Tag Archives: Copyright

Google Books Unsettled

The Google Books Settlement was tossed out by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, arguing that it gave too much power to Google in allowing the company “significant rights to exploit entire books.” The major problem appears to be the issue … Continue reading

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Catch-22 Terms of Service

Apple pulled a newsreader called Pulse from their App Store yesterday after the New York Times sent a letter saying that the application violated their terms of service. The issue seems to revolve around the fact that Pulse is a … Continue reading

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Public Domain Manifesto

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 … Continue reading

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Books : A Plan To Scan

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 … Continue reading

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TinEye Reverse Image Search

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 … Continue reading

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Copyfraud – Poisoning the Public Domain

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 … Continue reading

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Use It or Lose It

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 … Continue reading

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Copyright Law, Love and Hate

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 … Continue reading

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Google Book Search Settlement Links

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.

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Stupid Disclaimer

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 … Continue reading

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Confusing Assistance with Performance

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 … Continue reading

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Sending OCLC on its way

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, … Continue reading

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Google Book Search – Publisher’s Perspective

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 … Continue reading

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Data Isn’t Copyrightable

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 … Continue reading

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Rational and Well Thought-Out OCLC Response

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 … Continue reading

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The Library and the Bazaar

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) … Continue reading

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More OCLC Comments

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 … Continue reading

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Harry Potter and the Unfair Use Lexicon

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

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Creative Commons Upheld

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 … Continue reading

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