Multi-Purpose Librarian
Posted in Copyright, Publishing on Feb 5th, 2009
I was disappointed to learn yesterday that Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) reintroduced the “Fair Copyright in Research Works” Act despite the fact that it is neither fair nor supportive of research. As Paul Courant put it in his blog post about it the first time around, “the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act is a [...]
Posted in Copyright on Dec 19th, 2008
Good news for a snowbound morning: The RIAA has announced that it will not file any more lawsuits against alleged music pirates.
From the Wall Street Journal:
The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little [...]
Posted in Copyright, Digital Culture on Dec 1st, 2008
In last week’s Screens Issue of the New York Times Magazine, Kevin Kelly had a long article called “Becoming Screen Literate.” I first became aware of Kevin Kelly and his greatness when I read another of his NYT Magazine articles in May 2006, Scan This Book, about the impact of mass digitization on the future [...]
Posted in Copyright, Libraries, Public domain on Sep 11th, 2008
This is local news for me, but exciting and important on a national level (at least I like to think so).
The University of Michigan Library was just awarded a grant for over half a million dollars from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to develop a copyright review management system which will improve the [...]
OCLC has launched the WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry.
From the press release:
The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry is a community working together to build a union catalog of copyright evidence based on WorldCat, which contains more than 100 million bibliographic records describing items held in thousands of libraries worldwide. In addition to the WorldCat metadata, the [...]
Posted in Copyright, Creative Commons Evangelism on Aug 8th, 2008
Part two of my amazing trip to Malaysia and Singapore culminated in a visit to the Singapore National Library, where I gave a presentation to librarians from the National Library Board and the Singapore Library Association.
It was yet another version of my “Introducing Creative Commons: Why you should love it as much as I [...]
Posted in Copyright, Creative Commons Evangelism, Digital Culture on Jul 1st, 2008
As a part of Ann Arbor Summer Fest, the Ann Arbor District Library hosted A Panel Discussion on Digital Culture and Internet Rights. The headliner, if panels can be said have headliners, was Gilberto Gil, Brazilian Minister of Culture, superstar musician, and Creative Commons evangelist extraordinaire.
The other panelists were local luminaries in the areas of [...]
Posted in Copyright, Technology and Web 2.0 on May 23rd, 2008
Web 2.0 is one of my biggest professional interests after scholarly communication and its attendant issues. Even though my titles don’t have “digital” or “technology” or “emerging” in them, I see Web 2.0 as being very tightly linked to the copyright and scholarly publishing issues of the moment. Over time, I hope to use this [...]
Posted in Copyright, Orphan Works on May 21st, 2008
Someday I will stop blogging about orphan works, but today is not that day. Today, our man Lawrence Lessig, creator of Creative Commons and cyberlaw expert extraordinaire, has an op-ed in the New York Times about orphan works, and I’m helpless before the impulse to link it: Little Orphan Artworks.
Lessig comes down strongly against the [...]
Posted in Copyright, Orphan Works on Apr 29th, 2008
Georgia Harper has a strongly negative critique of the new orphan works legislation that is well worth a read.
The House version of the bill is so burdensome I would much prefer just to rely on fair use, even with all its uncertainty, than to know for certain that the burden for each and every [...]
