Category: Copyright

"The Economics of Book Digitization and the Google Books Litigation"

Hannibal Travis has self-archived "The Economics of Book Digitization and the Google Books Litigation."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This piece explores the digitization and uploading to the Internet of full-text books, book previews in the form of chapters or snippets, and databases that index the contents of book collections. Along the way, it will describe the economics of copyright, the "digital dilemma," and controversies surrounding fair use arguments in the digital environment. It illustrates the deadweight losses from restricting digital libraries, book previews, copyright litigation settlements, and dual-use technologies that enable infringement but also fair use.

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Finding the Public Domain: Copyright Review Management System Toolkit

The University of Michigan Library has released Finding the Public Domain: Copyright Review Management System Toolkit.

Here's an excerpt:

This toolkit is divided into three main parts. It is primarily designed for copyright review of books, but it is also useful for a range of copyright review activities. The first part of the toolkit consists of a series of preplanning documents, one or more of which can be used in early-stage project meetings to build your team and plan your approach when faced with key questions. . . .

The second part of the toolkit dives deeper into the practical considerations facing a copyright review project, including project leadership, the legal fundamentals for copyright review, technical elements, and observations related to project personnel. . . .

The third part of the toolkit includes reports on pilot projects and a series of appendices. Together these form valuable documentation from the [Copyright Review Management System] project.

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"After Copyright Win, GSU Seeks $3.3 Million from Publishers "

Andrew Albanese has published "After Copyright Win, GSU Seeks $3.3 Million from Publishers" in Publishers Weekly.

Here's an excerpt:

After winning a key copyright decision, attorneys for Georgia State University want the publishers who brought the suit to pay more than $3.3 million dollars in fees and costs.

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"The Mystery of Creative Commons Licenses"

De Gruyter Open has released "The Mystery of Creative Commons Licenses" by Witold Kieńć.

Here's an excerpt:

While more than half of open access papers are published under the terms of a liberal Creative Commons Attribution Licence, the majority of authors of open access works seem not to accept the terms of either this or any other Creative Commons license.

Despite the fact that the majority of journals indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals use liberal Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence as a default, and that probably more than half of all articles published in open access serials are published under the terms of this licence, academic authors seem not to support liberal licensing. How is it possible? Are authors of more than 600 thousand CC-BY licensed works invisible in surveys? Or do they publish under the terms of this license against their will?

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"Policy: Google Books: The Final Chapter?"

Walt Crawford has published "Policy: Google Books: The Final Chapter?" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

On Monday, April 18, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Authors Guild appeal of a district court decision finding, once again, that Google Books Search is fair use. . . .

That should be the final chapter in this decade-long epic case, and maybe I should stop right here.

But let's look at a couple of the early commentaries after the denial (two of many), then go back for the usual chronological citations and notes on items since the last coverage of this legal marathon. The question mark in the essay's title? Well, the Authors Litigation Guild (the middle word isn't part of the name, but maybe it should be) seems as incapable of admitting defeat as it apparently is of recognizing that it only represents the interests of a few hundred or few thousand writers. And, of course, there's the enticing if unlikely counter possibility: what if Google asked to recover its legal costs, which must surely be in the millions of dollars?

See also: “Google Case Ends, but Copyright Fight Goes On.”

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"How Large is the ‘Public Domain’?: A Comparative Analysis of Ringer’s 1961 Copyright Renewal Study and HathiTrust CRMS Data"

College & Research Libraries has released an e-print of "How Large is the 'Public Domain'?: A Comparative Analysis of Ringer's 1961 Copyright Renewal Study and HathiTrust CRMS Data" by John P. Wilkin.

Here's an excerpt:

The 1961 Copyright Office study on renewals, authored by Barbara Ringer, has cast an outsized influence on discussions of the U.S. 1923-1963 public domain. As more concrete data emerges from initiatives such as the large-scale determination process in the Copyright Review Management System project, questions are raised about the reliability or meaning of the Ringer data. A closer examination of both the Ringer study and CRMS data demonstrates fundamental misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the Ringer data, as well as possible methodological issues. Estimates of the size of the corpus of public domain books published in the U.S. from 1923-1963 have been inflated by problematic assumptions, and we should be able to correct mistaken conclusions with reasonable effort.

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Developments in the Authors Guild v. Google and Cambridge University Press v. Patton (GSU E-Reserves) Cases

The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal of the Authors Guild v. Google case, leaving in place the 2015 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals 2nd Circuit in favor of Google.

See: "Supreme Court Rejects Google Books Appeal."

Judge Orinda Evans has issued a remand decision in the Cambridge University Press v. Patton case that significantly reduces the number counts that the plaintiffs prevailed on.

See: "Publishers' Loss in GSU Copyright Case Just Got a Little Worse."

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DPLA, Creative Commons, Europeana, and Partners Launch RightsStatements.org

The Digital Public Library of America, the Creative Commons, Europeana, and other partners have launched RightsStatements.org .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In May 2015, the International Rights Statements Working Group released two white papers with our recommendations for establishing standardized rights statements for describing copyright and reuse status of digital cultural heritage materials, and the enabling technical infrastructure for those statements. After working for nearly a year to implement the recommendations of the white papers, the Digital Public Library of America and Europeana are proud to announce the launch of RightsStatements.org.

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"A Spiritual Successor to Aaron Swartz Is Angering Publishers All Over Again"

David Kravets has published "A Spiritual Successor to Aaron Swartz Is Angering Publishers All Over Again" in Ars Technica.

Here's an excerpt:

Meet Alexandra Elbakyan, the developer of Sci-Hub, a Pirate Bay-like site for the science nerd. It's a portal that offers free and searchable access "to most publishers, especially well-known ones."

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Cambridge Press v. Georgia State University: "Here We Go Again: Latest GSU Ruling an Odd Victory for Libraries"

Kevin Smith has published "Here We Go Again: Latest GSU Ruling an Odd Victory for Libraries" in Scholarly Communications @ Duke.

Here's an excerpt:

So this ruling, like each ruling in the case, is clearly a disaster for the plaintiff publishers. Once again it establishes that there is significant space for fair use in higher education, even when that use is not transformative. Nevertheless, it is a difficult victory for libraries, in the sense that the analysis it uses is not one we can replicate; we simply do not have access to the extensive data about revenue, of which Judge Evans makes such complex use.

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"Digital Piracy Debunked: A Short Note on Digital Threats and Intermediary Liability"

The Center for Internet and Society has released "Digital Piracy Debunked: A Short Note on Digital Threats and Intermediary Liability."

Here's an excerpt:

This short paper shows that the "digital threat" discourse is based on shaky grounds. Two related arguments might run against this approach. First, market conditions might incentivise piracy. Additionally, there are raising doubts over the argument that piracy is a threat to creativity, especially in the digital environment.

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Creative Commons Integration, from A to Z

The Creative Commons has released Creative Commons Integration, from A to Z.

Here's an excerpt:

What: This toolkit covers the elements for a basic Creative Commons platform integration, including aligning legal terms to CC tools; installing the CC license chooser; displaying CC licensed content with the correct logos and links; and how to communicate CC to your users.

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"Creative Commons Licenses: Empowering Open Access"

Thomas Margoni and Diane M. Peters have self-archived "Creative Commons Licenses: Empowering Open Access."

Here's an excerpt:

Open access (OA) is a concept that in recent years has acquired popularity and widespread recognition. International statements and scholarly analysis converge on the following main characteristics of open access: free availability on the public Internet, permission for any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, and link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, and use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the Internet itself. The only legal constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

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"Google Asked to Remove 100,000 ‘Pirate Links’ Every Hour"

Ernesto Van der Sar has published "Google Asked to Remove 100,000 'Pirate Links' Every Hour" in TorrentFreak.

Here's an excerpt:

Copyright holders are continuing to increase the number of pirate links they want Google to remove from its search results, which have now reached a record-breaking 100,000 reported URLs per hour. This remarkable milestone is more than double the number of pirated links that were reported around the same time last year.

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White Paper on Remixes, First Sale, and Statutory Damages

The Department Of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force has released White Paper on Remixes, First Sale, and Statutory Damages.

Here's an excerpt:

The U.S. Department of Commerce has played a key role in addressing Internet policy-related issues since it launched the Internet Policy Task Force in April 2010. Two years ago, the Task Force published a Green Paper on Copyright Policy, Creativity and Innovation in the Digital Economy—the most comprehensive assessment of digital copyright policy issued by any Administration since 1995. The review process that culminated in this White Paper serves as a testament to the importance the Administration has placed on the development of updated and balanced copyright law in the digital environment.

Read more about it at "The Commerce Department Has Good Recommendations for Fixing Copyright Law —But More Is Needed."

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"NYPL Shows Academic Libraries What ‘Public Domain’ Means"

Rick Anderson has published "NYPL Shows Academic Libraries What ‘Public Domain’ Means" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

In far too many libraries, public-domain documents and images are treated as if they were under copyright—and, even worse, in many cases the policies in question are written as if the holding libraries were themselves the copyright holders. Sometimes this is because the librarians who control access to those images genuinely don't understand copyright law: they believe that simply digitizing an image results in a copyrightable document (it doesn't), or that owning the physical item gives one legal say over how its intellectual content can be used (also untrue). The result is that in many academic libraries, intellectual content that the public has a right to access, copy, adapt, and generally reuse in any way we wish is being locked down and restricted by—ironically enough—librarians.

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Harvard Launches State Copyright Resource Center

Harvard's Office for Scholarly Communication has launched the State Copyright Resource Center.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The State Copyright Resource Center aims to clarify the ambiguity around the copyright status of state-produced works. . . .

In brief, while the U.S. Copyright Act affirms that works produced by the U.S. federal government are ineligible for copyright protection (17 U.S.C. § 105), this law does not assert the same status for works created by state governments. As a result, many states assert a copyright interest in the surveys, reports, and other documents they produce, and many more lack clear legal guidance on the issue. This resource aims to gather the sources of law in each state to provide assistance to those seeking to make use of state-created works.

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Strategic Plan 2016-2020: Positioning the United States Copyright Office for the Future

The United States Copyright Office has released Strategic Plan 2016-2020: Positioning the United States Copyright Office for the Future.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Register of Copyrights Maria A. Pallante today released the Copyright Office's Strategic Plan, setting forth the Office's performance objectives for the next five years. This release follows a thirty-day comment period, during which the Office solicited feedback from stakeholders and the public on a draft of the plan. The Register is grateful for the comments received by the Office, which are reflected in the final Strategic Plan.

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"Fair Use in the Digital Age: Reflections on the Fair Use Doctrine in Copyright Law"

The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the American University Washington College of Law has released a digital video of Judge Pierre N. Leval's "Fair Use in the Digital Age: Reflections on the Fair Use Doctrine in Copyright Law" lecture.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

At the Fourth Annual Peter A. Jaszi Distinguished Lecture in Intellectual Property, Judge Pierre N. Leval of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will present a lecture on the role of the fair use doctrine within the structure of copyright law. Judge Leval is responsible for introducing the concept of transformative use to United States fair use jurisprudence and will discuss the development of the doctrine to date. He is the author of the court's opinion in Authors Guild Inc., et al. v. Google, Inc. (October 16, 2015) in which the court held that Google's digitization of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses. Judge Leval also authored Toward a Fair Use Standard, 103 HARV. L. REV. 1105 (1990).

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Requirements for the Technical Infrastructure for Standardized International Rights Statements

International Rights Statements Working Group has released Requirements for the Technical Infrastructure for Standardized International Rights Statements.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Over the past fifteen months, representatives from the Europeana and DPLA networks, in partnership with Creative Commons, have been developing a collaborative approach to internationally interoperable rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright status of cultural objects published via the DPLA and Europeana platforms.

The purpose of these rights statements is to provide end users of our platforms with easy to understand information on what they can and cannot do with digital items that they encounter via these platforms. Having standardized interoperable rights statements will also make it easier for application developers and other third parties to automatically identify items that can be re-used.

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"Trade Officials Announce Conclusion of TPP—Now the Real Fight Begins"

The EFF has released "Trade Officials Announce Conclusion of TPP—Now the Real Fight Begins" by Maira Sutton.

Here's an excerpt:

Trade officials have announced today that they have reached a final deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Their announcement came after a drawn out round of negotiation in Atlanta, Georgia, which was mainly held up around disagreements over medicine patent rules and tariffs over autos and dairy.

We have no reason to believe that the TPP has improved much at all from the last leaked version released in August, and we won't know until the U.S. Trade Representative releases the text. So as long as it contains a retroactive 20-year copyright term extension, bans on circumventing DRM, massively disproportionate punishments for copyright infringement, and rules that criminalize investigative journalists and whistleblowers, we have to do everything we can to stop this agreement from getting signed, ratified, and put into force.

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"Help the Copyright Office Understand How to Address Mass Digitization"

The DPLA has published "Help the Copyright Office Understand How to Address Mass Digitization" in the DPLA Blog.

Here's an excerpt:

The U.S. Copyright Office recently issued a report and a request for comments on its proposal for a new licensing system intended to overcome copyright obstacles to mass digitization. While the goal is laudable, the Office's proposal is troubling and vague in key respects.

The overarching problem is that the Office's proposal doesn't fully consider how libraries and archives currently go about digitization projects, and so it misidentifies how the law should be improved to allow for better digital access. It's important that libraries and archives submit comments to help the Office better understand how to make recommendations for improvements.

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"Important Win for Fair Use in ‘Dancing Baby’ Lawsuit"

The EFF has released "Important Win for Fair Use in 'Dancing Baby' Lawsuit."

Here's an excerpt:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represents Stephanie Lenz, who-back in 2007-posted a 29-second video to YouTube of her children dancing in her kitchen. The Prince song "Let's Go Crazy" was playing on a stereo in the background of the short clip. Universal Music Group sent YouTube a notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), claiming that the family video infringed the copyright in Prince's song. EFF sued Universal on Lenz's behalf, arguing that Universal abused the DMCA by improperly targeting a lawful fair use.

Today [September 14, 2015], the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that copyright holders like Universal must consider fair use before trying to remove content from the Internet. It also rejected Universal's claim that a victim of takedown abuse cannot vindicate her rights if she cannot show actual monetary loss.

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"Sharing Research Data and Intellectual Property Law: A Primer"

Michael W. Carroll has published "Sharing Research Data and Intellectual Property Law: A Primer" in PLOS Biology.

Here's an excerpt:

Sharing research data by depositing it in connection with a published article or otherwise making data publicly available sometimes raises intellectual property questions in the minds of depositing researchers, their employers, their funders, and other researchers who seek to reuse research data. In this context or in the drafting of data management plans, common questions are (1) what are the legal rights in data; (2) who has these rights; and (3) how does one with these rights use them to share data in a way that permits or encourages productive downstream uses? Leaving to the side privacy and national security laws that regulate sharing certain types of data, this Perspective explains how to work through the general intellectual property and contractual issues for all research data.

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