From the monthly archives: September 2008

Power, error and a “cruel historian”

On September 26, 2008 By

There was a short but fascinating article posted on the Association of College and Research Libraries’ blog earlier in the month called “Information is Power — Even When it is Wrong.”  Starting with a truly frightening story about how easily misinformation is spread on the web, librarian Amy Fry discusses some important lessons [...]

Continue Reading →

Open Access Day @ Duke

On September 23, 2008 By

Mark your calendars for world-wide Open Access Day!  October 14, 2008 is being marked as Open Access day by three important organizations in the fight for more openness in scholarship and research — SPARC, the Public Library of Science, and Students for FreeCulture.

The big international event will [...]

Continue Reading →

Rough Week, legislatively

On September 19, 2008 By

The other troubling developments last week involved legislative proposals to amend the copyright law.  It is surprising that Congress should be so interested in copyright right now, what with an election coming up.  Nevertheless, as Public Knowledge phrased it on their website, there was a “perfect storm” of [bad] copyright activity last week.

First [...]

Continue Reading →

Rough Week, judicially

On September 16, 2008 By

This past week has seen at least three developments in copyright law and legislation that all bode badly for higher education and user’s rights.  Each however, need to be seen in context, since none may actually pose the imminent threat that initially appears.  This post will address the case decided during the week, the next [...]

Continue Reading →

Copyright in laws

On September 10, 2008 By

While it could be said that trademark and patent are close cousins to copyright law, there is no such thing as copyright’s in-laws.  The real question is, should there be copyright in laws?

Most people know at least vaguely that government works in the US are not subject to copyright protection.  Of course, nothing is [...]

Continue Reading →

Copyright use case on a Grecian Urn

On September 6, 2008 By

A colleague recently asked my opinion about an interesting question.  Would there be any copyright interest held by a museum that was displaying a classical vase for the first time?  The root of the question was the idea that if the museum was displaying an object that had recently been unearthed (quite literally), it might [...]

Continue Reading →

Copyright FAQ for government works.

On September 3, 2008 By

There is a nice website, just updated in August, that addresses a great many copyright questions as they relate to works created by the U.S. federal government, under contract with the government, or using government funding.  The site is created by CENDI (the Commerce, Energy, NASA, Defense Information Managers Group), and also provides [...]

Continue Reading →