By SCOTT CARLSON From the issue dated July 29, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education
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By SCOTT CARLSON From the issue dated July 29, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education
July 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) have confirmed that Google officials and the AAP board of directors met on July 1 to discuss copyright concerns with Google’s library digitization plan. Although no further details are available, more meetings are likely in the coming weeks. The meeting comes after the AAP wrote to Google to express their concerns over the company’s ambitious scan plan. In June, AAP VP for legal affairs Allan Adler said that AAP always intended to keep discussions with Google private, but discussed their concerns after news of their letter was leaked.
July 28, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Even Copyright Infringing Spammers Deserve Free Speech Protections
Posted by Ernest Miller
notice-and-takedown provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to attack "spamblogs" .
There are spammers who copy entire blog posts from others to act as fresh bait for their search spoofing tricks. This is commercial use, and a violation of most CC licenses (and indeed default copyright).Stephanie Booth recently did this [issued a DMCA notice and takedown] to a spammer at www.famous-people.info who plagiarized one of her posts on Jennifer Garner, on what was a Google Adsense supported spamblog. When she sent a DMCA notice, they took down the page and apparently lost their Adsense status.
The desire to inhibit spamming and enforce copyright, the provisions lack important procedural safeguards for free speech. The use of the DMCA's notice-and-takedown provisions, unless there are no other reasonable legal alternatives, should be reviewed..
The problem with the Copyright holders can easily, with virtually no justification and no judicial oversite, cause a website to remove speech that is perfectly legal for days, if not weeks. There is no requirement that the copyright holder actually file a lawsuit, if there is a counter notification. There is no recourse for damages for false takedown notices as long as they were issued in "good faith." This makes the DMCA ripe for abuse and, among other reasons, an unjust law.
We should not use unjust laws, giving them legitimacy, unless there are no reasonable alternatives. In this case, there are a number of alternatives, such as sending a polite request, sending a threatening legal letter, contacting the ISP directly, or even suing for copyright infringement.
We should not be so quick to use law to terminate speech merely on our say so. You say spam, I say free speech (until a court rules otherwise).
July 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
From: Charles W. Bailey, Jr., cbailey@uh.edu
Version 58 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available. This selective bibliography presents over 2,420 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.pdf
The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals, by the same author, provides much more in-depth coverage of the open access movement and related topics (e.g., disciplinary archives, e-prints, institutional repositories, open access journals, and the Open Archives Initiative) than SEPB does.
http://www.arl.org/pubscat/pubs/openaccess/
The bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are marked with an asterisk):
Table of Contents
1 Economic Issues*
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History*
2.2 General Works*
2.3 Library Issues*
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History*
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals
3.4 General Works
3.5 Library Issues*
3.6 Research*
4 General Works*
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Intellectual Property Rights*
5.2 License Agreements
5.3 Other Legal Issues
6 Library Issues
6.1 Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata*
6.2 Digital Libraries*
6.3 General Works*
6.4 Information Integrity and Preservation*
7 New Publishing Models*
8 Publisher Issues*
8.1 Digital Rights Management*
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI*
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author*
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources includes the following sections:
Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata Digital Libraries* Electronic Books and Texts* Electronic Serials* General Electronic Publishing*
Images*
Legal*
Preservation
Publishers
Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI*
SGML and Related Standards
Further Information about SEPB
The HTML version of SEPB is designed for interactive use. Each major section is a separate file. There are links to sources that are freely available on the Internet. It can be can be searched using Boolean operators.
The HTML document includes three sections not found in the Acrobat file:
(1) Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (biweekly list of new resources; also available by mailing list
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepwlist.htm
(2) Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources (directory of over 270 related Web sites)
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepr.htm
(3) Archive (prior versions of the bibliography)
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/archive/sepa.htm
Related Article
An article about the bibliography has been published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing:
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-02/bailey.html
July 25, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
ORPHAN WORKS ROUNDTABLES: INFORMATION ON GENERAL TOPIC AREAS
AND
PARTICIPATION
The Copyright Office will hold public roundtable
discussions regarding
orphan works in Washington, D.C., on July 26-27, and in
Berkeley,
California, on August 2. The Office has identified several
general
topic areas for discussion during the roundtables, and has organized
a
preliminary agenda according to these issue areas. Persons wishing
to
participate in the roundtables must submit a request to participate
to
the Copyright Office by 5:00 p.m., E.D.T. on July 15, 2005. REQUESTS
TO
PARTICIPATE MUST CONTAIN CERTAIN INFORMATION, AND MUST BE
SUBMITTED
ACCORDING TO INSTRUCTIONS SPECIFIED BY THE OFFICE. Further
information
on the topic areas and the preliminary agenda and on how to
submit a
request to participate is contained in a Notice to be published in
the
Federal Register on July 7, 2005, but is also now available on
the
Office's orphan works webpage as well, at www.copyright.gov/orphan
July 09, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
A Chicago-area businessman has agreed to pay $3.1 million to settle a trademark infringement case involving unauthorized use of university logos.
Donald Bruno of Burr Ridge, Ill., was placed on probation for 2 1/2 years after pleading guilty to unauthorized use of a trademark. Bruno, president of Romeoville, Ill.-based American Family Products, agreed to pay $1.15 million in criminal fines and $1.74 million in civil fines, penalties and restitution, according to court records in Will County, Ill.
The company and Bruno were accused of illegally using logos from the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and nearly 60 other universities and companies.
July 07, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)