The RIAA and CD Ripping for Personal Use: Infringement or Not?

Recently, there has been a flurry of articles about the RIAA's stance on the legality of CD ripping for personal use that was triggered by a Washington Post article ("Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use") that was later corrected. The controversy resulted in a debate on National Public Radio between the article's author and RIAA's president (Cary Sherman). In it, Sherman would not say that CD ripping for personal use was legal, but he did say: "Not a single (legal) case has ever been brought (by the RIAA against someone for copying music for personal use)."

Just as the dust seemed to be settling, Wired Blog Network has published "RIAA Believes MP3s Are A Crime: Why This Matters—Updated," takes another look at what the RIAA has said on the issue, and concludes "The RIAA doesn't believe Americans have any right—or Fair Use legal defense—to play copyrighted material on the device and in the format of their choosing."

Image Management Software Descriptions from TASI Survey

TASI (Technical Advisory Service for Images) has published descriptions of information management software resulting from a vendor survey (e.g., see the Greenstone description). TASI notes: "The information has been provided by the system developer/vendor in answer to TASI's survey, but has not been independently verified."

TASI recommends that readers consult Systems for Managing Image Collections and Choosing a System for Managing your Image Collection as background for evaluating the survey responses.

UK May Make CD Ripping for Legal in Some Cases

Did you know that ripping MP3 files from CDs was illegal in the UK? The good news (for a change) is that Lord Triesman, Minister for Intellectual Property, has initiated an IP reform consultation that may result in making CD ripping legal for distance education, personal use, parody, and preservation purposes.

Read more about it at "Proposal to Make CD Copying Legal," "UK Issues Public Consultation on More Flexible Copyright," "U.K. Looks to Relax Restrictive Copyright Laws," and "UK Wants to Make CD Rips Legal (at Last)."

STARGATE Report Investigates Issues with Software to Support Harvesting for Publishers without OAI-PMH-compliant Repositories

The JISC-funded extension of the STARGATE project has released the STARGATE Extension Final Report.

Here's an excerpt from the original STARGATE project page that explains its goals:

The Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR) at of Strathclyde set out to implement a low-tech solution to OAI-based disclosure for small publishers. Their STARGATE project was based on the 'static repositories' model for using OAI-PMH . . . Instead of building an OAI-compliant repository, a publisher builds a static repository, effectively an XML file of the relevant metadata on an accessible server. A separate static repository gateway handles the technical aspects of making the metadata available for harvesting, i.e. the complexity is shifted away from the publisher.

Here's an excerpt from the report's "Executive Summary":

The extension has produced a functional branded gateway that the publishing community can use to explore the use of static repositories. It will be maintained for the next year. The gateway is available at http://stargate.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/gateway/.

The project concludes that although functional the software is not suitable for deployment by a novice user. It is also effectively still in at the beta stage of development and it has only been used in a limited number of settings.

The project further suggests that the creation and maintenance of gateway(s) within the publishing community may be more suitably carried out in the same way that DOI and Purl provision is offered through a third-party service provider willing to work with developing open source software. Any deployment of a gateway by JISC to support wider participation in static repositories should also engage with the gateway software developers.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (1/9/08)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: "Assessment of Self-Archiving in Institutional Repositories: Across Disciplines"; "Copyright and Research: A Different Perspective"; "The Cost Profiles of Alternative Approaches to Journal Publishing"; "Data, Disciplines, and Scholarly Publishing"; "Discovering Books: OCA & GBS Retrospective"; In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law; "Open Access in 2007"; "An Open Access Mandate for the NIH"; and "The Rutgers Workflow Management System: Migrating a Digital Object Management Utility to Open Source."

Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video

American University's Center for Social Media has released Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, which examines fair use issues in user-created digital videos. See the announcement for links to videos used in the report.

Here's an excerpt from the "Next Steps" section:

The effervescence of this moment at the dawn of participatory media should not be mistaken for triviality. The practices of today’s online creators are harbingers of a far more interactive media era. Today’s makers—feckless, impudent, brash, and extravagant as they often are—in fact are the pioneers of an emerging media economy and society. Recognition of the importance of fair use, within the copyright law toolkit for cultural creation, is both prudent and forward-looking for those concerned with maintaining an open society.

Wikia Search Debuts to Pundits’ Criticism

An alpha version of Wikia's open source Wikia Search has gone public, but the consensus seems to be that this user-tuned search engine has a long way to go to compete with the likes of Google.

Read more about it at "Jimmy Wales Argues That His Wikia Needs More Time," "Wiki Citizens Taking on a New Area: Searching," "Wikia Launching Human-Powered Search," "Wikia Search Alpha Preview Leaves Much to Be Desired," "Wikia Search Is A Complete Letdown," and"Wikia Search—Miles Behind the Competition."

Sony BMG, Last of the Big Music Labels to Use DRM, Drops It for Some Albums

According to "Sony BMG to Sell DRM-Free Music Downloads through Stores," Sony BMG will join EMI, Vivendi's Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group in offering DRM-free MP3 tracks. Initially, this will be for a small number of albums, and it will require that buyers purchase a card at a retail store. In 2005, Sony BMG was embroiled in a major controversy about its use of DRM software.

Read more about it at "Digital Music: 2007 Year in Review," "Labels See New Online Music Options," "Sony BMG Cautiously Exploring DRM-Free Future," and "Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM."

PublicDomainReprints.org Turns Digital Public Domain Books into Printed Books

PublicDomainReprints.org is offering an experimental service that allows users to convert about 1.7 million digital public domain books in the Internet Archive, Google Book Search, or the Universal Digital Library into printed books using the Lulu print-on-demand service.

Source: "Converting Google Book PDFs to Actual Books."

Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite

Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite, the latest Digital Scholarship publication, is designed to give the reader a very quick introduction to key aspects of institutional repositories and to foster further exploration of this topic through liberal use of relevant references to online documents and links to pertinent websites. It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, and it can be freely used for any noncommercial purpose in accordance with the license.