The Public Domain Manifesto is an effort to describe the strengths of public domain, and to encourage support.

Some of the general principles:

• The Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception.
• Copyright protection should last only as long as necessary to achieve a reasonable compromise between protecting and rewarding the author for his intellectual labour and safeguarding the public interest in the dissemination of culture and knowledge.
• What is in the Public Domain must remain in the Public Domain.
• The lawful user of a digital copy of a Public Domain work should be free to (re-)use, copy and modify such work.
• Contracts or technical protection measures that restrict access to and re-use of Public Domain works must not be enforced.

I recommend that you review the manifesto, and if you agree with it, show your support by signing it.

found via Open Source Initiative

A very straightforward and readable overview of the issues surrounding Google’s book scanning project appeared in yesterdays Financial Times :  Books : A plan to scan.

A prime focus of the analysis is the Orphan Works issue, books that fall under copyright guidelines but have no clear indication of who the actual copyright holder is.  A chart detailing the number of orphan works in existence is an excellent example of  providing just the right amount of information in a very readable way (note the use of Google’s colors):

Financial Times Graphic on Orphan Works

There is also an interesting accompanying article on the European reaction to the issue.

thanks to Jim Campbell for posting about this on Web4Lib!

TinEye is an image search engine with a twist:  you provide it with an image, and it returns a list of websites utilizing that image.

I can quickly think of a few really good uses of this service:

• You have an image that you downloaded sometime in the past, but you don’t remember where you got it.
• You have found an image that would be perfect for a project, but you aren’t sure who the owner is, or what the usage terms might be.
• You are the owner of an image, and want to ensure that it isn’t being mis-appropriated by others.
• You have an image, and want to locate a site with a higher quality or different version of the image.

found via a comment thread in MetaFilter

Copyfraud : Poisoning the Public Domain is an introduction to some of the ways that content providers (websites, publishers, etc.) abuse copyright protections when they use public domain materials.  A couple of minor points, however:

• The act of assigning a copyright to something already in the public domain is the issue; taking a Project Gutenberg text, formatting it, and publishing it is of great benefit to people, as long as one doesn’t claim protection that doesn’t actually exist for the material.
• The Creative Commons Public Domain Tools is not a license, nor is it  an attempt “to become the arbiter of  public domain licensing”, but a way to allow people to have an easy and effective way to display that a work belongs to the Public Domain.

found via LISNews

The Center for Social Media at American University’s School of Communication has a PDF guide available for download titled Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.

To both illustrate and promote the practices, they have just released a video called Remix Culture : Fair Use is Your Friend.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

found via Lessig 2.0

Cory Doctorow has an interesting take on the differing attitude of copyright between those who wish to wish to honor a creative work and those who wish to diminish it.  An excerpt:

“The upshot of this is that you’re on much more solid ground if you want to quote or otherwise reference a work for the purposes of rubbishing it than if you are doing so to celebrate it. This is one of the most perverse elements of copyright law: the reality that loving something doesn’t confer any right to make it a part of your creative life.”

An added bonus is a reference to a Firefly-based fan fiction that I hadn’t encountered before, titled My Own Kind of Freedom.

found via Library Link of the Day (16 May 2009)

Peter Murray has an incredibly good selection of links about the Google Book Search Settlement on the Disruptive Library Technology Jester blog.  Really.  Spend some time perusing them.

A brief rant, if you will accomodate me for a moment:

I encountered a disclaimer in an e-mail that strikes me as extreme enough to mention:

This email, and any attachment, is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, copying, dissemination or other use of this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited.

This came as part of a response from a company I had asked about the availability of an item.  Note that, by a strict interpretation of the statement, only the specific recipient of the message can use the information contained within.  If the e-mail had been from the company’s legal department, or if it hadn’t been about a product with a great deal of publicity and interest, there might have been some justification.

I know that legal boilerplate such as this seems to go along with incorporation, and that many of the employees of this company must stifle a groan every time they send information on their products, but these statements can be worded in such a way that they don’t throw a giant blanket of silence over simple sale information.  Or, perhaps, the statement can be reserved for those departments that handle legal, fiscal, and personnel matters, and a “lighter” disclaimer be used for general public communication.

This is something that falls into the same general category as Copyfraud, in that it attempts to place a much stronger restriction on something that doesn’t legally deserve it.

Or am I supposed to take the information about whether a particular item is available for sale to the grave?

My own disclaimer:  I changed the language of the disclaimer a tad, even though a quick internet search revealed several companies using the same wording as the e-mail.

Amazon.com has given in to the Publisher’s Guild on the issue of text-to-speech capabilities in the Kindle 2.

In their press release, Amazon states up front that “Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given.“  In this statement, they are correct.  If I read a book to someone who is visually or otherwise impaired, it takes a stretch of the imagination to suggest that I am actually staging a performance.

In addition, as I stated when the issue was first raised:

“How would someone with a visual impairment be able to order the audio book version of a title without using a screen reader?  In addition, how would they know whether a website allows for the use, under copyright law, of their own website by someone with a screen reader?”

To state that a feature of your product is legal, and to understand the benefit that the feature would bring to users of the product, but to then allow it to be disabled arbitrarily by third parties strikes me as a company that is attempting to placate the “squeaky wheels” simply because they threaten legal action.

BookFinder.com Journal makes a comparison to the relationship between large-print books and magnifiers.  Should the ability of consumers to use magnifiers while reading be controlled by the publisher (after all, it might be costing them large-print sales).

If you still feel that publishers should have the final say, then consider whether they should have this ability to control works that are in the public domain.  It doesn’t matter whether it is the consumer’s right to use text-to-speech, according to this decision; it only matters that individual consumers cannot respond with the apparent impact that the Writer’s guild can muster.

There has been a similar theme in the bibliographical world lately – rules being put in place that attempt to ignore or even circumvent that which already exists, whether it is Public Domain, Fair Use, or the First Sale doctrine.  OCLC, Google, and now Amazon have all implemented restrictions to their various offerings.  OCLC, to their credit, has stepped back and is in the process of re-evaluating its approach towards licensing records.  Google hasn’t even blinked about restricting access to Google Book items waaay beyond even the tightest of copyright interpretations.  Amazon asserts the rights of users to use text-to-speech, but then allows those with a vested interest against it to control its use.

Yes, there is a pattern to all of this, and we need to figure out how to prevent it from continuing.

Sending OCLC on its way is a post by Peter Brantley on his Thoughts and Speculations blog.  It focuses on the library world’s reaction to OCLC’s licensing change, and cautions against our overreacting.

He is not an apologist for OCLC, but someone who is pointing out what he sees as the dangers in pushing OCLC too far off of its business model.  In this I agree; OCLC has done some fantastic things, and is an orgainization worth preserving.  However, we need to ensure that it does not stifle innovation at the same time.

The continuing survival of libraries in the digital age requires us to be creative and experimental with our data, and having it locked up too tightly will only hurt everyone involved.

found via Code4Lib OCLC Policy Change wiki

A few links of note:

• Library Journal has an overview of the panel session – OCLC Defends Records Policy, Faces Questions, Suggestions, and Criticisms.
• Karen Calhoun, Vice President OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services, has posted the slides from her presentation.
• The Disruptive Technology Library Jester blog has a couple of posts well worth reading – Consideration of OCLC Record Use Policy and Further Consideration of OCLC Record Use Policy.

I sincerely hope that Karen Calhoun and OCLC are taking into consideration that a licensing structure similar to Creative Commons (to name one that many people have become familiar with) can be a win-win situation, allowing for quality control and prevent reselling of records, while still allowing for sharing and creative use of the data within the records.

A Fire on the Plain is a post by Peter Brantley of the University of California that relates the essence of conversations he has had with several rightsholders who were part of the Google Book Search negotiations.  An exerpt:

From the rightsholders’ perspective, one terminal per library, instead of being stingy, quivered with profligacy. I heard remarked by several individuals (and often enough now to feel it corroborated) that indeed this concession started out far more restricted: either no public access, or starkly limited access – perhaps apocryphally, a single terminal in each State capitol, or one terminal in each city. In short, it was impressed upon me that libraries were lucky to get as much as they did.

As I understand it, rightsholders feared that having unhindered access to books online at libraries might (among other issues) encourage libraries to decelerate buying print books, thereby reducing royalties to authors and profits to publishers. In this equation, more public access = less revenue.

This is not a good sign.  If this is applicable to rightsholders as a group (and be mindful that this is an incredibly small sample of opinion), then the resistance of publishers and other rightsholders is going to increase exponentially when we finally get an e-book reader that becomes the equivalent of what the I-Pod was to e-audio.  Libraries and other organizations need to ensure that Fair Use is respected (and utilized), and that there is a broad understanding of the changes happening to media and culture.

found via Open Access News

Data, Copyrights and Slogans, Oh My! is a post on the Common Knowledge blog discussing the idea that data is not subject to copyright.  With the OCLC kerfluffle still echoing about the libibliogosphere, it stands out as a nice, succinct argument – and one that is not specifically about library catalogs.

Update: Data, Copyrights, and Slogans, part II has been posted (27 January 2009)

found via Open Access News

Over the past few days, I have been gathering my thoughts together in order to post an essay-style overview of the issues surrounding the OCLC records policy changes.  As of now, I am going to put those thoughts aside, as Stefano Mazzocchi has posted an excellently rational and well thought-out essay on the topic.

I feel glad that I have injected some of the points he mentions into my own posts.  OCLC is a tiger (my own reference) defending its territory; this means they feel threatened.  Stefano described how OCLC can become the lady, opening up their process and becoming a hero to librarians, bibliophiles, and geeks worldwide.

Can they take a cue from the Open Source movement and adjust their business model to better fit their actual position in the biblioverse?  Stefano is hesitant about their chances; I have a lot of respect for many of the people and projects at OCLC, and feel that they can achieve nearly anything the set their collective minds towards (except to maintain a monopoly on the course they seem to have chosen).

found via Librarian.net

The Library and the Bazaar is an essay by Greer Hauptman that discusses copyright options, libraries, and the freedom to read.

Of note is his argument that with greater control being exerted by publishers over access to content (think e-journals) it becomes important to recognize how critical access to information is to the library’s mission.  Now think about this in terms of e-books where we might be ten years from now.

found via Open Access News

The debate about OCLC’s revision of their Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records is heating up.  The core issue appears to be the licensing of WorldCat records and the limitations imposed, namely that “data extracted from a WorldCat Record” cannot be used in anything that “substantially replicates the function, purpose, and/or size of WorldCat”.

Aaron Swartz, with the Open Library project, has posted a really interesting overview of OCLC, although his intro suggests that he feels that the 800 pound gorilla comparison is closer to the mark.  He followed up with quotes from and comments about Karen Calhoun’s post to OCLC members comment from his first post (thanks for setting this straight, Aaron!) He did not have a link to Karen’s post, and I wasn’t able to locate it via a search.

There is a podcast on Panlibus of Karen Calhoun and Roy Tennant discussing the policy.  I haven’t had a chance to listen yet.

Karen did post comments on November 4th on OCLC’s Metalogue blog.  Read the comments, especially Jonathan Rochkind’s (Nov 5, 1:41 p.m.); then check out his own blog posts on the topic (I would link to individual posts, but there are quite a few, and they are all worth reading — scroll back to November 3rd and read forward).

I am still fairly certain that OCLC is taking on the tiger’s role:  territorial and instinctive.  The more thought I give to it, however, the stronger the argument for opening the records and information becomes:  the data doesn’t belong to anyone (and if it did, it would belong to the libraries that created it in the first place) and OCLC is playing a losing game if it insists on full ownership and control.

TeleRead has an excellent post dissecting the recent ruling against the author of the Harry Potter Lexicon.  It examines the Fair Use aspects of copyright as they apply to this particular case.

via LISNews

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld (pdf) the Creative Commons License as valid, as well as establishing its relationship to copyright law.  Basically, if someone uses a work in violation of a Creative Commons license, the license itself vanishes (because it is an additional allowance of use under copyright), and the full copyright restriction becomes the rule by which use is judged and restitution made.

Long live Creative Commons!

found via the Lessig blog

Not the death of this blog, but of the ending of The Patry Copyright Blog, which has been consistently informative, educational, and timely.  I truly hope that William Patry returns to blogging at some point, as I can only guess at the amount and quality of information that I won’t gain from him in the meantime.

On a “making lemonade out of lemons” note, he is “creating a file with most of the posts (weeding out really trivial one)” and offering it up to all who ask.  I have responded, and am planning to host the file on Libology.com.  Other people have indicated their interest, as well, so it is likely that his blog will be accessible in some form.  How the posts will be presented on Libology remains to be seen (I don’t even know what format the file will be)… I hope to present them in some way that makes them more easily accessed and used.

Disclaimer: I have been an avid user of Scrabulous for several month (Stats:  70 wins and 3 losses, best bingo at 158 points), and am sad to see it go.  I am not posting because of this, however, but because of how the the article illustrates the problems with current copyright law.

Scrabulous Highlights the Failure of American Copyright Law is an excellent article in the Inquisitr.  They examine the copyright history of a game that started off with the name Lexiko, and compare it to the current patent laws as they apply to prescription drugs.

The intent of copyright is to encourage creativity by granting a period of exclusivity, but not at the exclusion of others with time. Copyright law as it stands today limits the creation of new works by denying the rights of others to create derivative works after a reasonable time. Copyright law today works against the greater good.

from LISnews