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

      Hoax academic articles, media meddling, and problems with 'open access' as it exists. | libcom.org

       Hoax academic articles, media meddling, and problems with 'open access' as it exists. | libcom.org

      Hoax academic articles, media meddling, and problems with 'open access' as it exists.

      Submitted by Choccy on Jun 11 2009

      Some recent hoax articles are demonstrating the flaws in the control of information and particularly academic publishing. A recent hoax demonstrates that, so long as you are willing to pay, you can get anything published, even computer generated mumbo-jumbo. And if you can't pay, you either don't publish, or the company owns the product of your labour. Open access isn't as open as it seems.

      Not quite as lol-worthy as the 'Sokal hoax' but certainly a nice effort is the story of a recent hoax paper submitted to, and accepted, by an open-access information science journal. A graduate student at Cornell University submitted a computer-generated nonsensical article to The Open Information Science Journal after getting unsolicited email for the publisher, Bentham Science Publishers. The paper was called 'Deconstructing Access Points'.

      New Scientist covers the story and the paper's author, Philip Davis, details it at his blog. What's apparent from the abstract onwards, is that it's incomprehensible tripe, and the author's institutional affiliation, Center for Research in Applied Phrenology, or CRAP, should have been a dead giveaway - not only because of the acronym, but a discredited 19th century practice of examining head-bumps has nothing to do with anything alluded to in the paper or the academic field in which the journal is situated.

      The paper was accepted, and Davis was asked to pay $800 for it's publication, which he declined - having made his point, he withdrew the paper. The thing is, an earlier attempt at a bogus paper, by the same author and to another Bentham-owned journal, had been rejected, so the acceptance of the paper in question can't merely be attributed to a scam publication simply taking money to publish crap, given they do actually reject some papers.

      There's actually a serious point to be made about how profit motives in research, and in particular, charging for authors to publish academic research means that any old crap will be accepted, as long as people can pay the often hefty author fees. Though many scientists and academics see open-access as a positive development, meaning they can communicate their research with a wider audience, for free, via the internet (rather than through expensive subscription journals), most open-access publication charge hefty fees for authors. The problems with the open-access platform as it exists under a profit-driven model, are apparent when you consider that some of the best known open-access journals, such as PLoS One, charge high author fees ($1250) and do 'light peer-review' (which means examining methodological flaws but not the relevance or importance of papers. Such bulk-publishing, at a price, and with a high-acceptance rate, keeps the businesses afloat (Nature).

      PLoS One was the journal at the centre of the recent media frenzy over the 47mil-year-old 'Ida' fossil primate, found in Messel, Germany.
      While the fossil was universally described as an incredible and remarkably complete find, the methods in which its find was unveiled to the world set a new precedent in the corporate media courting of scientific research. Before the paper had even been published, several TV channels (inc. BBC, and History Channel) had their documentaries lined-up, a book was available pre-order, and science journalists had been forced to sign 'secrecy' contracts just to get a look at the fossil and interview the researchers involved.

      In the original paper, the authors declared 'no competing interests', despite knowing TV companies and book publishers were involved in almost every step of the find. When a skeptical science writer, Carl Zimmer, queried this, the journal was forced to include an addendum with regard to the relative 'interests':
      “The authors wish to declare, for the avoidance of any misunderstanding concerning competing interests, that a production company (Atlantic Productions), several television channels (History Channel, BBC1, ZDF, NRK) and a book publisher (Little Brown and co) were involved in discussions regarding this paper in advance of publication. However, to clarify, none of the authors received any financial benefit from any of these associations and these organizations had no influence over the publication of this paper or the science contained within it. The Natural History museum in Oslo will receive some royalty from sales of the book, but no revenue accrues to any of the scientists. In addition, the Natural History Museum of Oslo purchased the fossil that is examined in this paper, however, this purchase in no way influenced the publication of this paper or the science contained within it, and in no way benefited the individual authors.”

      This of course had no bearing on the quality of the fossil, by all accounts of people who work in the field of paleontology it's an astonishing find, and the unique nature of the Messel Pit means it will provide many more incredibly well-preserved fossils. What did piss scientists off though, was the sheer hype around the find, and the cynical timing of the TV and book industries involvement. The choice of the PLoS One journal, which is certainly a highly regarded and reputable journal, was also deliberately chosen because of its comparatively 'light' review process, as opposed to other high-impact subscription journals, such as Science or Nature. The fossil itself hadn't actually been 'found' by the researchers, it had been sitting in a private collection since the 1980s.

      Another issue some scientists and writers pointed out, that the hype surrounding the 'missing link' Ida was proposed to be, misrepresented the nature of the fossil record, and of evolutionary relationships - it gives the impression of evolution as a linear process, a 'great chain of being', just waiting for that 'missing link' to be filled. Other reports hailed the find as 'teh f1Nal Ev1d3ncE of Ev0Lut1on!1!!!1!', as if it was on shaky ground prior to the find. Carl Zimmer writes again, "If the world goes crazy for a lovely fossil, that’s fine with me. But if that fossil releases some kind of mysterious brain ray that makes people say crazy things and write lazy articles, a serious swarm of flies ends up in my ointment."

      Media hype aside, charging for authorship is common in open-access. If you want your work open and accessible for free to the public, you have to pay for it. You can avoid these fees, by signing away your copyright, and thus control over what you have laboured to produce. I've just had my first foray into the academic publishing game, and it was an eye-opener. Going in wide-eyed, with a first article accepted, and thinking 'yes, this article is interesting and people will want to read it, it should be free and accessible to all, no fancy journal subscriptions!1!!!'. But no, to have this 'open-access' and freely available I would have to pay $3000, which I don't have. So, unable to pay for that, and unlikely to get my department to do so, I signed away control to the publishing company, Springer. Of course, having copyright doesn't interest me, I don't want to 'own' this research, but it raises problems over where authors, the creators of this work, can share and distribute their own work. Authors are not allowed to host a pdf file on their own website, or say, a blog, until 12mths after the date of publication.

      Challenging the 'pay-to-play' ethos of much of the academic publishing world, particularly those that spam potential contributors for their pay-to-publish articles, drove some genius authors to write this piece of work: 'Get me off your fucking mailing list'.

      Outside of open-access, and in the traditional subscription-based journal world, it recently emerged that Elsevier, a big-name academic publisher, has SIX industry-sponsored medical journals, on its roster, all essentially long adverts, in the form of positive journal articles, for drugs owned by the companies that run the journals. Essentially, these are 'fake' journals, claiming to be objective and interested only in the evidence-base of the research contained, but in actuality, controlled directly by pharmaceutical companies.

      Under capitalism we'll never really have a truly open and accessible information and research community. Even the moves toward opening-up access to research findings are as fraught with problems of control and ownership as the traditional subscription-based research publications. Open access isn't as open as I thought.

      Hoax academic articles, media meddling, and problems with 'open access' as it exists. | libcom.org

      Pubget: the search engine for life-science PDFs

      Pubget: the search engine for life-science PDFs

      Pubget solves the problem of full-text document access in life science research. Instead of search results linking to papers, with Pubget's proprietary technology, the search results ARE the papers. Once you find the papers you want, you can save, manage and share them — all online.

      Each year, scientists spend at least a quarter billion minutes searching for biomedical literature online. This is time they could better spend curing disease and building the future. Pubget's mission is to give them (you!) that time back.

      Pubget: the search engine for life-science PDFs

      The Delaware Curmudgeon

       The Delaware Curmudgeon

      "Not really sure if it belogs here but freedom of information and privacy are isues I love to debate -- so ....."  HSM

      Enzyte May Not Make Your Penis Bigger, But the Promoter is Shaking His Dick at the Government

      Remember Smiling Bob and the Enzyte commercials? I really miss them, and am disappointed that the claims were apparently not true. Ah, well. The commercials really cracked me up.
      But the promoter of this impotent product, Stephen Warshak, is in the middle of fighting against a violation of his Fourth Amendment right in Washak v. United States. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed an amicus brief.
      From EFF:

      During its criminal investigation, the Department of Justice illegally ordered defendant Stephen Warshak's email provider to prospectively "preserve" copies of his future emails, which the government later obtained using a subpoena and a non-probable cause court order. The government accomplished this "back door wiretap" by misusing the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which is only supposed to be used for obtaining emails already in storage with a provider.
      In Wednesday's filing, EFF argues that the government's seizure violated federal privacy laws and Warshak's Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy in his email. As a result, the illegally seized emails should have been suppressed by the district court where Warshak was tried. All told, the government acquired over 27,000 emails spanning over six months from Warshak's email provider, all without probable cause.
      "The Justice Department not only violated the Fourth Amendment and federal privacy statutes but its own surveillance manual when it conducted this 'back door wiretap' to intercept six months worth of emails without a warrant," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "Thankfully, this abuse has given the appeals court yet another opportunity to clarify that the Fourth Amendment protects the privacy of email against secret government snooping, even when it's in the hands of an email provider."

      The EFF article cited also has a link to the brief (PDF) which is worth reading. It is also a bit scary. It states that not only did the government not obtain probable cause before seizing Mr. Warshak’s e-mails, it also violated the very provisions of the Stored Communications Act (known as the “wiretap act”).
      You may or may not think that Mr. Warshak is a reputable fellow (unless you tried Enzyte and it worked), but this case is important in defending our expectations or privacy when sending or receiving e-mail, as well as demanding that the government adhere to its own regulations.

      The Delaware Curmudgeon

      Open and Shut?: The world’s first Open Access Mandate?

      Open and Shut?: The world’s first Open Access Mandate? 

      The world’s first Open Access Mandate?

      In the process of writing something about the current state of Open Access (OA) mandates I became intrigued by the mandate introduced at Geneva-based particle physics laboratory CERN.

      Officially, CERN introduced a self-archiving mandate in November 2003. Amongst other things, this requires CERN researchers to “deposit a copy of all their published articles in an open access repository”.

      This suggests that CERN’s mandate came some ten months after the world’s first mandate – introduced in the department of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the UK’s University of Southampton in January 2003.

      When I began enquiring about the genesis of the CERN mandate, however, the picture began to seem less clear. I found it hard, for instance, to establish why CERN had introduced its mandate, and who had been responsible for pushing it through.

      Amongst those I contacted for enlightenment was scholarly publishing consultant Alma Swan, who said her understanding was that there had always been a mandate at CERN. Originally this was an analogue mandate, with researchers expected to provide the library at CERN with print copies of all the papers they published, but that this was subsequently upgraded to a digital mandate (in November 2003).

      Alma kindly emailed the head of the Scientific Information Service at CERN Jens Vigen for clarification. Vigen also found the question intriguing and began digging around in CERN's archives; and today he emailed me a copy of the original memo from CERN's Director General – officially known as CERN/DG/Memo/5, and dated 17th March 1955.

      Vigen commented, “Times have obviously changed since then and I must admit I was smiling quite a lot while reading it. However, the mandate for deposit was, as you see, in place from the very first days of the organisation's life.”

      Images of the two-page memo are attached below, and can be accessed as a PDF file here.

      This still leaves me with a number of questions however:

      1. Is it fair to call the CERN memo an OA mandate given, for instance, that the term OA was only coined in 2001, at the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI)?

      2. Similarly what do we make of the fact that the policy was combined with one on press statements? Could it be that this was not intended to refer to scholarly papers?

      3. If it can be classifed as an OA mandate, is it truly the world's first, or is there another dusty memo out there somewhere predating 17th March 1955?

      4. If it is an OA mandate, why was it introduced at CERN at such an early date?

      5. What was the process by which CERN’s analogue mandate was upgraded to a digital mandate. Specifically, who was responsible, and why was it upgraded?

      All comments and further information gratefully received.

      Open and Shut?: The world’s first Open Access Mandate?

      Reports: DOJ Turns up the Heat on Google's Book Deal - Business Center - PC World

      Reports: DOJ Turns up the Heat on Google's Book Deal - Business Center - PC World 

      Reports: DOJ Turns up the Heat on Google's Book Deal

      Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

      Wednesday, June 10, 2009 8:30 AM PDT

      The U.S. Department of Justice has stepped up its review of a deal that would settle a lawsuit publishers and authors filed against Google over the latter's book search engine, according to published reports.

      The DOJ started looking into the proposed deal in April via preliminary and informal inquiries, but has now turned it up a notch by sending civil investigative demands (CIDs) to parties involved.

      Critics have objected to the proposed deal, announced in October, citing antitrust concerns. Google and the plaintiffs -- the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) -- say those concerns are unwarranted.

      However, it appears that after its initial review of the deal, the DOJ is leaning toward challenging the proposed settlement.

      The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported late Tuesday that the DOJ is now sending CIDs to organizations involved in the deals, a more formal approach than its initial information-gathering efforts.

      "The Justice Department is clearly focused on Google. It's a wide-ranging request for documentation," a New York publishing executive told the Journal.

      A DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment.

      "The Department of Justice and several state attorneys general have contacted us to learn more about the impact of the settlement, and we are happy to answer their questions. It's important to note that this agreement is non-exclusive and if approved by the court, stands to expand access to millions of books in the U.S.," Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said via e-mail.

      Google has maintained that the proposed settlement, which has to be approved by the court, will be beneficial to authors, publishers and readers by making it easier to find, distribute and purchase books, especially those that are out of print.

      Critics have raised several objections, including what they perceive as excessive control by Google over prices and over so-called "orphan works," books that are under copyright but whose owners can't be found, such as when the author has died or the publishing house disappeared.

      For example, Consumer Watchdog has charged that the proposed settlement gives Google special protections against lawsuits over orphan works.

      "The danger of using such works is that a rights holder will emerge after the book has been exploited and demand substantial infringement penalties. The proposed settlement protects Google from such potentially damaging exposure, but provides no protection for others. This effectively is a barrier for competitors to enter the digital book business," Consumer Watchdog said in a statement.

      In the fall of 2005, the Authors Guild and the AAP separately sued Google alleging that Google's wholesale scanning and indexing of in-copyright books without permission amounted to massive copyright violations. Book authors and the Authors Guild filed a class-action lawsuit, while five large publishers filed a separate lawsuit as representatives of the AAP's membership.

      The lawsuits were brought after Google launched a program to scan and index books from the libraries of major universities without always getting permission from the copyright owners of the books.

      Google then made the text of the books searchable on its book search engine, although it argued it was protected by the fair use principle because it only showed snippets of text for in-copyright books it had scanned without permission.

      Last October, the Authors Guild and the AAP hammered out a wide-ranging settlement agreement that calls for Google to pay US$125 million and in exchange gives the search giant rights to display chunks of these in-copyright books, not just snippets.

      In addition, Google will make it possible for people to buy online access to these books. The agreement will also allow institutions to buy subscriptions to books and make them available to their constituents.

      A royalty system will also be set up to compensate authors and publishers for access to their works via the creation of the Registry. Revenue will come from institutional subscriptions, book sales and ad-revenue sharing.

      This Registry, whose board of directors will be made up of an equal number of author and publisher representatives, will also locate and register copyright owners, who in turn have the option to request to be included in or excluded from the project.

      A big portion of Google's $125 million payment will go towards funding the Registry, while the rest will be used to settle existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees.

      Consumer Watchdog also slammed what it calls a "most favored nation" provision in the settlement towards Google, by preventing the Registry from offering better deals to Google competitors interested in offering access to books online.

      Meanwhile, University of California at Berkeley law professor Pamela Samuelson has argued against the settlement, saying it will endanger competition because of its orphan work provisions.

      "The Book Search agreement is not really a settlement of a dispute over whether scanning books to index them is fair use. It is a major restructuring of the book industry's future without meaningful government oversight. The market for digitized orphan books could be competitive, but will not be if this settlement is approved as is," Samuelson wrote.

      The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which will decide whether to approve the settlement, has extended from June to September the period for members of the plaintiff class -- authors, publishers and rights holders in general -- to be notified of the agreement and mull whether to opt out of it.

      Reports: DOJ Turns up the Heat on Google's Book Deal - Business Center - PC World

      Christian Copyright Solutions Releases VIDEOready License for Christian Camps and Youth Ministries

      Christian Copyright Solutions Releases VIDEOready License for Christian Camps and Youth Ministries 

      Christian Copyright Solutions Releases VIDEOready License for Christian Camps and Youth Ministries

      FAIRHOPE, Ala., June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- It's the perfect gift for youth groups and campers -- visual images capturing the colors, sights, sounds and images of their life-changing trips and events. User-friendly technology makes it easy for student and camp leaders to film and produce highlight videos, and mixing the hottest Christian music with images just sweetens the memories. But is it LEGAL?

      Many Christian leaders are unaware it is illegal to "lift" songs from their favorite artists (whether from a CD or MP3 download) to score highlight scenes without prior permission and licensing from owners of the songs and recordings.

      To provide an easy and legal solution for church and camp leaders, Christian Copyright Solutions (CCS) announces the launch of VIDEOready License (http://copyrightsolver.com/VideoReadyLicense.aspx), an internet on-demand license, providing immediate online authorization for hundreds of today's most popular Christian songs.

      In collaboration with major Christian music publishers and record labels, the VIDEOready License features pre-approved licensing for a selection of song tracks (including both song and sound recording) by top Christian artists--like Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, Kari Jobe, Lincoln Brewster, Hillsong and Third Day.

      I know Christian camp staffs and leaders want to do the right thing," explains Susan Fontaine Godwin, CCS CVO/Founder. "They want to model a good example for youths regarding upholding the laws of the land (1 Tim. 5:18). They often don't, however, due to lack of knowledge, confusion or the complexities in getting copyright clearances."

      According to the U.S. Copyright Law, prior permission to reproduce music must be obtained from the owner of the song and the sound recording, which are two separate copyrights and often controlled by at least two different parties. The VIDEOready License now makes legal authorization simple, easy and immediate.

      "Music Services applauds Christian Copyright Solutions for their new program, VIDEOready License," states Don Cason, Music Services Vice President. "This program provides legitimate permission for the use of many popular Christian recordings for uses on camp and event video projects. It's a wonderful turn-key solution to secure the proper licenses for some of the top songs used in these projects. Congratulations, CCS."

      "We try so hard to do the right thing, but it's been so difficult to do that with our videos," says Sarah Augustston of Covenant Harbor Bible Camp. "I am so grateful that God placed this idea in the minds of others, so that all camps may be able to honor the copyright issues."

      CCS (www.copyrightsolver.com) offers online administration, consultation and education services to a client base which includes Saddleback Church, Pine Cove Christian Camps, Willow Creek Church, Bellevue Baptist Church. In addition to the VIDEOready License, CCS features the following services and licenses:

      • PermissionsPlus - online copyright administration digitally manages every detail of permissions/licensing from start to finish.
      • WorshipCast License - legally webcast more than 16 million songs
      • PerformMusic License - one-stop church performance license from ASCAP, BMI & SESAC

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      SOURCE Christian Copyright Solutions

      Christian Copyright Solutions Releases VIDEOready License for Christian Camps and Youth Ministries

      LEAHY Remarks At World Copyright Summit

      LEAHY Remarks At World Copyright Summit 

      LEAHY Remarks At World Copyright Summit

      Jun 10, 2009 (Congressional Documents and Publications/ContentWorks via COMTEX) -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) delivered the following remarks at the World Copyright Summit on Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C.

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      Remarks Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, At The World Copyright Summit "New Frontiers For Creators In The Marketplace" June 10, 2009 As Prepared Thank you. I always appreciate the opportunity to be in such talented company.
      I would like to thank the President of CISAC, Robin Gibb, and the Chairman of the Board, Brett Cottle, for inviting me here today.

      I am an avid fan. I see intellectual property rights as an important way to ensure that inventors and creators have the incentives to produce their work. In my role as a United States Senator, I am also interested in the value of that work in our economy, and the importance of bringing those creations to the public.
      This Conference brings together those who create the movies, music, art, and literature we enjoy, with those who are able to connect creators and consumers. The design of this Conference represents an important recognition that a symbiotic relationship exists among all participants in the copyright system.
      This relationship is also reflected in copyright policy. The art of creating copyright law is in understanding the need to provide strong and sufficient protections for creators, while making sure that their creations can be used, enjoyed, and appreciated.
      Too often, different factions within the copyright community view themselves only as having competing interests. They fail to work together to see what can be achieved through cooperation. I encourage you to use the dialogue you are creating here this week to bridge policy differences. We should work together on copyright legislation that ensures a fair and functioning system in the Information Age.
      Intellectual property is a major driver of the United States economy. I was able to be on a movie set recently and it gave me a firsthand view of the talent and effort that goes into creating such an incredible work. It also demonstrated how many jobs are related to the industry. That last Batman movie included over 65 days of filming in Chicago, and $36 million was poured into the local economy as a result. Seventeen million dollars went to nearly 800 local vendors - that is real money that creates real jobs. Congress must do its part to protect intellectual property, and to foster its growth. That is why legislation to reform our patent system, protect the rights of creators, and enforce our copyright laws must be enacted and supported.
      Preventing the theft of intellectual property - your work - therefore remains a high priority of mine. A few weeks ago, President Obama announced a new cybersecurity initiative. In doing so, the President noted some estimates that online intellectual property theft reached $1 trillion worldwide last year. That is unacceptable.
      As we work to reinvigorate the American and global economies, we simply cannot afford to tolerate theft on this level. You are all creators and legitimate users of intellectual property. The theft of intellectual property hurts all of us, it costs jobs, and it impedes economic growth.
      More than ever, we need a comprehensive and coordinated IP strategy.
      Last year, Congress enacted an intellectual property rights enforcement bill that I was pleased to sponsor. We intend that law to provide the resources and coordination our law enforcement agencies need to combat intellectual property theft here in the Unites States.
      But your businesses and your audiences are increasingly global, and so our governments must also work together on an international approach to protecting intellectual property rights that fosters creativity and facilitates the legitimate distribution of your work to consumers.
      I am working on bipartisan legislation this year, on which all aspects of the recording industry agree, that will harmonize U.S. copyright law in important respects with the rest of the developed world. It will ensure performing artists are compensated when their work is broadcast over the radio.
      Copyright issues are global in large part because we are moving at full speed into the digital world. Consumers are increasingly accessing news and entertainment content online. From watching user generated videos, to episodes of the evening news, there is no question that consumers are taking advantage of the fast-growing digital environment.
      Consumers watch videos over the web on their television sets, on their computers and on personal digital devices. The online world is adaptable, and it does not recognize international boundaries.
      This week, television stations in the United States will cease analog broadcasting and complete the digital transition. Radio stations are also providing high definition digital services today.
      The digital world brings with it the perils of piracy for content owners, but it also opens new business models and new opportunities for creators to reach consumers.
      I have been working on intellectual property policy for many years now. It was 15 years ago that I last addressed the CISAC World Congress about copyright issues.
      A little more than a decade ago, we enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to address emerging issues related to copyright and the Internet. The DMCA was intended to provide a framework for protecting content, while allowing Internet access and online service providers to flourish.
      The legislative process is deliberate, and so the DMCA had to be sufficiently flexible to address issues that would arise in a rapidly innovating world.
      Business models, technology, and Internet usage change faster than Congress can act. Consider that in the time since the DMCA was enacted, the number of homes in the U.S. with Internet access has roughly tripled. When Congress passed the DMCA, Google had yet to be incorporated.
      The relationship between Internet service providers and content owners continues to evolve. New issues that were barely contemplated when we wrote the DMCA a decade ago will surely emerge.
      Your innovation has changed, and will continue to change the digital environment. As the digital world evolves, and the issues you confront as both creators and distributors of content change, I look forward to continuing to hear from you on how the current law is working and how it can be improved.
      I again commend you for bringing together interests on all sides of copyright issues. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be a part of it.
      # # # # #

      LEAHY Remarks At World Copyright Summit

      Film, TV music composers urge copyright law change - Yahoo! News

       Film, TV music composers urge copyright law change - Yahoo! News

      Film, TV music composers urge copyright law change

      Reuters
      • By Sue Zeidler Sue Zeidler Wed Jun 10, 5:29 pm ET

      LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Nathan Barr has scored horror films like "Hostel" and the HBO vampire series "True Blood," but what really keeps the composer up at night is fear he will not get paid for music distributed online.

      "'True Blood' is my first big show for TV and it's definitely going to see a lot of play on the Internet. It's a big issue for me," Barr, 36, told Reuters in an interview. "I don't understand why composers don't get paid if someone downloads it."

      The issue is the latest digital copyright debate pitting creators in the entertainment industry on one side and studios, broadcasters, cable operators and technology companies on the other. Barr underscores how a growing number of artists -- writers, actors and, yes, composers -- feel they are not fairly compensated for content distributed on the Internet.

      Actors and writers have aired their grievances and demanded Hollywood studios pay up. Now, composers, along with publishers, are urging Congress to change copyright law so that when music airs in an audio-visual download, it is considered a public performance that earns them royalties.

      The stakes are high: Industry experts believe composers could potentially earn nearly $100 million in additional royalty payments annually as Internet viewing grows -- if the law was changed to deem downloads of music in audio-visual works as public performances.

      "We see audio visual as a vigorous growth area for composers, whether it's on Hulu, Netflix or iTunes, and a big issue is clarifying public performance rights as they apply to digital downloads," said Richard Conlon of Broadcast Music Inc (BMI), a performing rights group that collects royalties on behalf of artists.

      The copyright issue, apart from being proposed legislation, is also expected to be the subject of a House Judiciary committee hearing in July, industry experts say.

      At the center of the debate is a federal court ruling in April 2007, considered a victory for companies like AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo! Inc YHOO.O> that found that downloading a music file was not considered a "performance."

      AU REVOIR

      Composers are arguably one of most overlooked among the so-called frontline entertainers behind a movie or TV series.

      "Most composers don't get pensions like other people ... and we're now realizing we're not covered for much of the way entertainment is viewed online," Barr protested.

      Performing rights group American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is appealing the 2007 ruling.

      And ASCAP, BMI, and various other publishing and songwriting groups sent a letter in March 2009 to Congress urging a change in the U.S. Copyright Law.

      "It's important these markets get locked down as composers really rely on public performance royalties," Conlon said.

      Meanwhile, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a trade group for Hollywood studios such as General Electric Co's Universal Pictures, Viacom Inc's Paramount and Walt Disney Co, strongly opposes these efforts, arguing that a download is not a performance.

      "The MPAA is opposed to amending the copyright law to require a double payment for music in movies and TV shows downloaded from the Internet," Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA said. "We do not need to amend the Copyright Act to compensate these composers twice for the same activity."

      Veteran entertainment lawyer Jay Cooper said composers collect performance royalties when their music airs on cable, TV, radio and is streamed over the Web.

      "But if a film along with the music in it is incorporated in a DVD, the typical contract between a composer and studio does not grant the composer a royalty or payment for sales of the DVD or for any downloads of the DVD," Cooper said.

      "Composers believe the performance right of a download is not a contractual right but a legal right to which there is great opposition," he said.

      Martinez and others like Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents online services like Apple Inc iTunes and Yahoo, believe composers are being disingenuous.

      "This legislative request is the latest effort by these groups to blur the lines between making a copy and making a public performance in order to get royalties where none are obligated or should be obligated," said Potter.

      (Reporting by Sue Zeidler; Editing by Edwin Chan, Richard Chang)

      Film, TV music composers urge copyright law change - Yahoo! News

      Authorlink.com: News Item Publishers Issue Statement-on Open Access

      Authorlink.com: News Item Publishers Issue Statement-on Open Access 

      Publishers Issue Statement on Open Access

      Washington, DC (AUTHORLINK NEWS, June 9, 2009)-- The Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP/PSP) today expressed its support and endorsement of a joint statement on the open access debate issued by two prestigious international organizations representing publishers and librarians. Designed to bring more light and less heat to the often contentious debate surrounding open access, the statement, entitled “Enhancing the Debate on Open Access,” was issued on May 20 by the International Publishers Association (IPA) and the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). They were joined in releasing the statement by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers.

      Although the debate over open access presents a unique and important opportunity for the international publishing and library communities to explore the use of technology and new business models to meet the challenges of growing scholarly publishing output, the debate has too often been hobbled “by unnecessary polarisations and sweeping generalized statements.” The IPA/IFLA statement attempts to lay out common ground for both communities so that future debate is conducted “in an open-minded way, encouraging experimentation and arguments based on empirical facts...”

      Michael Hays (McGraw-Hill Education), chairman of the AAP/PSP Executive Council, said: “By acknowledging common ground and shared values and agreeing, among other things, that ‘all assumptions surrounding open access and scholarly communications should be open to scientific scrutiny and academic debate,’ this statement represents an important step forward in bringing a civility and rationality to this debate which has too often been absent. We applaud the efforts of IFLA and the IPA, and join in the spirit of open inquiry and mutual respect embodied by the statement.”

      The complete text of the statement can be found at:

      http://www.internationalpublishers.org/images/pdf/IndustryPolicy/IFLAIPA/JointStatements/ifla%20ipa%20statement%20on%20open%20access%20final%2020090505.doc

      About AAP/PSP:

      Members of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers, Inc.(AAP) publish the vast majority of materials used in the U.S. by scholars and professionals in science, medicine, technology, business, law, reference, social science and the humanities and are worldwide disseminators, archivists, and shapers of scientific research via print and electronic means. The Division's 100 plus professional societies, commercial publishers and university presses produce books, journals, computer software, databases and electronic products.

      Authorlink.com: News Item Publishers Issue Statement-on Open Access

      Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog

      Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog 

      Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog

      June 10, 2009

      Next Weblog update on 7/15/09.

      American Archivist 72, no. 1 (2009): Includes "A Brave New World: Archivists and Shareable Descriptive Metadata," "Digital Preservation through Archival Collaboration: The Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences," and other articles.

      Ariadne, no. 59 (2009): Includes "EThOS: From Project to Service," "Publish and Cherish with Non-Proprietary Peer Review Systems," "The REMAP Project: Steps towards a Repository-Enabled Information Environment," "Three Perspectives on the Evolving Infrastructure of Institutional Research Repositories in Europe," and other articles.

      Bailey, Charles W., Jr. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition. Houston: Digital Scholarship, 2009.

      D-Lib Magazine 15, no. 5/6 (2009): Includes "Evaluation of Digital Repository Software at the National Library of Medicine"; "Towards a Repository-Enabled Scholar's Workbench: RepoMMan, REMAP and Hydra"; and other articles.

      The International Information & Library Review 41, no. 1 (2009): Includes "E-Theses and Indian Academia: A Case Study of Nine ETD Digital Libraries and Formulation of Policies for a National Service," "Managing Digital Information Resources in Africa: Preserving the Integrity of Scholarship," and other articles.

      Journal of Archival Organization 7, no. 1/2 (2009): Includes "Choosing a Digital Asset Management System That's Right for You"; "Planting Seeds for a Successful Institutional Repository: Role of the Archivist as Manager, Designer, and Policymaker"; "Why Archivists Should Be Leaders in Scholarly Communication"; and other articles.

      Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries 6, no. 2 (2009): Includes "Better Control of User Web Access of Electronic Resources," "Core Competencies for Electronic Resource Access Services," "Database Coverage and Impact Factor of Open Access Journals in Pharmacy," "A Licensing Survival Guide for Librarians," and other articles.

      Journal of Library Administration 49, no. 4 (2009): Includes "The Future of Academic Publishing: A View From the Top" and other articles.

      Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60, no. 1 (2009): Includes "Author-Choice Open-Access Publishing in the Biological and Medical Literature: A Citation Analysis" and other articles.

      Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60, no. 3 (2009): Includes "Do Open-Access Journals in Library and Information Science Have Any Scholarly Impact? A Bibliometric Study of Selected Open-Access Journals Using Google Scholar" and other articles.

      LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of European Research Libraries 19, no. 1. (2009): Includes "The Jigsaw Puzzle of Digital Preservation—An Overview," "The KB e-Depot: Building and Managing a Safe Place for e-Journals," "Taking Care of Digital Collections and Data: 'Curation' and Organisational Choices for Research Libraries," and other articles.

      Library Review 58, no. 24(2009): Includes "Choosing Between Print or Digital Collection Building in Times of Financial Constraint" and other articles.

      Morris, Sally. Journal Authors' Rights: Perception and Reality. London: Publishing Research Consortium, 2009.

      New Library World 110, no. 5/6 (2009): Includes "Customized Mapping and Metadata Transfer from DSpace to OCLC to Improve ETD Work Flow," "Putting the Public in the Public Domain: The Public Library's Role in the Re-Conceptualization of the Public Domain," and other articles.

      OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives 25, no. 1 (2009): Includes "Bioline International: A Case Study in Open Access and Its Usage for Enhancement of Research Distribution for Scientific Research from Developing Countries," "An Interactive Reading Environment for Online Scholarly Journals: The Open Journal Systems Reading Tools," "Open Access Dissemination Challenges: a Case Study," "Open Access Indicators and Information Society: the Latin American Case," "The Open Access Movement and the Library World Seen from the Experience of the E-LIS Project," "Promoting Open Access in Germany as Illustrated by a Recent Project at the Library of the University of Konstanz," and other articles.

      Research Information (June/July 2009): Includes "Partners in Open Access," "Publishers Relax Author Rights Agreements," and other articles.

      Research Information Network. E-Journals: Their Use, Value and Impact. London: Research Information Network, 2009.

      Research Library Issues, no. 263 (2009): Includes "Achieving the Full Potential of Repository Deposit Policies," "Author-Rights Language in Library Content Licenses," "Digital Scholarly Communication: A Snapshot of Current Trends," "Strategies for Supporting New Genres of Scholarship," and other articles.

      ScieCom Info 5, no. 2 (2009): Includes "A Digitizing Project and Open Access Publishing of an Established National Journal"; "Open Access to Scientific Publications: The Situation in Lithuania"; "Open Minds—An Interview with Rune Nilsen Professor of International Health, The University of Bergen"; and other articles.

      Technical Services Quarterly 26, no. 2 (2009): Includes "The Crisis in Scholarly Communication, Part I: Understanding the Issues and Engaging Your Faculty" and other articles.

      Technical Services Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2009): Includes "The Crisis in Scholarly Communication, Part II: Internal Impacts on the Library, with a Focus on Technical Services" and other articles.

      Webology 6, no. 1, (2009): Includes "Citation Analysis of Library Trends," "Moving from Script to Science 2.0 for Scholarly Communication," and other articles.

      Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog

      Open-Access Publisher Appears to Have Accepted Fake Paper From Bogus Center - Chronicle.com

      Open-Access Publisher Appears to Have Accepted Fake Paper From Bogus Center - Chronicle.com 

      Open-Access Publisher Appears to Have Accepted Fake Paper From Bogus Center

      The medical-research industry is under growing pressure to improve its ethical standards. Similar pressure has extended to peer-reviewed medical journals, after Elsevier, a publishing leader, admitted to publishing at least nine fake journals from 2000 to 2005.

      In other words, it’s an especially bad time for a medical journal to be duped by an author who, say, submits a fake computer-generated research paper from a fake institution he named the Center for Research in Applied Phrenology — or CRAP.

      And yet that’s exactly what appears to have happened.

      The deception was the work of Philip M. Davis, a doctoral student in communication at Cornell University who serves as executive editor of the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s Scholarly Kitchen blog.

      Mr. Davis said he had concocted the plan after receiving numerous “aggressive” unsolicited e-mail messages from Bentham Publishing, which finances its line of 200 open-access scientific journals by charging authors a publication fee.

      Mr. Davis and the blog’s editor in chief, Kent R. Anderson, submitted two research papers that were created by a computer program at MIT called SCIgen that describes itself as generating random text intended to “maximize amusement, rather than coherence.”

      One of the papers was rejected by Bentham, and the other — a nonsensical five-page report with footnotes and graphical charts that purported to describe an Internet process called the “Trifling Thamyn” — was accepted after the publisher said it had been peer-reviewed. Mr. Davis reported that an invoice for $800 had been issued by Bentham, without any evidence that the article was actually peer-reviewed.

      The publications director at Bentham, Mahmood Alam, told The Chronicle by e-mail that, “to the best of our knowledge, we have not published any article from the Center for Research in Applied Phrenology in any of our journals.” Mr. Davis said he had written to Bentham to withdraw the paper after its publication was approved.

      Bentham’s subscription manager, Pradeep Menon, reached by telephone at the company’s headquarters in the United Arab Emirates, said he was aware of the accusation but had no further details and could not offer any other company official to comment.

      “It’s the first of its kind because we never had such an insinuation charged against us,” Mr. Menon said. “All of our journals are peer-reviewed — that is 100 percent sure.”

      Similar scammers have had success in the past, most notably the hoax published in the journal Social Text in 1996 by Alan D. Sokal, a physicist at New York University.

      The “popular conception” that open-access publishers rely on publication fees, meanwhile, may not even be true, according to Stuart M. Shieber, a professor of computer science at Harvard University. Mr. Shieber, in his blog, The Occasional Pamphlet, said he had devised a program to pull data out of computerized medical-journal listings and concluded that only about 23 percent of open-access journals charge publication fees. —Paul Basken

      Open-Access Publisher Appears to Have Accepted Fake Paper From Bogus Center - Chronicle.com

      The Associated Press: First Freedom of Information ombudsman appointed

      The Associated Press: First Freedom of Information ombudsman appointed 

      First Freedom of Information ombudsman appointed

      By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN – 1 day ago

      WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Archives appointed a veteran open government advocate Wednesday to be the first Freedom of Information Act ombudsman, empowered to mediate disputes between people who request data and the agencies that have it.

      Miriam Nisbet, who now heads the information society division of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris, was chosen to direct the Archives' new Office of Government Information Services, acting Archivist Adrienne Thomas announced.

      "While the federal FOIA mediator's office is still a long way from mediating its first FOIA dispute, it took a big step forward today," said Rick Blum, coordinator of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of nine media groups, including The Associated Press. Blum said Nisbet "is a longtime advocate for open government, and this is a promising start for those who want the FOIA to work better."

      Thomas said Nisbet "has dedicated her entire professional life to working for open access to government records."

      Nisbet, who is still in Paris wrapping up her UNESCO duties, said she was excited to be part of "a new approach to make the Freedom of Information Act work better." She is expected to open the new Archives office in September.

      Nisbet's U.N. office supports libraries and archives in developing countries and promotes new communication technologies for education, science and culture. Before joining the U.N. in 2007, she was legislative counsel of the American Library Association. In the mid-1990s, she was special counsel for information policy at the National Archives. And from 1982 to 1994, she was deputy director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy, which decided which department documents could be released under FOIA and the Privacy Act and provided guidance to the entire federal government on how to implement FOIA.

      The FOIA ombudsman's office was created by the OPEN Government Act of 2007. Besides mediating disputes, it is authorized to review how well agency's comply with the act and recommend policy changes to the president and Congress.

      On the Net:

      The Associated Press: First Freedom of Information ombudsman appointed

      French Court Kills Part of Controversial Copyright Law

      French Court Kills Part of Controversial Copyright Law 

      French Court Kills Part of Controversial Copyright Law

      A French court struck down yesterday part of a recently passed anti-piracy law that would have shut off Internet access to those accused of repeated copyright infringement. The Constitutional Council said, in effect, that given the importance of the Internet, a court approval was needed before denying someone web access.

      The court’s decision is a blow to copyright holders, who loved the law and saw its strict measures as a model for cracking down on file sharing. The three strikes law, which passed last month, would have created a new government agency called HADOPI (the Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des droits sur Internet) that would issue notices (at a copyright holder’s behest) to illegal file sharers. Upon receipt of a third notice, the accused would have been disconnected from Internet access for anywhere from two months to a year and blacklisted from signing up with another ISP. The law would also allow ISPs to be ordered to block certain sites, such as The Pirate Bay.

      But the Council put the kibosh on that plan. The New York Times writes:

      The council said the proposal was contrary to French constitutional principles, like the presumption of innocence and freedom of speech. The latter right “implies today, considering the development of the Internet, and its importance for the participation in democratic life and the expression of ideas and opinions, the online public’s freedom to access these communication services.”

      France’s culture minister said that, based on the court’s decision, the law could be taken back to the French Prime Minister for re-tooling.

      French Court Kills Part of Controversial Copyright Law

      Justice Dept. Seeks Details On Google Deal - washingtonpost.com

      Justice Dept. Seeks Details On Google Deal - washingtonpost.com 

      Justice Dept. Seeks Details On Google Deal

      By Brian Womack and James Rowley

      Bloomberg News
      Thursday, June 11, 2009

      The Justice Department has asked Google and publishers for information about the settlement of a book-scanning dispute, signaling that a federal probe is underway.

      Google has received a formal inquiry from the Justice Department, said Adam Kovacevich, a company spokesman. The Authors Guild received a civil investigative demand last week, said Paul Aiken, executive director of the New York-based group, which was part of the settlement.

      Google, which is creating an online book database by scanning millions of titles, reached a $125 million deal with publishers last year to settle copyright issues. The agreement could make Google the main online source for millions of out-of-print books, raising antitrust concerns.

      Hachette Book Group, a publishing company in New York, also received a formal request for information from the Justice Department, said spokeswoman Sophie Cottrell. Gina Talamona, a spokeswoman for DOJ, declined to comment.

      The settlement was designed to end years of hostility between Google and publishers.

      Google, which began scanning books in 2004, uses volumes from Harvard University, the New York Public Library and other sources. The project lets users search books, bringing up pages or excerpts that contain sought-for terms.

      The company was sued in 2005 by the Authors Guild, Pearson's Penguin unit, McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons and Simon & Schuster. They claimed the digitizing process infringed their copyrights.

      Justice Dept. Seeks Details On Google Deal - washingtonpost.com

      Can Scraping Non-Infringing Content Become Copyright Infringement... Because Of How Scrapers Work? | Techdirt

      Can Scraping Non-Infringing Content Become Copyright Infringement... Because Of How Scrapers Work? | Techdirt 

      Can Scraping Non-Infringing Content Become Copyright Infringement... Because Of How Scrapers Work?

      Earlier this year, we couldn't figure out how Facebook's lawsuit against Power.com made any sense. Power.com tried to aggregate various social networking accounts in a single place, so you could manage them all at once through a single interface. Yet Facebook charged the company with all sorts of complaints, including copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act. Power.com asked for the case to be dismissed, but last month the judge sided with Facebook, but did so in a troubling way, by basically suggesting that since Facebook's terms of service prohibited these uses, it made it copyright infringement. Michael Scott points us to lawyer Jeff Neuberger's take on the ruling, and separately Tom O'Toole has a good analysis of the ruling. Neuberger states the following:
      Judge Fogel concluded that the allegations of the complaint made out a sufficient claim of copyright infringement because Power Ventures "need only access and copy one page to commit copyright infringement." The court also found that the ToU prohibited downloading, scraping or distributing content from the Facebook Web site content except that belonging to the user, and that in any event, using automated methods, i.e., "data mining, robots, scraping, or similar data gathering or extraction methods" to access any content were also prohibited by the ToU. Thus, the court found that the allegation that Power Ventures accessed Facebook via automated means constituted made out a claim of direct copyright infringement, while the allegation that Facebook users utilized the Power.com interface to access their own profile pages made out claim of secondary copyright infringement.
      Thus, because the terms of service said you can't do any automated scraping of the site, it's suddenly infringing? Even worse, the court found that even though the data being used by Power.com isn't owned by Facebook (it's the users') the scraping was still copyright infringement, because in order to scrape the non-infringing content, Power.com had to first "scrape" the whole page. O'Toole explains:
      OK, so far the court has found that Power.com made unauthorized copies of the Facebook Web site. What about the fact that Facebook does not own the copyright in its users' profile data? Facebook surmounted this hurdle by arguing that the content of the Facebook page that surrounded the user's data is copyrightable and is owned by Facebook. According to Facebook, the Power.com scraper operated in a manner that required it to copy the entire Web page in order to extract the user's profile data....
      Note that the court is conditioning its ruling on the assertion that the Power Ventures scraper necessarily copied the entire Web page before it processed the page and extracted the profile data. That comports with my (limited) understanding of how a Web scraper works. But is it true? If it were true, couldn't an argument be made that this is a fair use of the page? I'll leave that for better lawyers.
      All of this seems a bit troubling, as it would effectively rule out scraping even non-infringing content, just because the scraper had to first read through copyrighted content to get to the non-infringing stuff. But, that seems to go against the entire purpose of copyright law. The fact that the scraper reads copyrighted content shouldn't mean that it's infringement. It's not doing anything with that content other than using it to find the content it can make use of. Anyway, this ruling probably doesn't mean all that much, since it was just to reject the dismissal request, but it does seem odd that the judge gave so much weight to Facebook's terms of service, and seems to indicate the mere act of scraping can be copyright infringement.

      Can Scraping Non-Infringing Content Become Copyright Infringement... Because Of How Scrapers Work? | Techdirt

      Stolen Picture at Extraordinary Mommy

      Stolen Picture at Extraordinary Mommy 

      Stolen Picture

      May 28th, 2009

      So, this is the price we pay for indulging in social media, I guess.

      I am thrilled to have reconnected with so many friends on Facebook.  One of them sent me this message yesterday:

      Alright, so how’s this for random: I’m in the car, taking my wife for a check up, pass by a new grocery store and notice that they have a picture of you, your husband and two kids on the store front window. Life size. I kid you not. Will take a photo of it later today and send….

      What you don’t know from this message: this college friend lives in the CZECH REPUBLIC.

      Clearly, my family did NOT take a picture for any advertisements - either here or abroad. And, clearly, whoever hijacked the picture assumed no one would recognize us so far away. Hmmmm…wrong. :)

      I’ll admit, there is an element of flattery (I think) to the whole thing.  But still, there is something creepy about knowing our family picture was stolen from one of my sites. This picture has been on my blog, used as a Christmas card and put on a few Ning Networking sites. It is also on my Facebook page (which is one of the reasons Justin recognized us) but my FB page is open only to friends.

      Perplexing.

       

       

       

      According to my friend, Justin, the translation reads:  “We will prepare and deliver your requests in two business days.” 

      Thanks, Justin for letting me know!

      Interesting.  Bizarre. Flattering, I suppose.  But quite creepy.

      This picture was taken by a friend of mine, Gina Kelly.  She does give me the rights to the pictures she has taken - and has authorized me to use them on my site, etc.

      Your thoughts?

      Updated, Saturday, June 6th.  Based on the comments I’m seeing, I feel compelled to clarify a few things. 1) I am the author of this site - Danielle.  Not my husband.  Quite a few comments have been directed to him. 2) I take FULL responsibillity for posting this picture with the incorrect resolution (read: too high).  Clearly, I am not a professional photographer and should have made the resolution smaller and/or watermarked the picture. 3) I used the incorrect term in one of my comments - the photographer did sign a release for me to use the pictures, and certainly, this does not mean I ‘own’ them. 4) While the photographer certainly may sell some of her pictures as stock, she ALWAYS has the subjects sign a model release.  I didn’t sign one for this picture, but would have if she had asked. 5) I posted this story because I think it is INTERESTING - what are the chances a friend who see this ad thousands of miles away? AND because I was SURPRISED it happend. Like many of you commenting, I wasn’t aware pictures could be taken.  If this makes me naive, so be it.  Now I know. And, for the record, I will not stop using pictures of my family on my site - I will however, change the format. 6) I am grateful to the greatest percentage of people who have commented with very interesting thoughts.  However, if you are part of the smaller percentage who are commenting only to say that a member of my family (or all of us) are ugly, I won’t be approving the comment.  I won’t allow it on my site.  I imagine you understand.  Thanks for stopping by!

      Filed under Are you kidding me?, I'm just sayin' |

      Stolen Picture at Extraordinary Mommy

      Open Repositories 2009 trip report « ptsefton

       Open Repositories 2009 trip report « ptsefton

      Open Repositories 2009 trip report

       

      Here’s my summary of my experience of OR09 it Atlanta Georgia USA. Tim McCallum and I came over from USQ and arrived on Friday night after 30 plus hours of traveling, for a Monday start. Tim discovered that if you lose the posters due to severe fatigue then getting them printed out on the Georgia Tech library’s plotter is easy and cheap.

      There were only a few Australians this time. I was surprised that there was nobody to represent/promote Fez or Mudadora, two antipodean repository solutions based on Fedora Commons but I did meet a Muradora user, Juan Rodriguez from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who knows the Muradora team – sounds like it’s alive and well.

      I’ll go through some general impressions of the conference then summarize my direct contribution; moderating a session, giving a couple of papers, presenting a poster, serving as a judge on the Developer Challenge and attending workshops and meetings with Microsoft Research. This is, of course, a personal view. As with any conference I missed stuff while I was working on presentations, plotting, having a jetlag-management nap, looking out the window, or judging the competition etc.

      Overall impressions

      Lots of people I have talked to have remarked on the movement towards modularity, where repositories are not monolithic systems but sets of services. I can’t remember who it was who reminded me of Clifford Lynch’s 2003 definition of a repository as a ’set of services’:

      In my view, a university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution. While operational responsibility for these services may reasonably be situated in different organizational units at different universities, an effective institutional repository of necessity represents a collaboration among librarians, information technologists, archives and records mangers, faculty, and university administrators and policymakers. At any given point in time, an institutional repository will be supported by a set of information technologies, but a key part of the services that comprise an institutional repository is the management of technological changes, and the migration of digital content from one set of technologies to the next as part of the organizational commitment to providing repository services. An institutional repository is not simply a fixed set of software and hardware.

      http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml

      I agree. It’s not a computer program, it’s a lifestyle; what Lynch is calling organizational commitment.

      I think the title of a presentation from John Kunze, Stephen Abrams and Patricia Cruse of the California Digital Library (CDL), Permanent Objects, Disposable Systems summed this up really nicely. I liked the stuff from the CDL and Library of Congress looking at simple ways to describe and move data; the ‘non-repository’ movement. We’ll be looking into BagIt, Pairtree, Dflat, etc, particularly for our work on The Fascinator Desktop where we need tested, safe, documented ways to organize data in way that is as lightweight as possible.

      I had a little moment in the spotlight when keynote speaker John Willbanks referenced my ‘Scholarly HTML‘ idea. This was reported in Twitter thus:

      akosavic Wilbanks at #or09: rename “semantic web” as “scholarly HTML”

      So there you have it, meet the saviour of the semantic web. Move over Sir Tim.

      Actually I wouldn’t go that far – what I am trying to get at with this Scholarly HTML is that the research article – our unit of academic currency should be a web page, not a bit of pretend paper, a PDF. Journals need to be reinvented. Articles should be web pages (yes we need ways to time-stamp and version them). Peer review and editing are both important, but I can think of better ways to get those done than we typically use now. Then there’s the idea of embedding machine readable semantics in the form of statements of fact, links to data etc, not to mention machine readable metadata. More on this soon here on the blog – I think I’ll write a series of papers on this, with appropriate collaborators, in the open then we’ll see if we can get them to count as scholarly literature via peer review. A couple of people told me they’re watching the Scholarly HTML posts so I think I’m onto something with this one.

      Repository sustainability

      I was asked by email before the conference to moderate a session, Strategies for Innovation and Sustainability: Insights from Leaders of Open Source Repository Organizations. Chairing sessions is my least favourite part of conferences, but I said yes. What they didn’t explain was that this was not just paper session, it was a panel session, where the moderator had to do more than just introduce the speakers. On stage with me were the leaders of the three major repository platforms. Michele Kimpton of the DSpace Foundation, Sandy Payette from Fedora Commons, Les Carr of ePrints fame from the University of Southampton and Lee Dirks of Microsoft Research.

      The big news this conference was the recent merger between the DSpace and Fedora Commons organizations to form DuraSpace. That meant that I got to introduce Lee from Microsoft as the new player in the open source world battling a creeping DuraSpace monopoly (Microsoft’s new repository Zentity is likely to be released as OSS). Before I left for the US my partner advised me not to call Microsoft the ‘underdog’ – so I didn’t.

      The three organizations on the panel each had ten minutes or so to talk about how they are set up to sustain their open source software. I don’t think there was much definite there. The DuraSpace crew are still working out a sustainability model, while ePrints remains driven very much by Southampton, but with some cash coming in from selling services. The Zentity repository is too young too need a sustainability model – it needs an adoptability model.

      My question to the panel was basically to ask them to play devil’s advocate and ask them ‘what’s the worst thing that could happen’.

      In the case of the new MS Repository, Zentity Lee was upfront – if there’s no uptake then the product will not be supported. That’s basically the same as with any repository, but this one will be a bit different if it takes off, as it’s what Sandy called ‘open at the edges’ in that it runs only on the Microsoft software stack – what this might mean long term I don’t know, but if your organization decides to move platforms then the repository won’t be going with you.

      The answer from the other two organizations as to what could go horribly wrong, was ‘not too much’ – at least that was my reading of the answer. My summary is that with ePrints, Dspace and Fedora commons there are enough users that if the central organizations crumbled or gave up then someone would invent a new one.

      But I reckon the best thing that repository managers can do is get familiar with the ways you can import and export data while intoning to themselves Permanent Objects, Disposable Systems.

      Papers and posters

      At OR07 the reviewers didn’t think that my proposed presentation about dragging repositories onto Web 2.0 was worth scheduling but we kept working on dragging repositories from Web 0.5 collections of PDF into the twentieth century (stay tuned for the twenty-first). This time, I was able to put all the stuff I did for the conference straight into ePrints. Each item was authored in ICE, in OpenOffice.org, (although I could have used Microsoft Word) with an embedded slide-show. Even my poster had an embedded sideshow, a straight HTML view and PDF.

      First up Jim Downing from Cambridge and I showed off the work we did with our teams on the ICE-TheOREM project. Not only were we able to show a thesis going onto the web in HTML as well as the dreaded PDF, it had granular chapter-level embargo, and we were fully buzzword compliant, with ORE and SWORD built in. And for the first time we made our work available as a ready-to run virtual machine, a few copies of which I handed out. We’ll definitely do more of that, and keep updating our machine with all the software we work with – at the moment it runs ICE, ePrints and The Fascinator, but I’d love to see DSpace and OJS and Moodle on there as well all integrated.

      I gave a presentation on The Fascinator in the Fedora user group stream (great rooms with power at every seat) which was gratifyingly well attended.

      And there was the poster, which I supplemented with a metaphor – a collection of 40mm & 50mm PVC waste pipe and various connectors. David Flanders used it to build a data grid which included a pipe going straight to repository hell a place he has apparently spent a fair bit of time drinking microbrew with too much malt. The idea was to drive the point that we want to make research data plumbing as easy as PCV pipe network engineering. Here I am spruiking the poster with a fistful of PVC.

      At time of writing there are a couple of minor usability issues with the HTML-in-ePrints approach which I’m sure will be fixed soon.

      Open Repositories 2009 trip report « ptsefton