From the Queensland University of Technology:
This study focuses on the copyright and related laws of Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States and the impact of those laws on digital preservation of copyrighted works. It also addresses proposals for legislative reform and efforts to develop non-legislative solutions to the challenges that copyright law presents for digital preservation.
From the Times Online:
The rock dinosaurs of the 1960s are in line for a spectacular windfall after the EU announced plans yesterday to extend musicians’ entitlement to retrospective royalties from 50 to 95 years.Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Cliff Richard and Roger Daltrey have all campaigned for what the record industry calls “the Beatles extension”, which will guarantee most artists royalties covering their entire careers.
From the New York Times:
The photograph, in the archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society, showed a group of people having drinks at Whittaker’s Hotel, a long-disappeared way station in Canarsie that once served travelers bound for the Rockaways. It was just what Brian Merlis, who publishes books of historical Brooklyn photographs, wanted.But in April, a few weeks after Mr. Merlis first saw the picture, the historical society, citing copyright concerns, rebuffed his request to use it and a second photograph — for a fee — for use in a forthcoming book on Canarsie, pending further research. Mr. Merlis’s objections became public when he wrote a letter criticizing the decision that was published on June 12 in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. What is the point of archiving old pictures, he argued, if people can’t use them?
But Deborah Schwartz, president of the historical society, in Brooklyn Heights, said Wednesday that the society was only trying to follow the letter of copyright law. The holders of the copyrights for the pictures — one taken around 1895 and the other in the early 20th century — are unknown, she said, and without permission from them or their estates, the photos cannot be reused for a commercial endeavor. Until, that is, they pass into the public domain, which is due to happen for the older picture in 2015, and for the newer as late as 2045.
From Law.com:
Back-to-back rulings by federal appellate courts in Atlanta and New York favoring the National Geographic Society will allow magazine and newspaper publishers to transfer their published archives to computer discs and sell them commercially without infringing on freelance contributors' copyrights.National Geographic won its dual victories after more than a decade of litigation in two federal circuits. The publisher of National Geographic has battled freelance writers and photographers over whether it must pay them additional royalties associated with the sale of "The Complete National Geographic" -- a digital version of the magazine's published archive.
On Monday, Judge Rosemary Barkett, writing the majority opinion for a sharply divided en banc court of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the claims of a freelance Florida photographer whose work has been published in National Geographic.
From The Chronicle of Higher Education:
In a closely watched copyright-infringement lawsuit, Georgia State University fired back this week at its accusers, three academic publishers that say the institution invites students to illegally download and print readings from thousands of works. The university asserts that its online distribution of course material is permitted under copyright law's fair-use exemption.
From the Inside Google Book Search blog:
For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable.How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly corrected the OCR.
Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here.
From the Toronto Star:
Last week's introduction of new copyright legislation ignited a firestorm with thousands of Canadians expressing genuine shock at provisions that opposition MPs argued would create a "police state." As opposition to the copyright bill mounts, the most common question is "why"? . . .. . . While Prentice has responded by citing the need to update Canada's copyright law in order to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization's Internet treaties, the reality may be that those treaties have little to do with Bill C-61.
Instead, the bill dubbed by critics as the Canadian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (after the U.S. version of the law) is the result of an intense public and private campaign waged by the U.S. government to pressure Canada into following its much-criticized digital copyright model.
From the Globe and Mail:
Canadians caught downloading illegal copies of music and movies online could be slapped with a penalty of $500 under new federal legislation to overhaul the Copyright Act of Canada, which was last updated in 1997, four years before the introduction of the iPod.The long-anticipated amendments, which Industry Minister Jim Prentice said are needed to bring Canada up to date with the rest of the digital world, triggered a flurry of heated reactions among consumers, artists and the entertainment industry yesterday. They also raised the question of who will have to play the role of copyright cop on the Internet.
From the European Commission:
An agreement on copyright was signed today by libraries, archives and right holders, in the presence of Commissioner Viviane Reding. The Memorandum of Understanding on orphan works will help cultural institutions to digitise books, films and music whose authors are unknown, making them available to the public online.
From the Times Higher Education:
The zombies wander the land; the lone survivor tries desperately to find support and resources. This might describe any number of films, but it also acts as a metaphor for the contemporary editor or biographer dealing with the undead of literary estates. The creative artist is long deceased, and what lives on is the administration of the literary estate, mechanistic in its movements and predatory in its actions. The literary estate uses the letter of copyright to disadvantage the scholarly work of editors and biographers in ways that the spirit of copyright does not justify.
John Wilkin's blog at the University of Michigan:
At Michigan we're engaged in an activity that I hope will one day seem ordinary and a routine part of library work. Resources from several departments are devoted to determining the copyright status of works typically presumed to be in copyright. For now, we're focusing on US monographic imprints (books, that is) published between 1923 and 1963, but plan to turn our attention to non-US publications in the future.
From InfoWorld:
A group of Belgian newspaper publishers wants Google to pay up to €49.2 million ($77.5 million) in damages for violating copyright law by publishing their articles on Google News and caching their Web pages.
From PublicKnowledge.org:
I never like to disagree with my friends in public; particularly friends like Larry Lessig, who I greatly admire and who, through his 24-7 work as the first populist copyright reformer, made the existence of organizations like Public Knowledge possible.But it would be irresponsible of me not to respond to his op-ed on the pending orphan works legislation that appeared in today’s New York Times.
From the New York Times:
Congress is considering a major reform of copyright law intended to solve the problem of “orphan works” — those works whose owner cannot be found. This “reform” would be an amazingly onerous and inefficient change, which would unfairly and unnecessarily burden copyright holders with little return to the public.
From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Laura N. Gasaway, associate dean for academic affairs and a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law, says that a lawsuit recently filed against Georgia State University regarding electronic reserves could have implications for how colleges distribute course material online. The suit, brought by three publishers — Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and SAGE Publications — alleges that Georgia State professors infringed publishers’ copyrights by “inviting students” to download, view, and print material from thousands of copyrighted works. Ms. Gasaway’s remarks assume the details of Georgia State’s practices, as described in the complaint, are accurate.
From the Electronic Frontier Froundation:
Orphan works legislation has returned to Congress, and the controversy surrounding the bill is just as heated as it was the last time around, in 2006. While a broad coalition of libraries, museums, independent filmmakers, public interest groups, and commercial arts organizations such as the RIAA and the MPAA back the bill, several prominent visual artists’ organizations have been rallying their members in opposition.
From the Ottawa Citizen:
Concerns are growing over whether [Canada's much-anticipated copyright law] will be good for consumers as representatives of the U.S. government and the entertainment industry met last night with a group of MPs studying intellectual property to talk about cracking down on copyright infringements.Caucus members are also planning a trip to Washington before the new law is introduced to meet with congressional leaders and other groups working on copyright and piracy issues.
From SLA:
If you have a representative serving on the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, please contact them in support of Orphan Works legislation, but in opposition to the "dark archive" that is proposed in the House version of H.R. 5889. The requirement of the dark archive would overly burden users, while at the same time be of little benefit to owners. The dark archive would require users to file a notice of use with a government agency, significantly increasing the cost of compliance. As we discuss below in greater detail, the requirement of such a filing will dramatically limit the usefulness of the legislation.
From Public Knowledge:
Public Knowledge, the Internet Archive, Association of Public Television Stations and the Association of Research Libraries joined today to praise the work of Senate and House legislators for introducing legislation that would allow for greater use of “orphan works.”. . .. . . While there are differences between the bills, the two pieces of legislation generally follow the Copyright Office recommendation that if a user conducts a reasonably diligent search, they are generally free from high copyright infringement damages; if an owner surfaces, they are compensated for the use of their work. The bills also promote creation of industry guidelines for conducting searches to find owners and encourage use of technology through online databases and visual recognition methods.
The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (HR 5889 and S 2913) "attempts to create a system where new creators can use old works without fear of massive lawsuits, provided that a good faith effort has been made to find out if the work in question is copyrighted."
From NPR's All Things Considered:
Technology has made it possible to make books accessible to anyone, anywhere. But in the effort to digitize the world's books, there's a fight brewing over who should control tomorrow's virtual libraries, and how open they should be. Some libraries are choosing to pay to digitize their collections rather than accept offers from Google and Microsoft to do it for free.
From Stuff.co.nz:
A bill that brings copyright laws into the digital age was passed by Parliament yesterday.The Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill changes the Copyright Act 1994 to clarify its application in the digital environment and to take account of international developments.
It does not change the balance between protection and access to copyright material, but makes sure the balance can continue to operate when new technologies are involved.
From Information World Review:
A British Library (BL) survey published this morning found that 93% of UK researchers believed, “access to online research material should be the same as for books”. The BL said this means that “those involved in non-commercial research should be allowed to copy parts of electronically published works such as online articles, news broadcasts, film, or sound recordings.The survey forms part of the British Library’s official response to UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) consultation on copyright. The scheme was launched earlier in the year following a year-long examination of copyright and Intellectual Property law in the UK by Andrew Gowers.
Section 108 Final Report:
The Study Group’s recommendations, conclusions, and other outcomes of its discussions are described in this Report in three separate sections:• “Recommendations for Legislative Change” addresses issues for which the Study Group agreed a legislative solution is appropriate and agreed on recommendations for legislative change. These recommendations often are subject to the resolution of related outstanding issues, discussed in detail in the body of the Report.
• “Conclusions on Other Issues” addresses issues on which the Study Group had substantive discussions, and agreed a legislative solution might be appropriate, but for which it has no specific recommendations on the major issues.
• “Additional Issues” addresses additional important issues that the Study Group discussed.
Read the full report of the Section 108 Study Group [PDF, 2.5 MB]
Read the Executive Summary [PDF, 1 MB]
From Public Knowledge:
PK and a group of film makers told the House Judiciary Committee last week what we would like to see as key elements of orphan works legislation. The testimony was submitted by PK and the following group of independent film maker organizations: Doculink, Film Independent, International Documentary Association, Independent Feature Project, National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, and Tribeca Film Institute, for the record for the March 13 House Judiciary hearing.
From Infopeople:
Libraries are making innovative use of their local treasures. The Library of Congress is sharing a sampling of its rich collection on Flickr, as well continuing to make its own American Memory site a must visit. If your library has been digitizing some of its treasures to put online, stop into this webcast for a concrete, understandable approach to understanding the copyright issues critical to your project.Spend an hour of prevention watching this webcast, and minimize the chances of lengthy legal battles in the future. This webcast is recommended for all libraries participating in the Local History Digital Resources Program (LHDRP).
Webcast: March 27, 2008
Time: 12pm-1pm
Speaker: Mary Minow
Infopeople's funding limits attendance at live webcasts & Infopeople Webinars to anyone in the California library community. If you are outside California please do not attend the live event. However, you are welcome to see the archived version the day following the webcast or Infopeople Webinar.
From the EurActiv Network:
The European Parliament urged member states to adopt newly drafted EU rules on copyright protection, introducing harmonised criminal sanctions across Europe for activities ranging from illegal downloading to the sale of counterfeit medicines.
From the Guardian:
When you're dealing with a flooding emergency in the middle of the worst drought for many years, the last thing you need is barriers to the sharing of geographical and meteorological information.Yet that's the situation faced by Australia. The authorities' response is to consider the widespread adoption of Creative Commons licences for public-sector information.
Last month, the government of Queensland approved the use of Creative Commons, which allows free re-use of copyright material subject to certain conditions, as part of a new licensing framework. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth (federal) government is expected to give the green light to creative commons in a new set of guidelines for the management of the government's intellectual property.
From Billboard.biz:
The European Union's internal market commissioner has given his unequivocal support to industry demands for an extension for the term of copyright on sound recordings.Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said today he intends to propose an extension of the current 50-year term of protection to 95 years, a move intended to preserve the livelihoods of performers.
From the Canadian Broadcasting Centre:
A who's who of powerful companies and business associations have banded together to push for less restrictive copyright reform, driving a stake into the heart of the federal government's argument for its new copyright bill.The Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright, a group that includes Google, Yahoo, Rogers, Telus, the Canadian Alliance of Broadcasters and the Retail Council of Canada, among others, on Tuesday sent its stance on seven key copyright principles to Industry Minister Jim Prentice, Canadian Heritage Minister Josée Verner and several other cabinet ministers.
According to the document obtained by CBCNews.ca, the coalition wants any new copyright legislation to include measures that enshrine the rights of consumers to use in different ways the copyrighted material they buy, as well as companies in their daily business practices.
The group also said internet service providers should not be held liable for copyright violations that occur on their networks, and that Canada should put into place measures that prevent the highly punitive lawsuits seen in the United States.
During the week of January 14, 2008, the New York Times Bits blog hosted a debate about copyright issues and technology between Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, and Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School. See the entire debate here.
From Public Knowledge:
In the wake of last month’s roundtable on proposed changes to copyright statutory damages, eight groups representing the public interest and industry submitted a white paper outlining the various reasons why it’s a bad idea to increase statutory damages for infringements of compilations and derivative works.The paper goes into some detail on the legislative history of copyright statutory damages, showing how the current law (which says that there should only be one award of statutory damages per compilation or derivative work) struck a balance between the old 1909 statute and proposals that would have limited all statutory damages to one award per case.
From the BBC:
Scores of writers are refusing to let their works be scanned for an online archive at the National Library of Wales because they are not being paid.A year after a near-£1m project was awarded to digitise modern Welsh writing, a dispute between authors and the library has not been resolved.
Association of American Publishers press release:
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced that three universities—Hofstra, Syracuse and Marquette—have reached agreement with the AAP on new copyright guidelines affirming that educational content delivered to students in digital formats should be treated under the same copyright principles that apply to printed materials.The guidelines, which were developed separately by the three universities, govern how librarians and faculty members distribute copyrighted content through library electronic course reserves systems, course management systems, faculty and departmental web pages and other digital formats.
From Library Journal:
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of Kahle v. Ashcroft, brought by Internet Archive and Open Content Alliance founders Brewster Kahle and Rick Prelinger in 2003, which challenged the constitutionality of the current copyright regime. Although not unexpected, the Supreme Court's refusal comes after a recent ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals raised hopes of a review and lets stand the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' rejection, effectively ending the case.
From the BBC:
Copying music from a CD to a home computer could be made legal under new proposals from the UK government. Millions of people already "rip" discs to their computers and move the files to MP3 players, although the process is technically against copyright law.Intellectual property minister Lord Triesman said the law should be changed so it "keeps up with the times".
From the Center for Social Media:
When college kids make mashups of Hollywood movies, are they violating the law? Not necessarily, according to the latest study on copyright and creativity from the Center and American University’s Washington College of Law.The study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, by Center director Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, co-director of the law school’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, shows that many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos are eligible for fair use consideration. The study points to a wide variety of practices—satire, parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion-triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving and of course, pastiche or collage (remixes and mashups)—all of which could be legal in some circumstances.
From ABC News:
Egypt is expected to pass a law requiring payment of royalties whenever its ancient monuments - from the pyramids to the Sphinx - are reproduced.The law could pose a problem for Egyptian-themed resorts in places like Las Vegas and Tokyo.
Dr Zahi Hawass, the charismatic and controversial head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, says the move is necessary to pay for the upkeep of the country's thousands of pharaonic sites.He says the new law will "completely prohibit the duplication of historic Egyptian monuments" in cases in which the Supreme Council of Antiquities considers the reproductions to be "100 per cent copies".
From the Korean Times:
The copyright period for royalty payments will be extended to 70 years from the current 50 years after the original copyright holder dies, as a step to meet the requirements of the ``provisional'' free trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and the United States.At a Cabinet meeting President Roh Moo-hyun chaired Tuesday, the government passed this and other revisions on copyright protection.
Under the revision book publishers and entertainment-related businesses will be required to pay royalties 20 years longer than is currently required.
From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:
A controversial bill that seeks to reform Canadian copyright laws will not be introduced this week, federal officials confirmed on Thursday.A spokesperson for Minister of Industry Jim Prentice said he would not be introducing the bill either Thursday or Friday. The House of Commons goes into recess for the holidays at the end of this week, meaning the bill could not be introduced until late January at the earliest.
From The Globe & Mail:
As sales of CDs continue to plummet and music downloading continues to increase, record companies and artists alike are trying to think of ways to change the traditional business models of the music industry. Radiohead and other bands are giving their music away, Universal is bundling songs with Nokia cellphones, and Prince is suing everyone he can get his hands on. In the U.S., litigation by the record industry is the dominant response to downloading, while Canada has the "private copying levy," which adds a fee to the cost of blank CDs, and uses the money to compensate artists.A group of Canadian artists want to take that latter idea and extend it even further: In an open letter to the federal government, the artists behind the Songwriters Association of Canada say that instead of just a fee on blank CDs, they would like the government to impose a $5-per-month levy on all Internet access in the country, with that revenue going to musicians whose music is being illegally downloaded. The letter appears on the SAC website.
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Online video-hosting services like YouTube have ushered in a new era of free expression online, as well as vigorous copyright enforcement efforts. Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of leading public interest groups issued a "Fair Use Principles" document that sets out six concrete guidelines designed to minimize the collateral damage that copyright enforcement efforts may inflict on video creators who are "remixing" copyrighted material into new video creations.
From the Toronto Star:
Michael Geist discusses the complexities of international copyright law and the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP).
From the New York Times' political blog The Caucus:
Fox News Channel confirms that it has ordered the campaign of Senator John McCain to cancel its new ad featuring a clip of him at last Sunday’s debate, which was sponsored by Fox News. The news network prohibits candidates from using debate clips in their political advertisements.The spot uses a debate clip liberally, highlighting Mr. McCain’s dig at Senator Hillary Clinton for pushing a $1 million earmark for a museum commemorating Woodstock and his quip that he was “tied up” during the concert – that is, tied in up North Vietnam as a prisoner of war.
From the Mercury News:
A coalition of major media and Internet companies Thursday issued a set of guidelines for handling copyright-protected videos on large user-generated sites such as MySpace.Conspicuously absent was Google Inc., whose YouTube Web site this week rolled out its own technology to filter copyrighted videos once they've been posted.
Media companies Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc., CBS Corp., NBC Universal and News Corp. joined Internet companies Microsoft Corp., MySpace, Veoh Networks and Dailymotion to issue the guidelines, which would require sites to use filtering technology to block copyrighted clips from being posted without permission.
The incentive for the coalition's Web sites and others to comply is the media companies' promise not to sue if any copyrighted material sneaks past their best efforts to block it.
From Heise Online:
Canadian International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) has gone off-line following a cease and desist warning by music and theatre publisher Universal Edition. The IMSLP is an online library for music scores which are no longer protected by copyright and uses the Wiki principle. Universal Edition, however, warned that IMSLP was also offering copyrighted scores. The owner of IMSLP writes on his home page that the music publisher had not asked him to take the project off-line. He says, however, that it would take considerable effort and funds to comply with Universal Edition's demands and that, since he has neither of those, the online library was no longer available.The cease and desist warning (pdf file) of October 5th, 2007 claims that Universal Edition owns the copyright for the works of composers like Béla Bartók, Alban Berg and Gustav Mahler. In Canada, copyrights expire 50 years after the author's death - in Europe, however, it is 70 years. The IMSLP was given until October 19th to install a filter system which prevents users from uploading copyrighted material. Failure to comply would result in personal liability of the project owner.
From the New York Times:
Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.
From the National Journal:
Internet watchdog Carl Malamud and a handful of other high-tech watchers wrote to Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters this week asking her to provide bulk access to the copyright catalog of monographs, documents, and serials on the Internet.Currently, the information is available through a Copyright Office online application that allows the public to search for individual records -- but no bulk access is available, meaning that the entire database cannot be downloaded.
From CNN:
The Assoc