From the press release: Irwin Law, Canada’s youngest and most innovative law publisher, has signed an agreement with Nubook, the leading developer of eBook reading applications, to distribute its front- and back-lists on tablets. Before the end of the year, Irwin Law’s eBook catalogue will be available in a reading interface designed by the publisher for an optimal user experience. François Guérard, president and CEO of Nubook, said: “We offer publishing houses a new avenue to add value to their books, thanks to digital technology. Nubook’s unique and innovative solution allows publishers...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that the California Reader Privacy Act has been signed into law. The act “will establish privacy protections for book purchases [including e-book purchases] similar to long-established privacy laws for library records.” While the EFF trumpets this as a victory for reader privacy, Death and Taxes Magazine points out that it is still superseded at the federal level by the Patriot Act. Given that elsewhere the EFF reports a US attorney demanded the book purchase records of 24,000 customers from Amazon, this is troubling. It seems doubtful the EFF will have much luck counteracting...

A partially sighted law student at the University of Victoria in British Columbia has filed a complaint against the school and six textbook publishers, reports the Times Colonist, over what he says is a discriminatory procurement system for students who need alternative textbook formats. For students to get an electronic copy of a textbook, they must first purchase the hardcopy and submit their booklist to the university. The university places a request for the alternate-format book to the publisher once the student has given them a booklist for all their courses. It may take up to eight weeks to get the book...

From the press release: Gale, part of Cengage Learning and a leading publisher of research and reference resources for libraries, schools and businesses, today announced new series for three Gale Digital Collections – Slavery and Anti-Slavery, The Making of the Modern World and The Making of Modern Law.   “We are excited to publish additional installments of these important collections,” said Jim Draper, vice president and publisher, Gale. “With these new releases, Gale continues to fulfill its mission to create essential resources for scholars and students in fields of high interest.”   Draper added: “Most of the materials in these new installments have never been digitized before...

An EFF press release trumpets the introduction of a bill in the California state legislature that would require a warrant or court order for access to sensitive reading records of both print and electronic books. The Reader Privacy Act of 2011 (SB 602) is backed by the ACLU and the EFF, and brings book-related privacy matters up to par with existing privacy and free speech safeguards in the state constitution and other state law. As Californians increasingly rely on online services to browse, read, and buy books, it is essential that state law keep pace and...

In a time when the progress of copyright law seems not simply stuck but actually going backward, it’s nice to see at least one country trying to move ahead. Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has announced a six-month review of UK copyright law to try to make it “fit for the Internet age.” In particular, Cameron has an eye on the United States’s doctrine of fair use, which permits limited types of unauthorized use of copyrighted material, which he believes is helpful to allow companies to innovate and produce new kinds of goods and services. At present, the...

From the press release: Springer and T.M.C. Asser Press, a prominent Dutch specialist publisher for international law, have signed an exclusive agreement on their future collaboration. Under the agreement, Springer is to handle the marketing and distribution of T.M.C. Asser Press’s English language book program. Asser will continue to be responsible for its program planning and title development with its authors. The agreement also provides a framework for Springer handling the production of the 35 Asser Press English-language titles annually and its backlist. They will all continue to be branded as T.M.C. Asser Press titles. Marketing...

Copyright is one of the legal theories that tends to come up most often in connection with e-books. The ease of copying digital data, coupled with laws against breaking decryption on that data, have generated a controversy that has been going on for at least twelve years now and shows no signs of stopping. Yet there are quite a few misconceptions about copyright that tend to persist, and it’s time to try to clear some of them up. (Again.) Copyright is a monopoly. By which I don’t mean to say that publishing is a monopoly, though...

This little article by Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing is important news, so I reprint it in full: A UN treaty called the WIPO Copyright Treaty requires countries to pass laws protecting "software locks" (also called DRM or TPM). Countries around the world have adopted the treaty in different ways: in the US, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits all circumvention of software locks, even when they don't protect copyright (for example, it would be illegal to for me to break the DRM on a Kindle to access my own novels, were they sold with Kindle DRM). Brazil has just created the...

Chris Good has an interesting piece in the Atlantic (found via Slashdot) pointing out one of the unforeseen consequences of the digital age on the nominations of judicial appointees such as Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Nominees to the Supreme Court and other high-profile judicial positions must provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with a copy of everything they’ve ever written or said publicly. It used to be that this was a relatively simple and straightforward thing—but thanks to Lexis-Nexis and the Internet, not only is it possible to find a lot more pre-existing media, but there are also...

As I mentioned in a Quick Notes post the other day, Gizmodo lately acquired and posted photos of what turned out to be a prototype of this summer’s coming 4th-generation iPhone. But they did not stop there. Subsequently, Gizmodo actually revealed the identity of the poor schmuck who lost it—an Apple software engineer out on the town celebrating his birthday. Then Gizmodo posted yesterday that they had received a request from the Apple legal department to return the phone, and would be complying (in as smarmy a manner as possible). Gizmodo also explained why Apple couldn’t simply...

Sometimes a Google search can yield unexpected results. For example, a paper entitled "Autonomy and Morality in DRM and Anti-Circumvention Law" (PDF version, Google's HTML version) came up as I was trying to find guidance on a question I will probably write about later today. This paper is written in the rarefied language common to legal and scholarly briefs, full of such words as "utilitarian" and "deontological" that may have you reaching for your dictionary. It boils down to an examination of the morality of legally-enforced digital rights management, rather than the cost-versus-benefits talk that has dominated most DRM discussion. As...