Keeping Within the Law (KWtL): minimize your risk of legal infringement

A new copyright and information law website by Paul Pedley.

Source: CILIP Website

A new version (Version 2) of the excellent Google Book Search Bibliography is now online.

This bibliography presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Book Search. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Book Search and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical.

Source: Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital Scholarship

+ Twitter’s controversy over Terms of Service (via Ars Tecnica)
Thanks, Pete W.

+ Belgian Copyright Group Wants Up To EUR49 Million Damages From Google (via Dow Jones)

+ YouTube suit called threat to online communication (via AP)

A $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit challenging YouTube’s ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how hundreds of millions of people exchange all kinds of information on the Internet, YouTube owner Google Inc. said.

See Also: The Big Viacom Sues GOOG & YouTube Roundup (via Search Engine Land)

+ Google’s Geek Fest (via Forbes)

From the article:

Laura N. Gassaway, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who thinks a lawsuit against Georgia State University’s electronic reserve system has implications for other colleges.

Source: Wired Campus

Psst! It’s no secret: copying is plagiarism

“It is extremely easy for students to make the mistake of cutting and pasting from the Internet,” said Catharine O’Connell, vice president for academic affairs and academic dean at Defiance College. “In the old days, when one had to type in text from a source, there wasn’t as much temptation, and it would have been very difficult to use large sections of a source without realizing it. Now, it is so easy to cut and paste that students can end up using large sections of someone else’s work almost before they know it.”

In the freshmen courses, first-year seminar and global civilization, academic honesty and plagiarism are addressed.

“Many faculty members revisit the topic in other classes, but we believe it is important to have the conversation about plagiarism right at the beginning of a student’s career at DC,” stated O’Connell.

Source: Crescent-News.com

From the article:

With stories surfacing on news channels regularly about lost or stolen data or the ability to recover data from discarded or resold computers and their hard drives, Computerworld decided to look at some cheap methods of removing that sensitive data from your hard drive permanently. And, what better place to look than YouTube?

Source: Computerworld

USPTO Introduces New Intellectual Property Curriculum

The Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced the launch of a new, dynamic curriculum that inspires students to be creative and teaches them about the value of patents, trademarks, and copyrights, as well as the importance of respecting other’s intellectual property. The i-©®eaTM curriculum, developed by the USPTO in collaboration with i-SAFE—a leader in Internet safety education—is an interactive and age appropriate unit of instruction designed for upper-elementary, middle, and high school students.
…
The i-©®ea TM curriculum is a valuable resource for teachers to introduce students to the inventive process through cross-curricular activities, inspirational stories of young inventors, and practical hands-on patent and trademark searching on the Internet. Students apply their knowledge and skills to real life experiences and view themselves as creative individuals. In turn, young people, their parents, and their teachers gain an appreciation of the contributions inventors and artists make to our way of life.

i-SAFE trains and certifies educators to teach the i-©®eaTM curriculum through the i-LEARN Online video training modules (http://ilearn.isafe.org). The i-©®ea TM curriculum is the latest addition to the growing i-SAFE library of more than175 standards-based lesson plans offered at no charge and taught in classrooms in all 50 states. For more details on the i-©®eaTM curriculum, see: www.isafe.org/icreatm.

These news notes are organized by the strategic directions identified in the ARL Strategic Plan: Scholarly Communication; Public Policies Affecting Research Libraries; and Library Roles in Research, Teaching, and Learning. In addition, there is an initial section for Governance and Membership Activities and complementary sections on Diversity, Professional Workforce, and Leadership Development; Library Statistics and Assessment; and Other Items of Interest to ARL Directors

Source: ARL

+ Intellectual property simplified with the help of new British Library e-courses

+ ALA celebrates National Library Week in Second Life (via ALA)

What Can You (Legally) Take From the Web?

Web sites and bloggers beware: copyright law applies to you too

Source: IEEE Spectrum

From the British Library:

Access to online research material should be the same as for books - say 93% of respondents to a British Library survey on researchers’ attitudes and needs in the digital age. An overwhelming majority of the survey participants agreed that, in the age of the internet, anyone involved in non-commercial research should be allowed to copy parts of electronically published works such as online articles, news broadcasts, film or sound recordings. The British Library conducted the research because the balance in copyright is being undermined in the digital era.

Source: BL

Einstein’s Notes sued for copying lectures, material

Einstein’s Notes is facing a lawsuit for allegedly selling notes from a UF professor’s lectures without permission.

Faulkner Press, the software company used to supplement courses, filed the 63-page federal lawsuit on Tuesday against Einstein’s Notes, a Gainesville business that sells class notes taken by student employees.

Jim Sullivan, a Gainesville attorney representing Faulkner Press in the city’s U.S. district court, said note-takers hired by Einstein’s have copied lecture notes from UF professor Michael Moulton without permission since 2007.

Moulton teaches Wildlife Issues in a Changing World and Biodiversity Conservation: Global Perspectives, a large lecture class that requires students to buy electronic textbooks printed by Faulkner.

The lawsuit also accuses Einstein’s Notes of copying practice questions from Moulton’s Web site and software published by Faulkner for student handouts.

Source: The Independent Florida Alligator

+ Irish Universities Association Supporting Digital Preservation via Portico

+ Managing Copyright for NIH Public Access—ARL Releases Preprint Article

From the report news release:

After nearly three years of intensive work, the independent Section 108 Study Group has issued its report and recommendations on exceptions to copyright law to address how libraries, archives and museums deal with copyrighted materials in fulfilling their missions in the digital environment. The report is available at www.section108.gov. Section 108 is the section of the Copyright Act that provides limited exceptions for libraries and archives so that they may make copies to replace copyrighted works in their collections when necessary, preserve them for the long term and make them available to users.

Direct to Report

Source: LoC, U.S. Copyright Office

+ Podcast: Columbia’s James Neal Provides Copyright Update (via Digital Koans)

+ Top 10 Search Terms: TechWeb TechEncyclopedia

+ Plinkits: Pre-built Library Web Sites that Libraries Love