TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics » copyright reform

Europe’s Database Right: A scary concept

Joanna Cabot — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:48:01 +0000

Techdirt has a write-up on something I had never heard of–a special copyright introduced in 1996 which protects the contents of databases, even if all the works they list are public domain. The case Techdirt profiles involves a company which wanted to obtain some government records from the 1700s and 1800s and were told they [...]

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The Suicide of Computer Genius Aaron Swartz: Time for presidential peacemaking in the online copyright wars

David Rothman — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:03:07 +0000

After Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an African-American Harvard professor, was erroneously arrested for breaking and entering, Barack Obama spoke up. The President at first overdid his criticism of the police, but in the end played the meritable role of peacemaker, inviting both Prof. Gates and the arresting policeman to the White House for a “Beer Summit.” In time, Sgt. [...]

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Republican paper on copyright reform lasts less than 24 hours, but there may still be hope

Chris Meadows — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 01:17:52 +0000

Given the state of Republican rhetoric in recent years, I was very surprised to find them endorsing a cause I can actually wholeheartedly support—but they did so this past weekend, for less than 24 hours before they hastily retracted it. I refer to a paper issued by the Republican Study Committee, the caucus for House [...]

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Digital Public Library of America faces uncertainty over functions, copyright

Chris Meadows — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 00:49:35 +0000

On MIT’s Technology Review, Nicholas Carr takes an in-depth look at the creation of the Digital Public Library of America, an attempt at a non-commercial universal electronic library (which I also mentioned last month) that hopes to provide universal access to as much of human knowledge as it can. Carr first looks at Google’s attempt [...]

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New Year’s Day is Public Domain Day

Chris Meadows — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:58:17 +0000

Happy New Year! This is the time of year when we make our New Year’s Resolutions (I think mine will be 1680 x 1050) and look forward to a brighter future. (At least until the world ends on 12/21.) But it’s also observed as Public Domain Day where, in some parts of the world, people [...]

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Colleges Lock Digital Books and Images Away From Scholars

Steven Lyle Jordan — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:13:40 +0000

The Chronicle for Higher Education reports on a major casualty to the copyright and orphan works confusion: Academia. Colleges with incredible treasure-troves of digital material, mostly photographs and recordings, but books as well, are afraid of making those materials available to scholars. Wide online access is curtailed, in part because they contain “orphan works,” whose [...]

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File-sharing case prompts push for copyright reform

Steven Lyle Jordan — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 13:20:06 +0000

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education discusses a recent file-sharing case in which Joel Tenenbaum was convicted of illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs. His original verdict was an award of $67,500 in damages to the music companies… a tenth what the jury voted to award the music companies, and an amount still [...]

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