Well, it’s that time of decade again. Someone in Congress has finally—or, rather, once again—taken note of how the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions step all over consumer rights and introduced legislation to try to balance the scales. Ars Technica reports that three Democrats and a Republican, including California rep Zoe Lofgren, have introduced the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013. This act would rewrite the anti-circumvention provision to make DRM-breaking illegal only if it’s done in order to “facilitate the infringement of a copyright.” Non-infringing uses, such as ripping DVDs, unlocking cell phones, and so on, would presumably be allowed....

Joe Konrath published a thoughtful piece yesterday on fair use and copyright. I thought he was spot on and made some excellent points. He started by talking about copyright as it applied to authors, not to the industry. Not surprisingly, the publishing industry (print, video and music) all focus on copyright as it applies to them and their needs and wants. Konrath points out that copyright doesn't belong to an industry. It belongs to the creator of the work, and that industries often exist to exploit the artists that the work creates. [caption id="attachment_83294" align="alignright" width="180"] Joe Konrath[/caption] You can agree or disagree...

Remember the Supreme Court case about the Thai exchange student who bulk imported cheap overseas copies of textbooks and resold them in the U.S. (making over $1 million in sales) to finance his doctorate? The judges handed down a decision today. By a six to three majority, they found that the student’s importation and resale was legal under the Fair Use Doctrine. Just because the books were printed overseas did not exempt them from the right of First Sale, which means that people who buy them can resell them as they please. Ars Technica has more details on the decision. Essentially,...

The Google Books lawsuit proceeds apace. paidContent and CNet report that, in Google’s latest filing, the search giant is appealing the court’s decision to certify class action status for the Authors Guild. Google argues that the majority of writers actually approve of its scanning (58% according to a Google-commissioned survey), and that its scanning to provide search capability is a transformative fair use. Google suggests that even if the court rules it is not fair use in general, it will still have to decide on a case by case basis whether each individual book is or not. Is Google...

Ars Technica has a couple of great, in-depth pieces laying out in detail the facts of the matter surrounding the upcoming Supreme Court case concerning a Thai exchange student who imported and resold cheap foreign editions of English-language textbooks to finance his doctorate. Publishers contend he earned $1.2 million in revenues, and essentially set himself up as an unlicensed importer/distributor, damaging the publishers’ market for the books within the United States. The publisher plaintiff is John Wiley & Sons, which has also garnered attention for its recent lawsuits against unauthorized BitTorrent distributors of its books. The article discusses the Costco vs. Omega case, which I covered...

The inimitable Michael Geist has a comprehensive blog post which "pulls together the Supreme Court's own language on how to assess fair dealing." Geist points out that even before the current round of copyright bill attempts, the courts here already had protections for both content creators and for consumers, but insisted that any defense involving 'fair dealing' (what Americans refer to as 'fair use') be decided using a six-part analysis to determine whether the use is really 'fair.' The six-factor analysis includes: The purpose of the dealing The character of the dealing The amount of the dealing The nature of the work Available alternatives to the dealing Effect of the...

Personanondata has a look at a recent legal decision in Canada’s Supreme Court concerning “fair dealing” (what we call “fair use”) as it applied to music and educational material—similar to the recent Georgia University ruling in the US. One particular point the judge made is that it’s unrealistic to expect universities to purchase entire copies of textbooks to provide to students if they only needed a small portion of the entire work. He also suggested that claims of financial harm from professors photocopying textbooks was spurious, and that many other factors could affect publishers’ income to a greater...

Fanfic and other original Internet fiction were some of the very first “e-books”, but ever since copyright owners have started paying more attention to the Internet the relationship with fans has sometimes been a thorny one. Reason TV has a 7.5-minute interview with Rebecca Tushnet, Georgetown University law professor and long-time legal advocate for fanfiction. (She wrote an article for a law journal back in the ‘90s that I believe is one of the first places fanfic was mentioned positively in a legal context.) At the moment, Professor Tushnet is a member of the Organization for Transformative Works, a...

PaidContent has a copy of Google’s motion for summary judgment, and a summary of what it says. Google makes the case that its scanning of all those copyrighted books qualifies as fair use, and cites numerous examples of beneficial outcomes that have come out of the availability of that information to be searched. It also insists that inclusion in the search has been beneficial, not harmful, to sales of the books it has scanned, and even well-known literary agencies like William Morris recognize that. The Authors Guild was expected to file its own motion later today, but I haven’t...

Publishing Perspectives has an interesting look at Japanese jisui company BOOKSCAN and its American subsidiary 1DollarScan, via an interview with CEO Hiroshi Nakano. Jisui companies are the do-it-yourself e-book makers who will, for a fee, take customers’ paper books and scan them into e-books for them. This allows the customers to get rid of the bulky books and replace them with compact electrons—extremely important in space-cramped Japan. Both the Japanese and American companies charge rock bottom prices for scanning, and both have been highly successful—the Japanese branch more so than the American, but both have been doing pretty well....

With a $10,000 research prize as well as thousands of periodicals for reading and study, I've very recently found a great resource for librarians, eReaders and classic pulp fiction fans.  With titles ranging from Collier's Weekly to classic works of pulp such as Argosy, Weird Tales, and even Yank magazine, I've been reading for hours. If this sounds interesting to you, then head on over to unz.org, a site I recently stumbled across when doing some research for my history blog.  Brought online by Ron Unz, who has been a huge fan of Wikipedia, there are thousand of resources to look...

I’m glad I paid extra for the upgrade to unlimited free popcorn refills. Techdirt and Ars Technica are reporting on the continuing saga of Righthaven’s “Schroedinger’s CEO” Steve Gibson and his attempt to hire more lawyers to continue litigating one of the cases the copyright troll infamously lost. The Techdirt piece largely covers Gibson’s tortured arguments that the court-appointed receiver, Lara Pearson, lacks the authority to fire him. The reasoning seems to boil down to a bunch of legalese about the nature of limited liability companies. Gibson insists he does have the right to hire additional lawyers to argue...