Library Rights Are at Stake in New Supreme Court Copyright Case Article by Marc Parry appeared in: "Chronicle of Higher Education" March 8, 2011, 4:12 pm
Does Congress have the right to restore copyright protection to foreign works that have fallen into the public domain?
That issue is at the heart of a major copyright case that the Supreme Court agreed to hear yesterday. Its resolution could have implications for libraries’ ability to share works online, advocates say.
posted by naight
on Mar 9, 2011 -
27 comments
... the International Music Score Library Project, has trod in the footsteps of Google Books and Project Gutenberg and grown to be one of the largest sources of scores anywhere. It claims to have 85,000 scores, or parts for nearly 35,000 works, with several thousand being added every month. That is a worrisome pace for traditional music publishers, whose bread and butter comes from renting and selling scores in expensive editions backed by the latest scholarship. More than a business threat, the site has raised messy copyright issues and drawn the ire of established publishers. (previously)
posted by Joe Beese
on Feb 22, 2011 -
23 comments
Every January 1 is
Public Domain Day, when new authors enter the public domain. Copyright law is "fiendishly complex", but using the generic "life plus seventy" rule, here are
some of the authors who enter the public domain today.
What could have been entering the public domain today under the pre-1978-era law (Fellowship of the Ring, Dr. Seuss, etc..).. but you can expect further endless extensions of copyright to come. More articles
here,
here.
posted by stbalbach
on Jan 1, 2011 -
115 comments
The Music-Copyright Enforcers “A few years back, we had Penn, Schoen and Berland, Hillary’s pollster guys, do a study. The idea was, go and find out what Americans really think about copyright. Do songwriters deserve to be paid? Absolutely! The numbers were enormously favorable — like, 85 percent. The poll asked, ‘If there was a party that wasn’t compensating songwriters, do you think that would be wrong?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes!’ So then, everything’s fine, right? Wrong. Because when it came time to ask people to part with their shekels, it was like: ‘Eww. You want me to pay?’ ” [more inside]
posted by availablelight
on Aug 9, 2010 -
121 comments
The RIAA paid Holmes Roberts & Owen $9,364,901 in 2008, Jenner & Block more than $7,000,000, and Cravath Swain & Moore $1.25 million, to pursue its "copyright infringement" claims, in order to recover a mere $391,000. ... for a 3 year period, they spent around $64,000,000 in legal and investigative expenses to recover around $1,361,000. (via Slashdot)
posted by Joe Beese
on Jul 14, 2010 -
63 comments
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shut down nine websites in connection with an ongoing crackdown on internet film and TV piracy. The sites seized are Movieslinks.tv, Planetmoviez.com, ZML.com, Thepiratecity.org, Filespump.com, TVShack.net, Now-Movies.com, NinjaThis.net, and NinjaVideo.net. The feds also seized related Paypal accounts and bank accounts as part of the operation. Ninjavideo was the most notorious of the group, and its admin, Phara,
went so far as to record a manifesto in praise of internet piracy.
posted by Pastabagel
on Jul 1, 2010 -
197 comments
Agence France Presse's slap to photographers. The AFP sues a photographer after using his photographs illegally: "On Monday, Agence France Presse filed a complaint in the United States District Court Southern District of New York against Haiti-based photographer Daniel Morel. Agence France Presse claims Morel engaged in an 'antagonistic assertion of rights' after the photographer objected to the use by AFP of images he posted online of the Haitian earthquake of 12 January."
posted by chunking express
on May 3, 2010 -
44 comments
The Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab is an organization dedicated to enriching the public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media. You may know them from such projects as
How to build a fake Google Street View car,
public domain donor stickers,
internet famous class, the
first rap video to end with a download source code link, or their numerous
firefox add-ons (such as
China Channel,
Tourettes Machine, or
Back to the future). FAT members have been hard at work standardizing various open source graffiti-related software packages, including
Graffiti Analysis,
Laser Tag,
Fat Tag Deluxe and
EyeWriter [previously] to be
GML (Graffiti Markup Language) compliant.
Fuck Google.
Fuck Twitter.
FuckFlickr.
Fuck SXSW.
Fuck 3D. FAT Lab is
Kanye shades for the open source movement.
posted by finite
on Mar 13, 2010 -
8 comments
Changes to Orphan Works copyright legislation in the US began to
crumble in 2008 when the NPPA and a grassroots initiative finally gained momentum. Still, the ASMP has a
FAQ outlining their position on the 2008 Orphan Works bill stating that it is inevitable legislation and they should take advantage of a favourable congress to retain as positive a position for photographers as possible.
It seems that new laws are close to coming into effect in the UK government seemingly
nationalising orphan works and in a separate action (same article) banning non-consentual photography making street photography essentially impossible.
[via]
Previously
posted by michswiss
on Feb 25, 2010 -
18 comments
"I am not going to rehearse any arguments pro and anti the “Google settlement.” You decided to deal with the devil, as it were, and have presented your arguments for doing so. I wish I could accept them. I can’t. There are principles involved, above all the whole concept of copyright; and these you have seen fit to abandon to a corporation, on their terms, without a struggle." - Ursula Le Guin
resigns from the Authors Guild over the
Google Book deal. (
Previously)
posted by Artw
on Dec 24, 2009 -
116 comments
