act in accord with the ideals they articulated last spring."