Currently viewing the category: "Copyright Issues and Legislation"

More on GSU and the publisher response

On May 22, 2012 By

Now that I am back from vacation and have read the GSU ruling and some of the commentary more thoroughly, I wanted to add a few additional comments.  In many cases these may be repetitive of things others have already said; I have not read all the commentary, of course, and some of this writing [...]

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The GSU decision — not an easy road for anyone

On May 12, 2012 By

Overall there is good news for libraries in the decision issued late yesterday in the Georgia State University e-reserves copyright case.  Most of the extreme positions advocated by the plaintiff publishers were rejected, and Judge Evans found copyright infringement in only five excerpts from among the 99 specific reading that had been challenged in the [...]

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A safe harbor, not an anchor

On April 30, 2012 By

Whenever Jonathan Band writes a “Friend of the Court” brief on behalf of the Library Copyright Alliance, it is sure to be worth careful reading.  One not only learns a lot about the particular case from Jonathan’s filings, but also a good deal about the legal and social place of libraries the U.S.

Jonathan’s [...]

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How to solve the Berne Problem, part 1

On April 18, 2012 By

The conference on Orphan Works & Mass Digitization, hosted by the Law School at the University of California, Berkeley last week, was exciting — at least to the 230 copyright geeks like me who attended — and filled with well-researched papers.  The three White Papers that were prepared by the Samuelson Law, Technology [...]

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First sale goes to the Supreme Court, again

On April 16, 2012 By

With the Orphan Works conference taking place last week, there is an awful lot to blog about.  I will address the conference in the next couple of postings (unless there is a GSU decision), but for now I want to look at another round in the John Wiley v. Kirtsaeng case.

Lest we [...]

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Seeking a boundary

On April 10, 2012 By

Is it just me, or do there seem to be a lot of lawsuits filed by publishers in the higher education space recently?  It is increasingly obvious that the disruption caused by the digital environment has led publishers to embrace litigation as a strategy for protecting their business models, and that that strategy cannot be [...]

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Momentum

On March 10, 2012 By

I am leaving later today to fly to Bahrain, where I will be part of an international panel discussing open access at the annual meeting of the Special Libraries Association, Arab Gulf Chapter.  Libraries in the region, as I understand it,  have not yet taken significant steps toward open access to scholarship, but they [...]

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A masterpiece of misdirection

On March 5, 2012 By

On February 28, the Authors Guild filed a memorandum in support of its “motion for partial judgment on the pleadings” in its lawsuit against the Hathi Trust and five of its partner libraries, asking the judge to rule that the activities the AG has complained about – the mass digitization of books and the [...]

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An extraordinary week

On February 29, 2012 By

It has been an extraordinary week for open access advocates, and it is only Wednesday!  For those keeping score, here is a recap of events, along with some commentary.

On Monday, Elsevier issued a press release withdrawing its support for the Research Works Act.  The RWA, of course, was a bill proposed in the [...]

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Debating derivatives

On February 27, 2012 By

During a recent visit to another university, I got into an interesting discussion with students about the difference, if there is one, between derivative works, the exclusive rights in which are reserved to copyright holders, and transformative fair uses.  The latter, of course, are considered “not infringement.”  The class of graphic arts students that attended [...]

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