Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Google And The New Digital Future

Google And The New Digital Future

"Pretty much the way most thought it would go.....Sigh!" HSM

Google And The New Digital Future

 

The New York Review of Books November 9 is one of those strange dates haunted by history. On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, signaling the collapse of the Soviet empire. The Nazis organized Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, beginning their all-out campaign against Jews. On November 9, 1923, Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch was crushed in Munich, and on November 9, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and Germany was declared a republic. The date especially hovers over the history of Germany, but it marks great events in other countries as well: the Meiji Restoration in Japan, November 9, 1867; Bonaparte's coup effectively ending the French Revolution, November 9, 1799; and the first sighting of land by the Pilgrims on the Mayflower, November 9, 1620. On November 9, 2009, in the district court for the Southern District of New York, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers were scheduled to file a settlement to resolve their suit against Google for alleged breach of copyright in its program to digitize millions of books from research libraries and to make them available, for a fee, online. Not comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, you might say. True, but for several months, all eyes in the world of books--authors, publishers, librarians, and a great many readers--were trained on the court and its judge, Denny Chin, because this seemingly small-scale squabble over copyright looked likely to determine the digital future for all of us. Google has by now digitized some ten million books. On what terms will it make those texts available to readers? That is the question before Judge Chin. If he construes the case narrowly, according to precedents in class-action suits, he could conclude that none of the parties had been slighted. That decision would remove all obstacles to Google's attempt to transform its digitizing of texts into the largest library and book-selling business the world has ever known. If Judge Chin were to take a broad view of the case, the settlement could be modified in ways that would protect the public against potential abuses of Google's monopolistic power. That Google's enterprise (Google Book Search, or GBS) threatened to become an overweening monopoly became clear when the Department of Justice filed a memorandum with the court warning about the likelihood of a violation of antitrust legislation. More than four hundred other memorandums and amicus briefs also provided warnings about mounting opposition to GBS. In the face of this opposition, Google and the plaintiffs petitioned the court to delay a hearing that was scheduled for October 17 so that they could rework the settlement. Judge Chin set November 9 as the deadline when the new version of the settlement would be unveiled. The great event turned out to be a dud, however. At the last minute, Google and the plaintiffs asked Judge Chin to grant another extension. He gave them four more days, so the witching hour finally took place not on November 9 but on a less auspicious date, Friday the 13th. Why did the deadline look so monumental? The terms of the settlement will have a profound effect on the book industry for the foreseeable future. On the positive side, Google will make it possible for consumers to purchase access to millions of copyrighted books currently in print, and to read them on hand-held devices or computer screens, with payment going to authors and publishers as well as Google. Many millions more--books covered by copyright but out of print, at least seven million in all, including untold millions of "orphans" whose rightsholders have not been identified--will be available through subscriptions paid for by institutions such as universities. The database, along with books in the public domain that Google has already digitized, will constitute a gigantic digital library, and it will grow over time so that someday it could be larger than the Library of Congress (which now contains over 21 million catalogued books). By paying a moderate subscription fee, libraries, colleges, and educational institutions of all kinds could have instant access to a whole world of learning and literature. But will the price be moderate? The negative arguments stress the danger that monopolies tend to charge monopoly prices. Equally important, they warn that Google's dominance of access to books will reinforce its power over access to other kinds of information, raising concerns about privacy (Google may be able to aggregate data about your reading, e-mail, consumption, housing, travel, employment, and many other activities). The same dominance also raises questions about both competition (the class-action character of the suit could make it impossible for another entrepreneur to digitize orphan works, because only Google will be protected from litigation by rightsholders) and commitment to the public good. As a commercial enterprise, Google's first duty is to provide a profit for its shareholders, and the settlement leaves no room for representation of libraries, readers, or the public in general. Story continues below An extensive argument about the pros and cons could turn Judge Chin's courtroom into a forum where the full range of literary questions would be dramatized by debate. No courtroom drama took place on November 13, because nothing happened other than the filing of the revised settlement (call it GBS 2.0 to distinguish it from the original version of the settlement, GBS 1.0). But the filing was important in itself, because it marked the denouement of years of hard bargaining over who would control a large stretch of the digital landscape that is just now coming into view. To be sure, GBS 2.0 will certainly be challenged by groups and individuals who claim they were not fairly represented in the classes of authors and publishers. The case may take years to work its way through the courts. Meanwhile, Google will go on digitizing; and as the legal situation evolves, it may devise further revisions of the settlement (GBS 3.0, GBS 4.0, etc.). The public will have to study all the new versions of the settlement in order to stay informed about the rules of the game while the game is being played. Who ultimately wins is not simply a matter of competition among potential entrepreneurs but an issue of enormous importance to everyone who cares about books, even though the public is reduced to the role of spectator. As the first step toward a resolution, the filing on November 13 suggested just how far Google is willing to go in modifying the original settlement. Google's spokesman hailed the revised version as providing all the benefits and none of the defects that one could expect. According to Dan Clancy, Google Books engineering director, Google is still very excited about this agreement.... We look forward to continuing to work with rightsholders from around the world to fulfill our longstanding mission of increasing access to all the world's books. But the arguments in favor of the reworked settlement came from Google and the plaintiffs who will become its collaborators if their deal is approved. To get a sense of the counterarguments, one can survey the memorandums and amicus briefs that were filed with the court before November 9.[*] The protests that came from Europe are the most revealing. Although they concentrate on issues of special importance to foreigners--above all, the incompatibility of American class-action suits with protection for copyright holders who are not Americans--they show how the settlement was seen from a distant perspective. The governments of France and Germany sent memorandums urging the court to reject the settlement "in its entirety" or at least insofar as it applied to their own citizens. Far from seeing any potential public good in it, they condemned it for creating an "unchecked, concentrated power" over the digitization of a vast amount of literature (this according to the French memorandum) and for doing so (according to the Germans) by a "commercially driven" agreement negotiated "in secrecy...behind closed doors by three interested parties, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and Google, Inc." In contrast to the commercial character of Google's enterprise, both governments stressed the higher values represented by their national literatures. The French began their memorandum by invoking Pascal, Descartes, Molière, Racine, and other writers through Camus and Sartre, while the Germans summoned up the line that led from Goethe and Schiller to Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass. Each country cited the number of its Nobel Prize winners in literature (France sixteen, Germany twelve), and each buttressed its case by other evidence of high-mindedness. The Germans insisted on Gutenberg and his contribution to "the spread of science and culture." The French cited the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 in order to uphold the principle of "free access to information" threatened by Google's "de facto monopoly." It is an odd spectacle: foreign governments defending a European notion of culture against the capitalistic inroads of an American company, and submitting their case to Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District Court of New York. What Judge Chin, who grew up in Hell's Kitchen in a family of poor Chinese immigrants (and won a scholarship to Princeton University) made of it all is difficult to say. He did not tip his hand on November 13, nor did he say when a hearing would take place. In playing the cultural card, the French emphasized the unique character of the book, "a product unlike other products"--its power to capture creativity, to enrich civilization, and to promote diversity, which, they claimed, would be compromised by Google's commitment to commercialization. The Germans spoke in the name of "the land of poets and thinkers," but they laid most stress on the right of privacy, which, they argued, Google could threaten by keeping data on who reads what. Both governments then listed a series of subsidiary arguments, which were nearly the same, word for word--unsurprisingly, as they engaged the same legal counsel: 1. The settlement gives Google a virtual monopoly over orphan works, even though it has no claim to their copyrights. 2. Its opt-out provision, which means that authors will be deemed to have accepted the settlement unless they notify Google to the contrary, violates the rights inherent in authorship. 3. It contains a most-favored- nation clause--i.e., a provision that prevents a potential competitor from obtaining better terms than Google in any new commercial uses of the digitized books. The terms of such future enterprises will be determined by a Books Rights Registry composed exclusively of representatives of the authors and publishers. The Registry will keep track of copyrights and cooperate with Google in setting prices. 4. It gives Google the power to censor its database by excluding up to 15 percent of the digitized works. 5. Its guidelines for pricing will promote Google's commercial interests, not the good of the public, through the use of algorithms created by Google according to Google's secret methods. 6. It favors secrecy in general, hiding audit procedures, preventing the public from attending meetings in which Google and the Registry will discuss library matters, and even requiring Google, the authors, and publishers to destroy all documents relevant to their agreement on the settlement. Above all, the French and Germans condemned the settlement for sanctioning the "uncontrolled, autocratic concentration of power in a single corporate entity," which threatened the "free exchange of ideas through literature." To drive the point home, they both noted that Google has taken in more revenue than many countries--$22 billion in 2008. The same points were made in a hearing before the European Commission on September 7 by the three most important international library associations: the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associates (EBLIDA), and the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER). In nearly identical testimony, all three stressed the danger that "a large proportion of the world's heritage of books in digital format will be under the control of a single corporate entity." It was Google's sheer power that gave them pause. They summoned up the prospect of a digital library of 30 million books that would cost $750 million, and they concluded that Google would exercise something close to hegemony in the book world. Therefore, they appealed to the European Commission to defend the interests of the public by preventing Google from abusing its power. Some of these associations submitted similar statements to the New York court. So did hundreds of other groups and individuals. After reading through them, one has the impression of a sense of alarm gathering force and rising to the surface of a collective consciousness. As November 9 approached, it did indeed promise to be a day of destiny, when we would begin to see into our digital future and to face the forces that might determine it. Where was the Department of Justice in the pre-November debate? It, too, submitted a memorandum for the court's consideration. After months of investigating potential violations of antitrust law, the DOJ pointed to two serious difficulties: the possibility of horizontal agreements among authors and publishers to restrict price competition and the further restriction of competition by Google's de facto exclusive rights to the digital distribution of orphan works. Competitors would be denied access to millions of orphans, the memorandum argued, because they would not enjoy the immunity from suits for copyright infringement that the settlement reserves to Google. Moreover, the settlement's equivalent of a most-favored-nation clause would prevent all competitors from obtaining better terms than Google's even if they could put together an attractive database. Instead of expatiating in the European manner on the danger to the world's literary heritage, the DOJ warned about something concrete: the "risk of market foreclosure." What to do? Far from sounding hostile to Google Book Search, the DOJ acknowledged its potential to promote the public good and announced, "The United States does not want the opportunity or momentum to be lost." The memorandum could therefore be read as a prescription for a way to save the settlement. It concentrated on the most hotly debated provisions--those concerning the approximately seven million out-of-print but in-copyright books, especially orphans--and it suggested the following changes: 1. Require rightsholders of out-of-print books to participate in the settlement by opting in instead of operating from the assumption that they had agreed to participate unless they opted out. The shift to an opt-out default would remove Google's control of books whose rightsholders cannot be identified or do not come forward. 2. Do not distribute the profits from the sale of orphan books to the parties of the settlement (Google and the authors and publishers) but rather use the money to fund a thorough search for the unknown rightsholders, and extend the search for a long period of time. 3. Appoint guardians to protect the interests of orphan rightsholders by serving on the registry. 4. Find some mechanism by which potential competitors to Google could gain access to orphan works without exposure to suits for infringement of copyright. Presumably this would require legislation by Congress. 5. Prevent Google from using out-of-print works in new commercial products without the owner's permission. The DOJ said it would continue to investigate the potential violation of antitrust laws, and it concluded with an unambiguous imperative: "This Court should reject the Proposed Settlement in its current form...." But its recommendations for an improved settlement did not go far--not nearly as far as those suggested by the governments of France and Germany and many other critics. The DOJ said nothing about the need for monitoring prices, protecting privacy, preventing censorship, providing representation of the public on the registry, and requiring full disclosure of Google's secret data. If the DOJ encouraged Judge Chin to take a broad view of the settlement, it did not open the door wide. The revised settlement, or GBS 2.0, released on November 13, reads as if Google and the plaintiffs took most of their cues from the DOJ's memorandum. In a clear concession to the DOJ's criticisms, GBS 2.0 provides that the Registry will include a court-appointed guardian to represent the rightsholders of unclaimed books. But it does not switch to an opt-out provision for such rightsholders--that is, according to GBS 2.0, any owner of a copyright of an out-of-print book would be deemed to accept the settlement unless he or she rejected it. Because millions of books, primarily orphans, fall into this category where the rightsholders are difficult to identify, Google alone would enjoy immunity from prosecution by any rightsholders who might turn up--and the exposure to litigation, which could easily reach $150,000 per title, would be enough to prevent any competitor from entering the field. Instead of providing a solution to the problem of orphan works, GBS 2.0 leaves Google in command of their commercialization, pending eventual legislation by Congress. As to revenue from the sale of orphan books, GBS 2.0 complies with the DOJ's insistence that the money not go to Google and the plaintiffs. Instead it will be spent in efforts to search for the unidentified rightsholders; and after being held for ten years, the funds will be distributed to charities determined by court order. GBS 2.0 also follows the DOJ's recommendation to abandon the most-favored-nation clause. Google's competitors would be able to license out-of-print books in retail enterprises --that is, in selling individual works to consumers--although Google would maintain exclusive control of the institutional subscriptions to its gigantic database. How the price of those subscriptions will be set remains unclear. GBS 2.0 has some language explaining the way its pricing algorithm will work, but it contains no effective mechanism to prevent price gouging, no provision for an antitrust consent decree that would empower a public authority to monitor prices, and no way to protect the public from excessive pricing should Google be taken over in the future by rapacious speculators. GBS 2.0 does not therefore differ in essentials from GBS 1.0. It largely ignores the objections of foreign governments, except in one crucial respect: it partly meets the objections by narrowing the scope of GBS to books published in the United States and to countries with similar legal systems--that is, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Google will not display books published in countries like France and Germany, and it will give them representation on the Registry to protect their interests. Just what proportion of unclaimed works will now be excluded from the settlement by this concession remains to be clarified. Will these concessions be enough to mollify Google's critics outside the Department of Justice who are not parties to the settlement? Probably not, judging from a statement issued on November 13 by the Open Book Alliance, whose members include Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo: By performing surgical nip and tuck, Google, the AAP [Association of American Publishers], and the AG [Authors Guild] are attempting to distract people from their continued efforts to establish a monopoly over digital content access and distribution; usurp Congress's role in setting copyright policy; lock writers into their unsought registry, stripping them of their individual contract rights; put library budgets and patron privacy at risk; and establish a dangerous precedent by abusing the class action process. What then is the outlook for the future? No one can predict the fate of the settlement as it bounces from court to court; but if the public good should be taken into consideration, one can imagine two general solutions to the problems posed by GBS, one maximal, one minimal. The most ambitious solution would transform Google's digital database into a truly public library. That, of course, would require an act of Congress, one that would make a decisive break with the American habit of determining public issues by private lawsuit. The legislation would have to settle ancillary problems--how to adjust copyright, deal with orphan books, and compensate Google for its investment in digitizing--but it would have the advantage of clearing up a messy legal landscape and of giving the American people what they deserve: a national digital library equal to the needs of the twenty-first century. But it is not clear how Google would react to such a buyout. If state intervention is deemed to go too far against the American grain, a minimal solution could be devised for the private sector. Congress would have to intervene with legislation to protect the digitization of orphan works from lawsuits, but it would not need to appropriate funds. Instead, funding could come from a coalition of foundations. The digitizing, open-access distribution, and preservation of orphan works could be done by a nonprofit organization such as the Internet Archive, a nonprofit group that was built as a digital library of texts, images, and archived Web pages. In order to avoid conflict with interests in the current commercial market, the database would include only books in the public domain and orphan works. Its time span would increase as copyrights expired, and it could include an opt-in provision for rightsholders of books that are in copyright but out of print. The work need not be done in haste. At the rate of a million books a year, we would have a great library, free and accessible to everyone, within a decade. And the job would be done right, with none of the missing pages, botched images, faulty editions, omitted artwork, censoring, and misconceived cataloging that mar Google's enterprise. Bibliographers--who appear to play little or no part in Google's enterprise--would direct operations along with computer engineers. Librarians would cooperate with both in order to assure the preservation of the books, another weak point in GBS, because Google is not committed to maintaining its corpus, and digitized texts easily degrade or become inaccessible. This digitizing process could be subsidized as part of the Obama administration's economic stimulus, and the overall cost, spread out over ten to twenty years, would be manageable, perhaps $750 million in all. Meanwhile, Google and anyone else would be free to exploit the commercial sector. The national digital library could be composed from the holdings of the Library of Congress alone or, failing that, from research libraries that have not opened all their collections to Google. Perhaps other solutions could be devised. If the court did not resolve the Google Book Search problem on November 13, at least it had the potential to concentrate minds and stimulate public debate. We are agreed that something must be done to improve the nation's health. Why not do something to enrich its culture? --November 18, 2009

 

[*]The texts of the documents can be consulted at dockets.justia.com/docket/court-nysdce/case_no-1:2005cv08136/case_id-273913.

Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard. "The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future" was published in October and "The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon" will be published in December. (December 2009)

Google And The New Digital Future

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

New Blog - Citation Help for ISU and Beyond

http://citehelp.blogspot.com/

I have started a new Blog to keep primarily ISU faculty, staff, and students up-to-date with the latest tools related to bibliographic management applications, primarily EndNote, EndNote Web, and Zotero.  Anyone using these tools may benefit from the information shared.  I will try to tag those items that exclusivly related to Iowa State University such as upcoming workshops.

The address is http://citehelp.blogspot.com/

Thanks -- Stephen

Friday, October 30, 2009

Highlights from International Open Access Week 2009 « ResourceShelf

Highlights from International Open Access Week 2009 « ResourceShelf 

Highlights from International Open Access Week 2009 From the Announcement: The first International Open Access Week (October 19 23) may have just come to a close, but the broad spectrum of initiatives that it showcased ensures that Open Access to research will play a central role in advancing the conduct of research and scholarship for years to come. Events took place on more than 300 higher education, research, and other sites worldwide, illustrating the dramatic growth of the global network that has emerged in support of Open Access. The post goes on to highlight five key events from International Open Access Week. Youll read about and find related links to: + The establishment of new access policies at agencies and research institutes. + The adoption of campus-based open-access policies. + The release of extensive research on the economic and social impact of Open Access. + The commitment of significant new funds to support open-access publication. + A groundswell of support by college and university students. Source: SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

Highlights from International Open Access Week 2009 « ResourceShelf

The Accessibility Paradox | Peer to Peer Review - 10/29/2009 - Library Journal

The Accessibility Paradox | Peer to Peer Review - 10/29/2009 - Library Journal 

"Interesting article in Library Journal ... 1st paragraph here for more wander over to LJ"  -- HSM

The Accessibility Paradox  -- Library Journal, 10/29/2009

The book world has been harrumphing about a battle among big box stores to sell the season's biggest books at the cheapest price. In order to draw customer into their stores, Target and Wal-Mart are making ten bestselling author's books available for under ten bucks. (Wisconsin is missing all the excitementthey have a law against dumping goods below wholesale prices but Amazon has joined in the fray, so Wisconsinites can still go online and pre-order bestsellers at low-low prices.) The American Booksellers Association has even asked the Department of Justice to intervene. I'm somewhat bemused to see a Barbara Kingsolver book among the discounted booksattention shoppers! Critique of corporate greed and US imperialism on sale in aisle three! But I'm also taken aback by the horrified response of the book industry. I thought the big crisis was that nobody reads. Now it turns out the problem is that books are so popular with the masses they're being used as bait to draw in shoppers. Come on, guys, get your story straight! Which is it?

The Accessibility Paradox | Peer to Peer Review - 10/29/2009 - Library Journal

Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers - Ars Technica

Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers - Ars Technica 

Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers A study provides evidence that file sharing takes place with some very specialized media: the research papers published in scientific journals. By John Timmer | Last updated October 29, 2009 6:15 AM CT

The ease with which information can be spread through the Internet has exacerbated tensions among those who pay for, conduct, and publish scientific research. Many journals still require subscription or per-article payments for access to the research they publish, which often leaves the public, who funds a significant percentage of the research, on the wrong side of a pay wall. So far, however, there's been little evidence that the public has been interested enough in research to engage in the sort of widespread file-sharing that plague other content industries. But a new study suggests that may just be because nobody's looked very carefully.

The study, which was spotted by TechDirt, appears in an open-access journal, so anyone can read its entire contents. It describes the sharing of over 5,000 research papers on a site frequented by medical professionals, and the formal community rules that governed the exchange.

During the six months in 2008 that the author tracked the activity on the site, which was a discussion board focused on medical fields, it had over 125,000 registered users. Anyone could start an account, but many of the fora were focused on specific issues, such as those faced by nurses and residents. In addition to those, however, there was a section called the Electronic Library that contained a forum called "Databases & Journals—Requests and Enquiries."

Up to three times a day, users were allowed to submit a request for a published research article, accompanied by a link to the free abstract hosted at the journal's website. Other users would then download the full article and host it somewhere, providing a link in the discussion. If everything was set up properly, the site would track the number of downloads.

Over the course of six months, over 6,500 articles were requested, and over 80 percent of those requests were successfully filled. The articles received a mean of 4.47 views, with one attracting 177 downloads. The author found that the requests roughly paralleled the journal's impact factors, with Nature and Science coming out on top, followed by more specialized medical journals. Figuring an average cost of $30 a download (the price requested by many journals), the publishing industry was potentially losing $1.4 million a year due to the site, although it's unlikely that many of the downloaders would have actually exercised their option to buy an article.

According to the author, the site (which is never named) went inactive in early 2009, although its contents were indexed via Google prior to that point.

The author considers this behavior in the context of the Open Access debate, which has played out in Congress and research institutions. He also terms the file sharing behavior among people involved in the medical profession "ethically dubious," given it involves the distribution of copyrighted material.

There is, however, an alternate way of viewing this that the author doesn't discuss: at least some medical professionals are apparently unable to obtain the publications they feel are needed for their training or practice; given their job responsibilities, it seems unethical to withhold these materials.

In addition, it's worth noting that, although this sort of informal sharing would be obviated if all research was open access, it has a very different history from the formal open access movement. For many years, it was traditional for anyone publishing a paper to order a stack of what were termed "reprints"—essentially the journal article without the rest of the journal's contents—from the publisher, in order to share with colleagues or anyone who was interested, but did not have access to the journal. With the advent of digital publishing, this sort of service shifted to the emailing of PDFs—in a lot of ways, the file sharing seen here could be viewed as the next logical step in this publication sharing process.

In any case, the amount of sharing that goes on is undoubtedly much larger than the file exchanges observed in the study. Many authors are now choosing to simply place articles where anyone can find them, either ahead of print at places like the arXiv, or after, on their university's servers. Offers to share paywalled articles also occur in public forums that aren't dedicated to this exchange, at least based on some of the comments attached to Ars' science articles.

Many publishers are readily adapting to and, in some cases, embracing the increased demands for public access to research results. But there remain a number who are resisting the trend. The study suggests that publishers might do well to adopt some sort of formalized access system, or they may end up facing a growth in the sites that encourage the same sort of sharing that has caused the movie and film industries so much indigestion.

The Internet Journal of Medical Informatics, 2009. DOI unavailable.

Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers - Ars Technica

Friday, October 23, 2009

SPIE Digital Library - Subscription Information and Support for Librarians

SPIE Digital Library - Subscription Information and Support for Librarians 

Open-access SPIE Reviews journal to launch in mid-2009 with focus on emerging topics in optics and photonics

December 12, 2008 -- SPIE announced today the launch in mid-2009 of the new open-access journal SPIE Reviews under the editorship of William T. Rhodes. The new journal will publish original, in-depth review articles on emerging and evolving fields in applied optics and photonics of use to researchers as well as industry innovators.

"Articles will serve both as valuable overviews of significant new technologies and as portals to the primary literature in those areas for practitioners, researchers, and students." Dr. Rhodes said. "The optics community has long needed a good journal of review articles. I am extremely pleased that SPIE is launching this new publication, and doubly pleased because it comes at no cost to readers or authors." Rhodes is a professor of electrical engineering and Associate Director of the Imaging Technology Center at Florida Atlantic University, and Emeritus Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology.

As editor, Rhodes will be assisted by a broadly interdisciplinary editorial board that will provide the expertise needed to ensure that SPIE Reviews covers the full range of topics important to SPIE constituents.

SPIE Reviews will be available as an open-access publication in the SPIE Digital Library, the world's largest collection of optics literature. Articles in the SPIE Digital Library incorporate features such as extensive CrossRef-linked bibliographies, multimedia, bookmarking tools, and RSS feeds. In addition to these features, SPIE Reviews will feature links to related resources such as book chapters.  SPIE Reviews joins the open-access SPIE Letters virtual journal as an additional open-access offering in the SPIE Digital Library, which also includes articles available by subscription or pay-per-view from SPIE's other six journals and the Proceedings of SPIE.

"SPIE Reviews will offer timely insights on emerging technologies of benefit to researchers and students, while also providing industry managers with overviews of developing fields and a front-view perspective on technology trends," said CEO Eugene Arthurs.

SPIE Reviews' open-access status will ensure its availability to researchers in developing countries and in schools with limited access to primary research journals, Arthurs noted. "This supports SPIE's mission to advance devierse new technologies throughout the world."

Articles will be invited by members of the editorial board and the editor. Proposals from prospective authors also will be considered by the editor. Proposals and inquiries may be sent to journals@spie.org. Additional information on SPIE Reviews is available at www.spie.org/reviews.

SPIE Digital Library - Subscription Information and Support for Librarians

Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)

 Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)

Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) becomes a founding member of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)

October 21, 2009

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) became a founding member of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR). COAR is an international association of organizations and individuals that have a common strategic interest in open access to scholarly communication. COAR was formed out of a need to work together at the international level to promote greater visibility and application of research outputs through global networks of open access digital repositories.

Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)

Hardin News» Blog Archive » Open Access Publishing in the Health Sciences- The University of Iowa Libraries

Hardin News» Blog Archive » Open Access Publishing in the Health Sciences- The University of Iowa Libraries 

Editor’s Note: Throughout Open Access Week (Oct 19-23), the UI Libraries will be sharing the views of our UI colleagues on the topic of open access.

by Dr. William Sivitz, Professor of Internal Medicine

I recently published an article in PlosOne (Mitochondrial Targeted Coenzyme Q, Superoxide, and Fuel Selectivity in Endothelial Cells by Brian D. Fink, Yunxia O’Malley, Brian L. Dake, Nicolette C. Ross, Thomas E. Prisinzano, and William I. Sivitz). I found the process straightforward and faster than most other journals. The peer review was thorough but fair. I hope to see this used more frequently.

by Dr. Michael Knudson, Association Professor of Pathology

We published in Plos One and found it a very satisfying experience.  Quick, insightful reviews, no charge for color figures and no copyright forms to sign.

The journal allows readers to provide feedback and ratings of each article.  I would recommend Open Access to all.

Hardin News» Blog Archive » Open Access Publishing in the Health Sciences- The University of Iowa Libraries

Sorry -- Been Away !

 

Sorry -- had numerous work related issues which were so unforeseen that I had to drop everything to get done.

None related to open access -- but I am back.... So....

Thanks for understanding.....Stephen

About OA week — Open Access Week - October 19-23, 2009

About OA week — Open Access Week - October 19-23, 2009 

About OA week

October 19-23 will mark the first international Open Access Week.

Open Access Week is an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public. The now-annual event has been expanded from a single day to accommodate widespread global interest in the movement toward open, public access to scholarly research results.

Open Access Week builds on the momentum started by the student-led national day of action in 2007 and carried by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. 2008 organizers SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the PLoS (The Public Library of Science), and Students for FreeCulture welcome new key contributors for 2009: OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); Open Access Directory (OAD); and eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries), which will again spearhead events in developing and transitional countries.

There are also partner organizations that are engaging their communities in every corner of the globe and these are listed on the main page of this site (SPARC Europe, SPARC Japan, DOAJ and BIREME). If you want join them and help get the word out please contact dokubo@plos.org.

This year, the organizers will highlight a growing suite of educational resources that local hosts can use to design their own programs on Open Access, for their respective audiences and time zones. The OASIS project features the resources for researchers, administrators, librarians, students, and the public — as well as different OA awareness levels — that will be the centerpiece of the 2009 Open Access Week program.

These audience-specific resource lists will be supplemented by the growing clearinghouse of educational materials available through the Open Access Directory, which will again serve as the key index for participating campuses and organizations on five continents. Through the collaborative functionality of the two initiatives, videos, briefing papers, podcasts, slideshows, posters and other educational tools will be drawn from all over the Web to be featured during Open Access Week 2009.

The organizers will also work with registered participants to develop a variety of sample program tracks, such as “Administrators’ introduction to campus open-access policies and funds,” “OA 101,” and “Complying with the NIH public access policy” that take full advantage of available tools.  Scholars, students, libraries, publishers, individuals, and campuses everywhere are invited to adapt these resources as needed and to mark Open Access Week by hosting an event, distributing literature, blogging, or wearing an Open Access t-shirt.

“After the success of last year’s Open Access Day, we’re delighted to be co-organizing the first ever Open Access Week with our fellow collaborators, again in conjunction with the anniversary of one of our flagship journals,” said Peter Jerram, CEO for the Public Library of Science. “We would ask our supporters to celebrate the fifth anniversary of PLoS Medicine by spreading the word about Open Access and getting involved in the week.”

“There’s no more certain sign of the momentum behind Open Access to research than an annual, global celebration of this scale,” added Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. “Occasions like this are the best possible way to attract attention from busy faculty members and administrators. It’s SPARC’s pleasure to be working with our partners to realize the event once again this year.”

Read a Press Release about Open Access Week 2009.

About OA week — Open Access Week - October 19-23, 2009

Monday, September 21, 2009

URGENT! Intellectual Property Lawyer Marc Toberoff Goes After Disney/Marvel Deal & Other Studios For Jack Kirby Estate – Deadline.com

"sorry for not posting lately -- been busy with 3 other major projects, but this was too good...." Stephen

 

URGENT! Intellectual Property Lawyer Marc Toberoff Goes After Disney/Marvel Deal & Other Studios For Jack Kirby Estate

By Nikki Finke | Kirby Thor 160 Kirby Cap America 100

Specifically, the estate of Jack Kirby, co-creator of Captain America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Avengers, Iron Man, Hulk, The Silver Surfer and Thor, has sent notices terminating copyright to publishers Marvel and Disney, marvel disney smallas well as film studios that have made movies and TV shows based on characters he created or co-created, including Sony, Universal, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. That's the news from the website bleedingcool.com, which covers all things comic book. Normally these kinds of lawsuits are run of the mill for Hollywood. But not when they're litigated by Marc Toberoff, who is the bane of Big Media. He's had so many victories they're hard to count, especially in he comic book arena on behalf of Superman creator Jerry Seigel against DC Comics and Warner Bros. KirbyPhotoLike that case, Kirby’s estate is looking to regain his share of copyright in the characters and their use in comics and other media. "Such claims, if found valid, would begin from 2014 and, as always, it's worth noting that Marvel/Disney will still own the trademarks of the characters in comics, and the studios in movies. The likelihood is that, if successful, the Kirby estate would enter into negotiation over terms to continue publishing comics based on his work," the website wrote. Other recent cases which Toberoff has won or settled lawsuits on Lassie, Get Smart, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Wild Wild West, and Smallville. On the Superman case, Warner Bros could have been draped in black mourning the loss of a shitload of Superman dollars because of U.S. District Court Judge Stephen G. Larson's ruling: "After 70 years, Jerome Siegel’s heirs regain what he granted so long ago — the copyright in the Superman material that was published in Action Comics, Vol. 1. What remains is an apportionment of profits, guided in some measure by the rulings contained in this Order, and a trial on whether to include the profits generated by DC Comics’ corporate sibling’s exploitation of the Superman." Think about it: Siegel sold the rights to the action hero he created with Joseph Shuster to Detective Comics for $130, and his heirs got back ownership of the character in 1999 and could possibly lay claim to $50+ million of Warner Bros' and/or its DC Comics' cash. Can that happen in the Kirby case? The iron is that Disney CEO Bob Iger's ties to Marvel go back two generations to Kirby himself. That's because Iger's late great-uncle (his grandfather's brother) was illustrator/cartoonist Jerry Iger, who partnered with illustrator/cartoonist Will Eisner back in the 1930s to create the comic book packager Eisner & Iger Studios. And their first hire was Jack Kirby, who as you know later became the co-creator of many of Marvel's best known characters with then Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee. Lee, meanwhile, has been supportive of the Disney/Marvel deal (though he is fighting lawsuits of his own on other fronts.)

URGENT! Intellectual Property Lawyer Marc Toberoff Goes After Disney/Marvel Deal & Other Studios For Jack Kirby Estate – Deadline.com

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

How do I make my research papers openly available without leaving out peer-review? « eResources at the University of Bradford

 How do I make my research papers openly available without leaving out peer-review? « eResources at the University of Bradford

How do I make my research papers openly available without leaving out peer-review?

A range of Open Access journals are now available in most subject areas. These titles number in their thousands and are usually peer-reviewed. Some of the more well-known titles include those of BioMed Central (199 peer-reviewed titles) and the Public Library of Science (seven peer-reviewed science and medicine titles). A number of directories exist to list Open Access journals. One of more extensive lists is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which also facilitates searches across the journals. The multi-disciplinary and multi-lingual DOAJ covers over 4250 free, full-text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.

In addition to Open Access journals the commercial publishers may offer paid open access options. this would allow authors to deposit their articles immediately in their institutional open access repositories upon payment of a fee. The same publishers may also permit authors to deposit after an embargo period without the payment of a fee. Where a publisher’s standard policy does not allow an author to comply with their funding agency’s open access mandate, paid open access options may enable an author to comply. Information about publishers’ paid options for open access are available at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PaidOA.html. Guidance is also available from the Research Information Network (RIN) who have produced a briefing document called “Paying for open access publication charges”. This PDF is available from RIN web pages.

Authors are urged to consider the requirements set by their funding bodies (information about funder mandates are available directly from the funding organisation or e.g.  the JULIET database)  regarding open access to reseach outputs. In many cases researchers are expected to make research results available open on the web. This could be an Open Access journal or paid open access article in a commercial journal. Institutional repositories are a third option for releasing research materials to the free web.

Authors concerned about their rights to publish in traditional commercial journals need not worry. Making research available openly on the World Wide Web does not exclude the publication of articles in the author’s choice of journal. However, it worth noting that on occasion the publisher’s policy on self-archiving and placing published articles on the free web may clash with the funder’s mandate on open access. Bearing this in mind it is worth checking the prospective publisher’s copyright policy and the funder mandate prior to getting published.

More information on publisher policies are available via the RoMEO database or the Bradford Scholars web page at the University of Bradford. Alternatively,  you may choose to contact the repository team at Bradford for advise and assistance. Contact details are available at the Bradford Scholars homepage.

How do I make my research papers openly available without leaving out peer-review? « eResources at the University of Bradford

Automated Copyright Settlement Letters Apparently A Lucrative Business | Techdirt

Automated Copyright Settlement Letters Apparently A Lucrative Business | Techdirt 

Automated Copyright Settlement Letters Apparently A Lucrative Business

from the pay-up-or-we'll-sue dept

We've covered a few different stories of companies that have been involved in what certainly has a lot of similarities to extortion: sending automated letters insisting that you're violating the law, and demanding payment to prevent a lawsuit. DirecTV was one of the first companies to put a big push behind such a revenue stream, but it was eventually shot down by the courts. The RIAA, of course, has used such a program for a while. More recently, we've seen some companies in Europe experiment with similar programs. The latest is Nexicon, a former cigarette retailer that's now rebuilt itself as an automated legal threat sender, scanning BitTorrent for what it believes is infringing content, and dashing off automated legal notices, demanding payment within 10 days, and suggesting that simply paying up is a lot cheaper than even contacting a lawyer. At what point do politicians realize just how badly the system is being abused? Or do they just let this sort of activity continue?
In the meantime, it looks like ACS:Law, which is one of the organizations that's been involved in a similar settle-or-we'll-sue letter sending campaign has been outed as sending bogus letters to people who had nothing to do with the content they're alleged to have infringed upon. The most amazing thing? The companies involved seem to admit it. In a letter used by multiple firms, they note that "We do not claim that your computer was used to commit the infringing act (although we do not exclude this possibility), nor do we claim that you downloaded our client's work. Our claim is that your Internet connection was used to make our client's work available via one or more P2P networks. The file may not, therefore, be on your computer." But they still want you to pay up, of course. It's guilty until proven innocent, because that's a lot more lucrative.

Automated Copyright Settlement Letters Apparently A Lucrative Business | Techdirt

The Associated Press: High court won't block remote storage DVR systems

The Associated Press: High court won't block remote storage DVR systems 

High court won't block remote storage DVR systems

2 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hollywood studios and television networks lost their bid Monday for the Supreme Court to block the use of a new digital video recorder system that could make it cheaper and easier for viewers to record shows and watch them when they want, without commercials.

The justices decline to hear arguments on whether Cablevision Systems Corp.'s remote-storage DVR violates copyright laws.

For consumers, the action means that Cablevision and perhaps other cable system operators soon will be able to offer DVR service without need for a box in their homes. The remote storage unit exists on computer servers maintained by a cable provider.

Industry experts say the new technology could put digital recording service in nearly half of all American homes, about twice the current number. That's what has movie studios, TV networks and cable channels worried. DVRs allow viewers easily to skip past commercials.

The studios and networks contend that the service is more akin to video-on-demand, for which they negotiate licensing fees with cable providers.

The Obama administration, which urged the court not to hear the case, said the ruling by the federal appeals court in New York in favor of Cablevision was correct.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a judge's ruling that Cablevision, rather than its customers, would be making copies of programs, thereby violating copyright laws.

The Screen Actors Guild, songwriters, music companies, Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the NCAA all sided with the networks and studios in asking for high court review.

The case is Cable News Network v. CSC Holdings Inc., 08-448.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The Associated Press: High court won't block remote storage DVR systems

OASIS

OASIS 

OASIS aims to provide an authoritative ‘sourcebook’ on Open Access, covering the concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving it. The site highlights developments and initiatives from around the world, with links to diverse additional resources and case studies. As such, it is a community-building as much as a resource-building exercise. Users are encouraged to share and download the resources provided, and to modify and customize them for local use. Open Access is evolving, and we invite the growing world-wide community to take part in this exciting global movement

OASIS

Media Life Magazine - Supremes open way for remote DVRs

Media Life Magazine - Supremes open way for remote DVRs 

Supremes open way for remote DVRs High court ruling frees Cablevision to offer service

By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Jun 30, 2009

It would seem like a splitting of hairs, but then so much of copyright and trademark law is just that.
Cablevision came up with a system allowing its customers to record TV shows, as they might with a DVR, but store them remotely on a Cablevision server.

TV networks, which are generally opposed to all things DVR, objected and filed a lawsuit, arguing that Cablevision's remote DVR storage system violated their copyright protection of the shows they produce--and in a way that a TiVo device or similar home DVR device does not.
The networks, including CNN, CBS and Fox Networks Group, along with the Motion Picture Association of America, won the first round in federal court but then lost on appeal, when last August the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the lower court's decision.
Yesterday the networks lost again when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
The effect is to enable Cablevision and other cable systems to broaden their offerings to consumers, allowing them to record and store programs without having to buy a home DVR device.
The networks worry that thus enabled, more and more viewers will use the service with the intent of zipping though ads on the recorded shows as they might with a TiVo device. About a third of homes now have some sort of DVR device.
Cablevision halted the rollout of its remote DVR service three years ago but now plans to introduce a version of it this summer, and presumably other cable systems will follow.
The network's beef with the remote system is that in effect it empowers a third party, the cable operator, to become a distributor of content that belongs to the networks. By contrast, the home DVR-recorded show is clearly for personal use and as such is not for distribution.
In any case, as copyright holders, the networks must be diligent in bringing legal challenges whenever they believe their copyright protection is being challenged, lest they open a floodgate of similar incursions.
And it becomes all the more critical as more and more content goes online or is offered on demand.
But they have a practical aim as well. Their long-term intent is to reach terms with cable systems such as Cablevision to restrict the ease with which users are enabled to skip ads.
What effect all this will have on ad-skipping is hard to say.
Numerous studies have been done on DVR usage and ad-skipping, and a number have concluded it occurs far less often than one might expect.
More to the point though, to skip an ad using a DVR device requires watching the ad as it’s speeded through to know when the program resumes. The effect is that the skipped ad gets more attention than if the viewer simply left the room.

Media Life Magazine - Supremes open way for remote DVRs

Has the Pirate Bay given up piracy? – SciTechBlog - CNN.com Blogs

Has the Pirate Bay given up piracy? – SciTechBlog - CNN.com Blogs 

Has the Pirate Bay given up piracy?

 

The Pirate Bay, a Swedish file-sharing Web site used by millions to exchange movies and music, is reportedly being sold to the Swedish company Global Gaming Factory X AB for nearly $8 million.

 

A blog posted on thepiratebay.org Tuesday morning says rumors of the sale are true:

We’ve been working on this project for many years. It’s time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody… The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets.

The Pirate Bay and its founders have been under legal attack from copyright owners for years. While the Web site does not host copyrighted content, it does host millions of torrent files which enable peer-to-peer file-trading. Many of these torrent files point to copyrighted material.

In April four of the Website’s co-founders were convicted of collaborating to violate copyright law and sentenced to one year in jail as well as ordered to pay $3.6 million in damages to several major media companies.

A press release from Global Gaming Factory suggests, following the sale, the Pirate Bay is done with piracy:

Following the completion of the acquisitions, GGF intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners. The responsibility for, and operation of the site will be taken over by GGF in connection with closing of the transaction, which is scheduled for August 2009.

There are hundreds of competing Websites that offer copyright infringing torrents, but it appears the Pirate Bay, which once claimed a spot on the Web’s top 100, will no longer be among them. The site claims more than 3.5 million registered users.

The news made Pirate Bay one of the top trending topics on Twitter Tuesday morning, with many tweets mourning the sale. “The Pirate Bay walks the plank for new biz model,” said one Twitterer.

Will the sale of the Pirate Bay mean an end to free copyrighted material for all? And can Global Gaming Factory monetize a site that is based on piracy?

Has the Pirate Bay given up piracy? – SciTechBlog - CNN.com Blogs

Music Firm Sues Microsoft, Yahoo, and Real Networks Over Copyright Infringement | paidContent

 Music Firm Sues Microsoft, Yahoo, and Real Networks Over Copyright Infringement | paidContent

Music Firm Sues Microsoft, Yahoo, and Real Networks Over Copyright Infringement

Not your typical targets for a music copyright infringement lawsuit: The big companies that run paid online music subscription services. But MCS Music America, which says it administers almost 45,000 tracks, is suing Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK), basically saying that they left some seemingly big Ts uncrossed when they obtained the rights to offer some songs to their members. From the lawsuit: “In order to transmit, perform, reproduce and deliver any sound recording of any musical work via ‘on-demand streams’ or ‘limited downloads’ defendants must first obtain not only the rights for the sound recording itself but also the rights for the underlying musical composition which is embodied on said sound recording.”

MCS Music America wants the tracks taken down and is also asking for damages—either “actual damages and profits derived by the defendants” or $150,000 for each act of copyright infringement (That could add up since it takes 90 pages for MCS Music America to simply list all the songs that it says have been misappropriated—and MCS Music America says that a separate act of copyright infringement took place each time one of those songs was downloaded or streamed).

TechDirt, which first reported the lawsuit, says it’s an indication of “just how incredibly confusing and impossible copyright law has become” since the three companies obviously did take the time to obtain some rights to the songs. Representatives from Yahoo, Microsoft and RealNetworks had no comment.

Music Firm Sues Microsoft, Yahoo, and Real Networks Over Copyright Infringement | paidContent

RIAA triumphs in Usenet copyright case | Digital Media - CNET News

 RIAA triumphs in Usenet copyright case | Digital Media - CNET News

RIAA triumphs in Usenet copyright case

by Greg Sandoval

Note: See Usenet.com's reaction at "Usenet.com says RIAA 'whittling down' Betamax case."

The Recording Industry Association of America has prevailed in its copyright fight against Usenet.com, according to court documents.

In a decision that hands the RIAA an overwhelming victory, U.S. District Judge Harold Baer of the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of the music industry on all its main theories: that Usenet.com is guilty of direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement. In addition, and perhaps most important for future cases, Baer said that Usenet.com can't claim protection under the Sony Betamax decision. That ruling says companies can't be held liable for contributory infringement if the device they create is "capable of significant non-infringing uses."

Baer noted that in citing the Betamax case, Usenet.com failed to see one important difference between it and Sony. Once Sony sold a Betamax, an early videotape recorder, the company's relationship with the buyer ended. Sony held no sway over what the buyer did with the device after that. Usenet.com, however, maintains an ongoing relationship with the customer and does has some say in how the customer uses the service.

Usenet.com's lawyers could not be reached Tuesday evening.

The two-decade-old Usenet network was one of the early ways to distribute conversations and binary files, long before the Web or peer-to-peer networks existed. Usenet.com is a company that enabled users to access the Usenet network.The RIAA filed suit against Usenet.com in October 2007, accusing the company of encouraging customers to pay up to $19 a month by enticing them with copyrighted music.

The case is highly unusual because of Baer's many findings of discovery misconduct by the Usenet.com side. The rules of discovery in a civil case requires both sides to exchange information. The RIAA produced evidence, however, that Usenet.com destroyed evidence or failed to produce witnesses on multiple occasions.

The RIAA accused Usenet.com of intentionally destroying the contents on seven hard drives that contained employee-generated data; providing false information; and attempting to prevent employees from giving depositions by sending them to Europe.

The judge found the evidence credible but denied the RIAA's motion to hand it a victory based solely on the misconduct. Instead, the judge sanctioned Usenet.com "from asserting (the company's) affirmative defense of protection under the DMCA's safe harbor provision."

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provides refuge to Internet service providers from being held responsible for criminal acts committed by users. Without that and without the Betamax decision, Usenet.com was a sitting duck.

In a brief note posted Tuesday to RIAA.com, the trade group for the music industry said: "We're pleased that the court recognized not just that Usenet.com directly infringed the record companies' copyrights but also took action against the defendants for their egregious litigation misconduct."

RIAA triumphs in Usenet copyright case | Digital Media - CNET News

The Ridiculous Copyright Situation Faced By Academics Who Want To Promote Their Own Research | Techdirt

The Ridiculous Copyright Situation Faced By Academics Who Want To Promote Their Own Research | Techdirt 

The Ridiculous Copyright Situation Faced By Academics Who Want To Promote Their Own Research

from the don't-ask,-don't-tell dept

Ed Kohler points us to a long, but fascinating blog post, by Stuart Shieber, a CS professor at Harvard, discussing the somewhat ridiculous copyright situation that many academics deal with in trying to promote their own works. I've heard similar stories from other professors I know, but this one is worth reading. Shieber points out the importance of academics getting their research published in journals, but how annoying it is that most journals require those academics to give up all sorts of rights -- including the right to distribute their own research on their websites. However, he notes that most published academics simply ignore this rule, and you end up with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Even though they're legally prevented from putting up a PDF of their work on their website, they do so anyway, and journals just look the other way.
Shieber, however, finds this situation to be a bad thing, and instead adds an amendment that at least grants him the right to publish his own research on his own website. It seems pretty ridiculous that this should even be an issue at all. He notes that most journals haven't had a problem with this -- which is surprising, but good to hear. He did run into one publisher, however, who fought him on it, and after lots of back and forth, his paper was pulled. The reasoning that the journal gave didn't make much sense, and Shieber shows how wrong they are (for example, they claim that if professors published the works on their website, demand for journal subscriptions would go down -- but Shieber did a quick look, and found that about 80% of those who published in the same journal had posted the content anyway, and it hadn't killed off the journal, so arguing against him seemed pointless). Eventually, he was able to convince the journal to change its policies and got his paper published, but it delayed publication for a while.
It's really unfortunate that journals still think that locking up such content makes sense. The idea that researchers shouldn't be allowed to share their own research with the world because some journal needs artificial scarcity for its business model is something that needs to be put to rest.

The Ridiculous Copyright Situation Faced By Academics Who Want To Promote Their Own Research | Techdirt

Kurtz on Measuring Effectiveness in the New Scholarly Communications : Christina's LIS Rant

Kurtz on Measuring Effectiveness in the New Scholarly Communications : Christina's LIS Rant 

Kurtz on Measuring Effectiveness in the New Scholarly Communications

Category: Information Scienceinformation retrievalopen access
Posted on: June 27, 2009 5:43 PM, by Christina Pikas

Michael J. Kurtz of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics came to speak at MPOW at a gathering of librarians from across the larger institution (MPOW is a research lab affiliated with a large private institution).  He's an astronomer but more recently he's been publishing in bibliometrics quite a bit using data from the ADS.  You can review his publications using this search.

As an aside, folks outside of astro and planetary sciences might not be familiar with ADS, but it's an excellent and incredibly powerful research database.  Sometimes librarians turn their nose up at it because it's all about being functional and not at all about being pretty, but it essentially rocks (I'm definitely going to have to do a post on freely available research databases besides PubMed).

Kurtz' talk was basically at the speed of light and broken down into two parts: bibliometrics using usage data as compared to citations in astro with ads data and then more on scholarly communication.

I only have hand-written notes so let me just try to capture some of his points in bullets:

  • like Amazon, successful recommender systems use usage data
  • not new, Derek J deSolla Price graphed the obsolescence curve for articles (not cited, then get the most citations, then trails off, eventually flat with few citations after some period of time that depends on the subject)
  • in an article he mapped the usage vs. age. He showed us graphs of 110 years, a few years (?), and then 90 days. (maybe doi: 10.1002/asi.20096 ). This can be modeled using exponentials with 4 different time scales.
  • he showed the different usage - age graphs for traffic coming directly to ADS (presumably mostly professional scientists - this looked just like Price's model and the citation model), for people coming from Google Scholar(they take to be students), and from people coming from google (flat across all years, taken to be random members of the public).
  • astronomers read and cite the same things so you can use usage instead of citations to look at individuals, institutions, countries
  • the MESUR project - gathering usage data from a pile of places. Problem is the quality of the data available - doesn't follow a user through what looked at, what linked to.
  • ADS has a popular items algorithm: put in a search - it matches, people who have read also read, ranks those by # of usages
  • should use citedness for tenure decisions - very unstable at about 7-10 years where as usage data is pretty stable
  • usage is better at measuring journals than citedness. example: medicine - clinicians read a lot more articles but don't write so much (if at all).
  • page rank gets it right, IF gets it wrong (I think this was mapping various things like usage, citation, impact factor... on some big graph...)

So that's the notes I have from the first section - here's the second.

  • ADS has semantic links between scholarly papers, the observations they' are based on, and other sources of data for that astronomical object (this is actually wicked cool)
  • ADS also links to ArXiv and has openurl linking so you can find a copy your institution subscribes to (I had them list our parent institution, but you have to set up your own preferences to turn it on, they don't register IPs with institutions)
  • it's a hodge podge now, but they're working on a virtual observatory that will make this more seamless
  • elsewhere - he mentioned provenance (briefly - I saw more at the IEEE eScience conference) and the value of sharing workflows (like myExperiment) - and VisTrails
  • he ended with an exhortation to support Open Access (this crowd already does - well at least the STEM folks)

I needed about 5 more minutes with each slide, but it was still a great talk.  I'll have to go back and read/re-read his articles after this comps thing is over.  BTW- if you're reading Michael - I'm waving and thanks for coming!

Kurtz on Measuring Effectiveness in the New Scholarly Communications : Christina's LIS Rant

Open Access: What are the economic benefits? « Jurn blog

 Open Access: What are the economic benefits? « Jurn blog

Open Access: What are the economic benefits?

Yet another new report for your holiday deckchair reading. Open Access: What are the economic benefits? A comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark is by John Houghton of the Australian Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, and is published by the Danish Knowledge Exchange….

“Open access or ‘author-pays’ publishing for journal articles (i.e. ‘Gold OA’) might bring net system savings of around [...] EUR 480 million in the UK (at 2007 prices and levels of publishing activity) [...] a repositories and overlay-services model may well produce similar cost savings to open access publishing.”

Open Access: What are the economic benefits? « Jurn blog

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Majors Welcome P2P Win, But $1.92M Award Could Make For Bad PR

 Majors Welcome P2P Win, But $1.92M Award Could Make For Bad PR

Majors Welcome P2P Win, But $1.92M Award Could Make For Bad PR
June 18, 2009 - Legal and Management
By Ben Sheffner
The recording industry secured a resounding victory when a Minnesota jury awarded the four major labels $1.92 million in damages after unanimously finding that Jammie Thomas-Rasset had willfully infringed on their copyrights by downloading and sharing 24 songs on the Kazaa peer-to-peer network.
The mammoth size of the verdict, representing $80,000 per track, may help dissuade more P2P users from illegally downloading music, and for that the labels are happy. "We appreciate the jury's service and that they take this as seriously as we do," RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth said in a statement.
"We are pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable."
But a question arose after the verdict about whether the sheer size of the damages could lead to a backlash against an industry that is already portrayed in some quarters as overreaching.
No one expects that the four major labels, all plaintiffs in the case, will collect the entire amount from Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old Brainerd, Minn., mother of four who testified during the retrial that her ex-boyfriend or sons, then 8 and 10, were most likely responsible for downloading and distributing the songs. Thomas-Rasset lost her previous trial in 2007 and was ordered to pay $222,000, only to achieve a now-pyrrhic victory when the court tossed the verdict because of a faulty jury instruction.
The RIAA's Duckworth indicated after the verdict that the recording industry doesn't intend to collect $1.92 million from Thomas-Rasset. "Since day one, we have been willing to settle this case and we remain willing to do so," she said.
This could help the labels avoid potential political and legal headaches stemming from the large verdict. Even for law-abiding citizens who believe that labels have every right to protect their copyrights, a verdict of almost $2 million could be hard to swallow.
The Copyright Act provides for awards of statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, in the case of willful infringement. A number of copyright scholars on the "copyleft," led by Harvard Law School's Charles Nesson, have argued that such damages awards for personal use of file-sharing networks are excessive. Though no court has yet adopted that theory, the Thomas-Rasset verdict provides a very human face to the argument, which she will likely pursue on appeal if the case isn't settled.
While the recording industry maintains strong support in Congress, with powerful champions including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and his Senate counterpart Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Minneapolis verdict could well lead to a legislative move to reduce the damages awards available against individual infringers like Thomas-Rasset.
Thomas-Rasset's attorney, Kiwi Camara, said he was "very surprised" by the size of the verdict and signaled a willingness to talk about a possible settlement with the labels. But Camara also listed a number of potential issues to appeal should the parties be unable to resolve the case, including a challenge to the labels' ownership of the copyrights at issue based on the argument that they were improperly classified as "works made for hire" in contravention of the Copyright Act of 1976.
Ben Sheffner is a copyright attorney who blogs at copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com. Previously, while employed at 20th Century Fox, he worked on an amicus curiae brief in this case for the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

Majors Welcome P2P Win, But $1.92M Award Could Make For Bad PR

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Royalties measure rocks Congress - Jeanne Cummings - POLITICO.com

Royalties measure rocks Congress - Jeanne Cummings - POLITICO.com 

Royalties measure rocks Congress

By JEANNE CUMMINGS | 6/16/09 4:12 AM EDT
It seems like a chicken-or-egg sort of argument.

Do musicians make more money because radio stations play their songs, or do radio stations make more money because they play the artists’ songs?

That’s part of the conundrum facing lawmakers as they consider the Performance Rights Act, a proposed piece of legislation that would require local radio stations to pay royalties to musicians whose songs are played on their airwaves.

Picking a side in this dispute carries some political risks, given the powerful adversaries.

On the one hand, you have the artists, whose star power and photo op possibilities can instantly bring tears of joy to the eyes of even the most grizzled veterans of the House and Senate.

Artists will.i.am, Sheryl Crow, Dionne Warwick and even Martha Reeves and the Vandellas have attended town hall meetings and appeared on Capitol Hill to pose with politicians and promote the legislation.

On the other hand, you have the radio station owners and talk show giants, whose control over the airwaves can have a knee-rattling, nail-biting effect on even the longest-serving incumbents.

Among them is Eduardo Sotelo, better known as Piolin, a syndicated Latino talk radio host who reaches millions of listeners in 52 markets. Piolin has had two sit-downs with President Barack Obama and is largely credited with driving Hispanic votes to the Democratic ticket last fall. He opposes the proposed royalty payments.

Making matters even harder for lawmakers is that the two sides are starting to play rough.

The coalition representing the artists, including MusicFIRST and the Recording Industry Association of America, filed a complaint last week with the Federal Communications Commission accusing the broadcasting industry of intimidating artists who support the act by threatening to silence their recordings.

In addition, the performers’ advocates assert that radio stations are refusing to air ads that present their view even as the stations run their own commercials misrepresenting it.

The group is urging the FCC to launch an investigation that “should also serve as an appropriate foundation for license renewal determinations.”

Meanwhile, the National Association of Broadcasters and its allies are accusing House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), the House bill’s chief sponsor and a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, of promoting legislation that would run small, minority-owned stations out of business.

The stations are using their inherent grass-roots advantage by urging listeners to press their local House or Senate members to oppose the legislation. When Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) voted against the proposal in the Judiciary Committee, she said it was because of heavy lobbying from Los Angeles station owners.

And the royalty opponents warn that aspiring artists would suffer if the legislation were passed, because radio stations would be less willing to pay untested talents without established fan bases.

“If this comes about, you won’t see very many new artists except on ‘American Idol,’” said Tom Joyner, a nationally syndicated African-American talk radio host. “That’s going to be the only place you can break in new artists. It won’t be the radio.”

Joyner tried to make that case when he met with Conyers on Capitol Hill this spring, but the congressman wasn’t moved.

Royalties measure rocks Congress - Jeanne Cummings - POLITICO.com

Friday, June 12, 2009

Creative Commons Recognition « Open Education News

Creative Commons Recognition « Open Education News 

Creative Commons Recognition

June 9, 2009 · 2 Comments

Glyn Moody points to a survey conducted by UK’s Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) regarding copyright terminology and presentation on government websites. The results found that 75% of the public did not recognize the Creative Commons license logos, nor what they means. The survey had 1350 respondents. From the survey results:

Only those likely to be more familiar with copyright (inferred from their route to the survey) are likely to have a previous understanding of Creative Commons terminology and imagery. One might argue that if these are used moving forward, more people will become more familiar with these, however, the benefits at this stage of shared / added meaning would only really apply to a minority…

Creative Commons Recognition « Open Education News

U.S. Steps Up Inquiry of Google Book Settlement - NYTimes.com

 U.S. Steps Up Inquiry of Google Book Settlement - NYTimes.com

U.S. Presses Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Book Settlement

By MIGUEL HELFT

Published: June 9, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — In a sign that the government has stepped up its antitrust investigation of a class-action settlement between Google and groups representing authors and publishers, the Justice Department has issued formal requests for information to several of the parties involved.

The Justice Department has sent the requests, called civil investigative demands, to various parties, including Google, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and individual publishers, said Michael J. Boni, a partner at Boni & Zack, who represented the Authors Guild in negotiations with Google.

“They are asking for a lot of information,” Mr. Boni said. “It signals that they are serious about the antitrust implications of the settlement.”

The Justice Department began its inquiry into the sweeping $125 million settlement this year after various parties complained that it would give Google exclusive rights to profit from millions of orphan books. Orphans are books still protected by copyrights, but that are out of print and whose authors or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found.

Attorneys general in several states are also investigating the settlement.

The complex settlement agreement, which is subject to review by a federal court, was aimed at resolving a class action filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google. The suit claimed that Google’s practice of scanning copyrighted books from major academic and research libraries for use in its Book Search service violated copyrights.

Under the settlement, announced in October, Google would have the right to display the books online and to profit from them by selling access to individual titles and by selling subscriptions to its entire collection to libraries and other institutions. Revenue would be shared among Google, authors and publishers.

Critics said that the settlement would unfairly grant Google a monopoly over the commercialization of millions of books.

The Justice Department’s requests do not necessarily mean that the government will oppose the settlement. But the department’s investigation could delay any approval of the settlement, antitrust specialists said.

“The government must be a lot further along with this than people thought,” said Gary Reback, a lawyer who wrote a book on antitrust. “Now, there is a big boulder sitting on the judge’s desk. It is hard to see the judge approving this if a government investigation is pending.”

Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who is overseeing the settlement, is to hold a hearing in September.

The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Tuesday that some publishers had received civil investigative demands.

      U.S. Steps Up Inquiry of Google Book Settlement - NYTimes.com

      Suffolk bar may have to back down over copyright suit | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

       Suffolk bar may have to back down over copyright suit | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

      Suffolk bar may have to back down over copyright suit

      Randy White, owner of Randzz Restaurant & Pub in Suffolk, refused to get a license to play copyrighted music in his bar. He was sued for infringement and lost the case. Now, he owes almost $14,000. (Genevieve Ross | The Virginian-Pilot)


      Suffolk bar may have to back down over copyright suit | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com