Posts filed under 'Copyright'
Copyright law professor, Lawrence Lessig, is posting a series of presentations on his blog over the next couple weeks. The presentations will outline arguments for five Internet-related proposals that he believes Congress should enact this year: Orphan Works, Remix Culture, Network Neutrality, Spam, and Harmful to Minors Material. The first presentation will be posted later today.
I’m especially interested to see what he proposes for Orphan Works, as this legislation is much needed for library digitization projects. Lessig’s presentation “trailer” for Orphan Works says that he’s not impressed with LC’s proposal. I’m looking forward to finding out what he proposes instead and how it might affect libraries.
We’ll have to watch to see if Congress takes Lessig’s advice on new legislation. And also watch to see who (ALA?) gets on the bandwagon to support his proposals. Stay tuned.
February 1st, 2007
U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay (No.Dist.Tex.) granted a preliminary injunction against Robert Davis, who had been providing direct links from his website to live streaming audio Webcasts of motorcycle events. The Webcasts are copyrighted by SFX Motor Sports.  For the complete news article, click here.
This ruling is unsettling, because Davis did not reproduce nor redistribute copyrighted materials but only provided a direct link from his website to the Webcasts. The copyright owners objected because this “deep link” bypassed their web page of sponsor advertising.
December 22nd, 2006
Google has launched a new online service, Google Patent Search. The official description states, “As part of Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, we’re constantly working to expand the diversity of content we make available to our users. With Google Patent Search, you can now search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you.â€
In addition to basic search, Google Patent Search also includes an Advanced Search that allows searching by patent number, date, title, inventor, and more.
You can also search for intellectual property information online at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website: Trademark search (TESS) and Patent Search. And the U.S. Copyright Office web site offers Copyright search.
December 20th, 2006
The Library of Congress now offers RSS feeds for several topics, including news about LC, webcasts, science reference, copyright, and more.
If you have not yet started to use RSS feeds, I’d like to recommend them as a wonderful and efficient way to keep up on your favorite blogs and web sites. And subscribing to your favorite feeds is pretty easy. LC’s RSS web page includes an FAQ on RSS. For additional information about RSS feeds (and links to subscribe to MLC RSS feeds!), please see MLC’s RSS web page.
December 19th, 2006
Effective today through October 27, 2009, the Librarian of Congress issued a rule setting out six exemptions to U.S. copyright law’s circumvention of technology. Under this rule, persons making noninfringing uses of the following six classes of works will not be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)) during the next three years:
1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.
2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.
5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.
6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.
For further details and background documents, see LC’s anticircumvention web page.
November 27th, 2006
In response to a threatened lawsuit from the American Association of Publishers (AAP), Cornell University has agreed to regulate electronic reserves using guidelines developed jointly by Cornell and AAP. See:
Seattle PI “Professors get ‘F’ in copyright protection knowledge.â€
Cornell Daily Sun “C.U. Changes E-Reserve Policy to Avoid Lawsuitâ€
Library Journal “In Response to AAP Concerns, Cornell Issues New Guidelines on Electronic Reservesâ€
Cornell’s new Guidelines (PDF)
In U.S. copyright law, there is nothing specific in the statute or case law about e-reserves. Since 1978, academic institutions have relied on ALA’s model policy and more recently on ALA statements on e-reserves. The articles suggest that Cornell is not the only university that AAP has targeted for e-reserves practices. It will be interesting to see whether other universities agree to work with AAP to adopt guidelines similar to Cornell’s or instead decide to chance a lawsuit from AAP.
November 21st, 2006
Associated Press reported Monday that L.A. Boy Scouts will now be able to earn an activity patch for learning about respect for copyrights. Read the story here.
Scouts will be instructed in the basics of copyright law and will learn how to identify copyrighted works and infringements.
October 26th, 2006
The handouts from my two MLA copyright programs are on MLC’s web page at:
http://mlcnet.org/cms/sitem.cfm/library_tools/copyright_/
Also linked from our home page, http://mlcnet.org , and click on link to Copyright under Tools.
October 12th, 2006
Th Copyright Modernization Act of 2006, H.R. 6052 (click here for 99-page PDF), was introduced in the House on September 12. This Act amends Title 17 of the U.S. Code to “provide for licensing of digital delivery of musical works and to provide for limitation of remedies in cases in which the copyright owners cannot be located, and for other purposes.”
Title 1 addresses music licensing, Title 2 addresses orphan works, and Title 3 addresses copyright protection resources.
I have to confess that I haven’t read through this bill yet. There is some discussion about the bill on Patry’s copyright blog.
September 19th, 2006
By now, most web-savvy individuals have encountered the terms “API” and “mashup“. At a bare-bones level, they relate to ways that techies (definitely excludes me) can take data feeds from one or more websites and use them in a helpful–often very novel–way on a different website. For example, Flash Earth combines mapping information from both Google Maps and Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and gives you simultaneous access to both. Up to now, the data-source sites have had full control over who can get access to the raw information. But new service Dapper allows those without expertise to cull information like articles, photos, and statistics from websites and put the data to new and highly-personalized use.
According to the Dapper website:
“Dapper’s mission is to allow you to use any web based content in any way you can imagine. And by use, we mean going beyond just reading or viewing a webpage. You may want to create an RSS feed or a Google Gadget for a site, take a site’s content and put it on a map, receive an email alert when your site’s Alexa’s ranking goes below 5000, or create a mashup of your favorite band’s tour dates and a camping locations reservation website to organize your musical camping vacation. Whatever you want to do, however you want to mold the web, Dapper can help you do it.”
Some will see this as a landmark in the web 2.0 movement–allowing Jane Q. Public great flexibility to easily create the kinds of web applications SHE wants to see and use. Others point out the potential for copyright infringement, more spamming, and earnings reductions on “monetized” weblogs due to inaccurate site traffic stats. Either way, Dapper is undeniably intriguing and a neat tool to play with. Hopefully, the main concerns involved will eventually be resolved while leaving the basic usefulness intact.
Related links:
http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/Dapper/
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/?p=315
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_scraping
http://www.programmableweb.com/
August 31st, 2006
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