From the Article:

While Google agreed to share the revenues with the publishers and authors, libraries, some consumer rights groups and other parties are worried that Google would have solitary and overwhelming control over access to “orphan books”—titles whose authors and rights-holders have essentially abandoned.

Source: Paid Content (via Forbes)

Reid Goldsborough writes:

One of the catchphrases on the internet is “Information wants to be free.” This creates the impression that anything you come across online is free for the using. Not quite.

The same laws that protect intellectual property elsewhere can get you in trouble for appropriating someone else’s words, images, music, video, and so on

Source: Info Today Link-Up

From the Web Site:

Read about changes in national copyright legislation, lobby & educational activities, law cases, and strategic plans for the future.

Reports (PDF Files) are Available for the Following Countries:

+ Australia

+ Canada

+ Croatia

+ Denmark

+ Finland

+ Germany

+ Israel

+ Jamaica

+ Japan

+ Lithuania

+ Netherlands

+ Norway

+ Poland

+ Russia

+ South Africa

+ Sweden

+United States

Source: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions

From the Open Content Alliance Blog:

…Cornell University Library [has] removed all restrictions on its digital public domain holdings. It did so in conjunction with a donation of more than 70,000 digitized public domain books to the Internet Archive. As these books are processed, they will appear on archive.org.

Cornell has removed restrictions not only on non-commercial use but commercial use as well. University Librarian Anne Kenney explains: “We decided it was more important to encourage the use of the public domain materials in our holdings than to impose roadblocks.”

You can read the complete news release from the Cornell University Library here.

Direct to the 70,000 images via The Internet Archive

Source: Open Content Alliance

From the Announcement:

As the entertainment industry promotes its new anti-copying educational program to the nation’s teachers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched its own “Teaching Copyright” curriculum and website to help educators give students the real story about their digital rights and responsibilities on the Internet and beyond.

The Copyright Alliance — backed by the recording, broadcast, and software industries — has given its curriculum the ominous title “Think First, Copy Later.” This is just the latest example of copyright-focused educational materials portraying the use of new technology as a high-risk behavior. For example, industry materials have routinely compared downloading music to stealing a bicycle, even though many downloads are lawful, and making videos using short clips from other sources is treated as probably illegal even though many such videos are also lawful. EFF created Teaching Copyright as a balanced curriculum encouraging students to make full and fair use of technology that is revolutionizing learning and the exchange of information.

[Snip]

The Teaching Copyright curriculum was developed with the input of educators from across the U.S. and has been designed to satisfy components of standards from the International Society for Technology in Education and the California State Board of Education.

Direct to Teaching Copyright Web Site

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Hat Tip: SLA Public Policy Connections Blog

From the News Release:

Access to over 50 million items held in trust by publicly funded agencies such as libraries, museums, archives and universities are being prevented from being available online due to current copyright laws. ‘In from the Cold’, a report by the Strategic Content Alliance and the Collections Trust, shows that millions of so-called ‘orphan works’ - photographs, recordings, texts and other ephemera from the last 100 years - risk becoming invisible because rights holders are not known or easy to trace.

[Snip]

The report shows how the UK is in real danger of losing 20th century materials due to the current copyright laws, the levels of resources needed to trace the rights for each orphan work and the potential lock down of access to these important works. Of the 13 million works represented in the on-line survey, it would take in the region of six million days to trace the rights holders, around 16,000 years.

The report was commissioned to find the scale and impact of ‘orphan works’ on public service delivery.

Read the Summary & Access the Complete Report

Listen to a Podcast About the Report
It runs about 12 minutes.

Source: JISC / Collections Trust/ Strategic Content Alliance

Tony La Russa suing Twitter for trademark infringement

Apparently, the Tweets stop with Tony. St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is suing the micro-blogging and social networking site Twitter, Inc., over what the skipper and his attorney describe as trademark infringement, cybersquatting and misappropriation of likeness and name.

The suit, filed in San Francisco about a month ago, concerns the Twitter name page for Tony La Russa (or www.twitter.com/tonylarussa) and the manager’s claim that it was an unofficial and unauthorized use of his name. The fake page allegedly had La Russa’s picture and some vulgar updates, a few of which were Cardinals-related. The suit contains several examples of off-color statements made on the page, two of which make references, directly or indirectly, to the two active Cardinals’ pitchers who died during recent regular seasons, Darryl Kile and Josh Hancock.

La Russa sought out ways to remove the address, even asking reporters for information on how to contact Twitter, Inc., and stop the feed of micro-blogs attached to his name, according to the suit.

In the suit his attorney claims that such attempts were fruitless. Only after filing the suit did the address come down on Twitter.com, according to the suit.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

See also: Twitter-Jacking On Trial: Cardinals’ Manager Sues Twitter (Mashable)

Twitterlogical: The Misunderstandings of Ownership

Tweets range from boring and useless facts (e.g., “wow, it’s cold in Toledo,” “my plane is late again,” “I’m going to poison the neighbor’s dog”) to purportedly-funny, yet useless facts (e.g., “I woke up and farted,” “she must workout,”), to interesting facts (e.g., “Americans consume 1.7 billion pounds of lard every year,” “the average burp contains 1.6 liters of gas”), to references to other facts (e.g., “check out this article in New York Post: tinyurld.com/183*&%,” “Michael Jackson auction canceled: whocares.com”), and everything in between. For this reason, to truly analyze the question of whether Tweets are copyrightable, you must differentiate between types of tweets. There may be a lurking Tweet that is protected by copyright law, but once you finish reading, I think you’ll see the probability of that scenario as being close to or at zero.

Source: Brock Shinen, Esq. (Shinen Law Corporation)

From a Prepared Statement:

In many countries, copyright law, through exceptions and limitations, has long supported the essential functions of libraries through statutes that permit functions such as preservation. But these laws have not adequately kept pace for uses of digital information.
The international library community believes that there is an immediate need for Member States to include provisions in their national laws to address the realities of access to digital information. We have developed a set of 12 Principles for Copyright Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives that address many of the issues, including provisions for persons with disabilities , within the context of the work of this Committee

Direct to Full Text Document: Statement of Principles on Copyright Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives (6 pages; PDF)

Source: International Federation of Library Associations

From the News Release:

The University of Michigan today announced that it has expanded its historic agreement with Google Inc. to create digital copies of millions of U-M library books and journals.

The amended agreement, which strengthens library preservation efforts and increases the public’s access to books, is possible because of Google’s pending settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers. The U-M library is the first in the nation to expand its partnership with Google.

The contract amendment is an important step in ensuring that the university’s vision of broad public access to its print collection becomes a reality.

“Through this amendment we are establishing a solid foundation for future library work and providing the greatest public good for library users,” said Paul N. Courant, U-M librarian and dean of libraries. Courant also is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Economics and the Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor in the Ford School of Public Policy.

Source: U of Michigan

See Also: UMich first to sign up under Google Books settlement terms (via News.com)

From the Article:

Google and UM have been working together since 2004 on digitizing the university’s library collection, but the Google Book Search settlement would allow Michigan to offer its books online as part of a subscription, or in some cases for free. The settlement has drawn reported attention from the government as well as library groups worried over the costs associated with access to such a large digital library amassed by a single company.

From the JISC (UK) Web Site:

Users of Web 2.0 content and services across education are set to benefit from a brand new animation which highlights the importance of considering IPR in their use and re-use of interactive Web 2.0 technologies.

Confusion about IPR and its relation to Web 2.0 is widespread. The free Web2Rights online diagnostic tool, highlighted by the animation, seeks to address this within education, providing a step-by-step user guide to ensure the protection of both their and others’ copyright in using, deploying and repurposing content.

The animation runs 6 minutes 49 seconds.

Source: JISC (UK)

Psst! Need the Answer to No. 7? Click Here

In the old days, college students might turn to classmates for help during all-night cram sessions before final exams. Now their study buddies are just as likely to be commercial Web sites with step-by-step solutions to textbook problems, copies of previous exams, reams of lecture notes, summaries of literary classics, and real-time help with physics, math and computer science problems.

Source: New York Times

From the News Release:

What’s New?

Major improvements and expansions to the website launched today, thanks to a new collaboration with Concept Foundation and funding by the Rockefeller Foundation:

1. Special video presentations, downloadable with synchronized slides, prepared by the ipHandbook community. Includes a unique & growing list of links to other relevant videos.

2. An exclusive list of distance learning courses, including one prepared by and for the ipHandbook community in collaboration with UNIDO’s e-Biosafety Training Programme

3. Follow us on Twitter for regular updates or use the new RSS Feeds on selected pages.

4. Improved navigation with pull-down menus.

5. Integrated Google translation on each page.

6. Improved search functions.

7. The full content now shared under a Creative Commons license.

8. An updated and expanded Resources section (more updates to follow soon).

9. A vibrant blog on current IP topics, including a list of over 60 IP related blogs by third parties.

10. Translation by PIPRA of 31 chapters into Vietnamese. Everyone is encouraged to request a royalty-free license to translate individual chapters or the executive guide into other languages.

Over the next 6 months, we will gradually update and expand patent search tools, information resources, publications, sample agreements and much more. Most importantly, however, we are aiming at establishing a virtual global network of IP and innovation managers, policymakers, scientists and R&D leaders.

Direct to IP Handbook Web Site

Source:

Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web

Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction writer, was perusing the Web site Scribd last month when she came across digital copies of some books that seemed quite familiar to her. No wonder. She wrote them, including a free-for-the-taking copy of one of her most enduring novels, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”

Neither Ms. Le Guin nor her publisher had authorized the electronic editions. To Ms. Le Guin, it was a rude introduction to the quietly proliferating problem of digital piracy in the literary world. “I thought, who do these people think they are?” Ms. Le Guin said. “Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?”

This would all sound familiar to filmmakers and musicians who fought similar battles — with varying degrees of success — over the last decade. But to authors and their publishers in the age of Kindle, it’s new and frightening territory.

Source: New York Times

From a Summary:

…leading figures in UK education and research today met at the British Library to explore the tensions and opportunities surrounding the role of copyright law in an increasingly digital knowledge economy.

David Lammy MP, Minister of State for Higher Education and IP, joined a distinguished panel drawn from the fields of publishing, libraries and higher education, which provided a range of perspectives on how copyright might best support innovation, education and research in the online environment.

Source: The British Library