Amazon Fights to Keep Secrets in eBook Trial (Publisher's Weekly) Amazon attorneys last week filed a letter with the court asking that it be allowed to redact sensitive business information about its Kindle e-book program gathered as evidence for the upcoming Apple price-fixing trial. --- CourseSmart Enhances its eTextbook Offerings (Good e-Reader) With some reports showing that the Android platform currently holds about 68% of the market for applications, digital content creators are taking steps to increase their current offerings to meet these customers where their devices are. CourseSmart, a leading provider of digital educational materials and textbooks, has been available on the Android...

From The Huffington Post comes this interesting story about the Kardashian siblings, who are suing their former stepmother, Ellen Pearson, over control of their late father's diary. Pearson has possession of the diary and has been releasing embarrassing snippets of it to the media. What makes the story interesting is that the Kardashians are alleging that the late Robert Kardashian's will bequeathed them not just his physical belongings, but his intellectual property as well. Therefore, they are alleging that Pearson is violating their 'copyright' by releasing the contents to the press. I suspect a case like this will, given the character of the...

eBooks Only Account for 1% of all Published Work in Vietnam (Good e-Reader) Is This Plagiarism? A New Web Extension Can Help Answer That Question (Paid Content) The Copyright Lobotomy (Techdirt) William Shakespeare's Birthday Flowchart (GalleyCat) Kindle Daily Deal: Extended Family by Patrick Kendrick (and 3 others)  ...

The Digital Public Library of America has Arrived (Scholarly Kitchen) Debate Continues Over Enhanced, Interactive eBooks (Good e-Reader) Span Admits New Copyright Law is Designed to Keep it Off US Naughty List (Techdirt) Should Indie Authors Reach Out to Bookstores? (GalleyCat) Kindle Daily Deals: Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard (and 3 others)  ...

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...

By now you've likely heard that the Supreme Court has ruled, in a 6-3 decision, in favor of immigrant scientist Supap Kirtsaeng in Kirtsaeng V. Wiley. In what's being heralded as a win for consumers and libraries, and a loss for publishers, the SCOTUS overturned a previous ruling against Kirtsaeng, who had been buying textbooks printed (legally) abroad—where they cost significantly less than they do in, say, the United States—and then reselling them in the U.S. on eBay and turning a handsome profit in the process. In a statement yesterday, Wiley's President & CEO Stephen M. Smith wrote: "We are disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided...

Canadian Government Creates Snitch Line to Report Librarians who Speak Publicly (Boing Boing) Self-Selling Self- Published Author Jennifer L. Armentrout Signs Six-Figure Deal (Digital Book World) Details on Copyright Register Maria Pallante's Call for Reform (Techdirt) Amazon Now Allows Schools to Buy Apps in Bulk with Whispercast (Good e-Reader) Kindle Daily Deals: Slipping Into Darkness by Peter Blauner (and 3 others)  ...

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,...

Digital products like e-books are licensed—not sold—to a buyer, so they can’t be legally resold, shared, or loaned. (See my article on e-books and the first sale doctrine for more information.) A group called the Owners' Rights Initiative wants to change that. The ORI believes that the owner of a digital book should be allowed to sell it used.  Members of this group include some library trade groups, used resellers of paper books, and eBay. Some readers consider this a good thing, because they can get cash back on books they've read, in the very same way many readers do with paper books. But...

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 could not: "In order to justify an exclusive right to its database, the department of Vienne told the court it had "committed more than €230,000 [about $300,000] to this project and that the digitization of documents archive had taken eight years." This is a scary story for...

Why Some Indie Authors Fail (Rich Adin) Amazon Maps the 50 Greatest Love Stories by State (Good e-Reader) Can Conservatives Break the Copyright Stalemate? (GigaOM) Self-Publishing Stigma: Because Revolution Takes Time (HuffPo) Kindle Daily Deals: Stone Maidens by Lloyd Devereax Richards (and 3 others)  ...

Techdirt is one of many who have picked up this story about a copyright battle that's brewing in a Maryland school district over who owns work done by teachers—and students—during school time. The Prince George district is trying to pass a policy that would give it ownership over all materials that teachers create for use in the classroom—and over all work that students produce as a consequence. There are a number of things which are wrong with this theory. Firstly, as this write-up in The Washington Post points out: "It’s not unusual for a company to hold the rights to an employee’s...