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Copyright gets under your skin

On May 4, 2011 By

I was considering a post about copyright in tattoos even before I read about a recent case.  This blog post raises some interesting questions about who owns the rights in a tattoo, and trying to answer them seemed like an interesting exercise; a chance, at least, to review some basic concepts.

Then I read [...]

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Getting the whole picture

On April 18, 2011 By

There has been a lot of attention paid to YouTube’s announcement of its “Copyright School,” which those accused of infringement will be forced to attend online.  YouTube, of course, is trying to fend off more litigation, but that should not be an excuse for misrepresenting copyright law, as the new video that is part [...]

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One ring to rule them all?

On February 23, 2011 By

How much control an author should have once a book leaves her hands is a fundamental question for copyright law.  It arises in lots of contexts, but nowhere more directly than when a different author creates a sequel, a parody, or an homage and the original author objects.

This, of course, was the case with [...]

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Pirate Marketing?

On June 24, 2010 By

Let me start with a confession; I have never seen the TV show Glee.  But lately I have heard a lot about it, from the odd perspective of copyright law.  In this blog post by Christina Mulligan, the copyright consequences of practices that are taken for granted in Glee are tallied up.  Apparently the [...]

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Transformation and teaching

On May 21, 2010 By

On Wednesday the Duke Libraries’ Instruction and Outreach department held a retreat on the topic of “Digital Literacies.”  The excellent keynote speaker for the event was Ellysa Cahoy from Penn State University.  As part of the retreat, I spoke very briefly about copyright issues around the use of digital media.  My comments ended up [...]

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Facing the Future of Social Media

On May 18, 2010 By

By Will Cross

As a scholarly communications librarian I am naturally excited when scholars embrace a promising new method of communication.  As such, I was delighted to see this new study published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Although academia is just scratching the surface of social media use, this study of almost 1,000 [...]

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A lens on the digital challenge

On March 29, 2010 By

On March 19th a fascinating symposium was held in Chapel Hill, NC in honor of Laura (Lolly) Gasaway.  Lolly, for many years Professor &  Law Librarian at UNC Chapel Hill and now Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, is a prolific scholar and has had a tremendous impact on how libraries understand and work with [...]

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The textbook world is getting flat

On December 23, 2009 By

Earlier this month I was able, thanks to the organizing efforts of a colleague, to participate in a phone call with Jeff Shelstad, one of the founders of Flat World Knowledge.  I wrote about Flat World some time ago, but I want to take the opportunity (before it fades in my mind) to describe [...]

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The most dangerous place on the Web

On December 15, 2009 By

The most dangerous place on the Internet may well be inside that little button that says “I Agree.”  The opportunity to bind oneself to a contract almost unconsciously abounds on the Internet, and the immediacy of the Web encourages click-through agreements that are almost never read and, if they are, impossible to understand.

The Electronic [...]

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Architectural overreaching

On November 13, 2009 By

This recent post on the TechDirt blog drew my attention (and that of may others) to an earlier note on the Freakonomics blog about an artist who pays an annual fee plus a percentage of his earnings to the University of Texas, Austin for the right to paint pictures of famous UT buildings like the [...]

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