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Open Access Legal Scholarship – Paul L. Boley Law Library

Joe Miller from Lewis & Clark law school has a very informative page about open access.

Scrivener’s Error – Hasn’t Anyone Ever Heard of First Sale?

Scrivener’s Error has some strong criticism for the bill as written, views the bill as an attempt to undermine the first-sale doctrine, and notes several other problems. I was not aware that the bill was a stealth bill, heading to the Committee on Energy and Commerce rather than the Committee on Judiciary, the typical home of copyright legislation. The blog author also recognizes that the bill seems to contradict the Audio Home Recording Act in several ways, particularly the prohibition on certain infringement actions.

The first sale doctrine implications are troubling, and I’m glad he pointed them out. For those of you unfamiliar with the first sale doctrine, that is the portion of copyright law that allows activities like selling, giving away, burning, etc. legitimately acquired copies of materials without infringing copyright. It also allows things like DVD rentals, and oh, say, libraries lending books. It is an important part of copyright law.

There have been several challenges to the first sale doctrine when dealing with digital materials. The U.S. Copyright Office generally tends not to discount first sale applying to digital objects, although this is a debated subject. I’ll write more about this at another time, but the different views usually break down from “digital objects should be treated the same as physical objects” to “transferring digital objects is infringement because you always make a copy when you try to transfer,” with various arguments in-between. Some libraries do attempt to lend digital materials, with varying degrees of success (note that in the linked example, they are actually lending a physical object). Of course, companies generally attempt to direct the usage of digital copies by DRM and complex licensing, which attempts to take first sale out of the picture altogether.

And of course, once again, this is an attempt to use legislation to direct the development of technology in such a way that could potentially harm the public.

From a Boing Boing story noting that the US House of Representatives has introduced a mandatory radio-crippling law.

There are serveral disturbing parts of the proposed law, dubbed the Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act of 2006. The relatively short full text of the bill can be found on Thomas at the Library of Congress.

One of the most problematic portions of the bill would prohibit “unauthorized copying and redistribution” of digital radio. The bill itself has language that MIGHT allow exemptions such as fair use or the myriad other exemptions, but it isn’t clear, and the bill relegates these uses to the “custormary use of broadcast content by consumers.” I find the terms customary use and consumers disingenuous. “Customary use” smacks of the problematic “historical use” that some content publishing industries are advocating as a replacement for fair use. Historic/Customary use is not sufficient to protect the public interest in copyrighted material. “Consumers” completely ignores members of the public who are not necessarily what a market would consider consumers- like, say, instructors teaching in the classroom, for one example.

There, I’ve said it. Shut up already.

Why?

Well, there’s things like this, for instance. In one news post, an “El Dorado” reference (from old-time Superfriends) AND a practical joke from Sony Online Entertainment. This could only be more complete if they posted images of some of the Elemenstor Saga cels they salvaged (although that might have just been a rumor).

http://outofambit.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_outofambit_archive.html#114069083471800451

Very interesting, and I hope the author makes money on this attempt. If this technique is successful, I wonder how much the novelty of the situation will play into the success… I’m interested in the book, but I only found out about it due to the unusual story behind its authoring and publishing. (But c’mon- wizard cats? Where can you go wrong?)

Slashdot | Diebold Whistle-Blower Charged With Felony Access

From Slashdot, a disturbing article involving the person who blew the whistle on Diebold.

NFL Draft Prospect Dreams Big – Deadspin

Last night, my housemate was telling me about this story involving the dreams of UT football player Michael Huff. In a moment of what I can only describe as an extreme disconnection with reality, I was trying to figure out what an iHop was- some new electronic jumping stick of some sort?

RLG DigiNews February 15, 2006, Volume 10, Number 1

A useful chronology of Massachusettes’ efforts to adopt an open standard as a file format. Beyond the access issues that the state was atempting to address, additional justifications included the fact that file format becomes a huge issue in the archiving and preservation of digital objects over the long term as well as problems with digital records retention schedules.

There has been more discusson about Google on Madisonian.net and Sivacracy.

I do believe that there are actions Google could take to improve perceptions about that particular project. Google could be more transparent in it’s classification and standards process, as Madison points out. I believe that would be a positive step. Google and the libraries could also have a contract that would be better than the existing contract.

Regarding the contract, available from the University of Michigan website, I have a couple of problems. First, I think that Michigan should retain the ability to share the digital objects it receives from Google with the public when the material is in the public domain. Also, I believe that Michigan should be able to continue with lawful activities such as Interlibrary Loan.

The Google Book project should be an addition to library activities in serving patrons, not a substitute to those activities. I know of some librarians that are considering passing on digitization efforts because of Google’s digitization. I believe this rationale is a mistake. Google’s Book project will increase the ability to find books, which is a good thing. However, it is not a substitute for library digitization efforts. Libraries add collection efforts, cataloging and classification standards, preservation, public access, and other services. In my opinion, libraries are better stewards of information than Google can be at this point in time, including librarians’ protection of users’ rights.

I find it interesting that the discussion in these areas has moved away from the copyright concerns. ^_^

[Edit: Typos that I didn’t notice until I read the thing on Sivacracy. Sheesh.]

Boing Boing: US copyright head: world “totally rejects” webcasting restrictions

Very interesting article about the controversial “webcasting provision” of the new proposed WIPO broadcasters’ treaty. The treaty would very much broaden strong copyright protection by adding yet another complex layer on top of copyright law- giving webcasters rights that they do not (and should not) have at this point in time. It makes fair uses more difficult for the public, by adding additional liability to people making fair uses of copyrighted work. It would give casters more authority than the copyright holders in many cases, which I would think should be objectionable by copyright holders as well as the public.