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Publishers Score Win in International Piracy Battle
An international alliance of publishers and publishing associations has succeeded in getting a Munich court to serve cease and desist orders to the operators of two Web sites that have been illegally offering more than 400,000 copyrighted books for free.
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AAUP Opposes Research Works Act, FRPAA
The Association of American University Presses this week said it does not support the Research Works Act, and also voiced opposition to a competing bill, Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which would mandate public access.
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Could Backlash to Research Works Act Boost FRPAA’s Odds of Passage?
Congress last week introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2012 (FRPAA), a bill that would mandate free public online access to taxpayer-funded research for all federal agencies with extramural research budgets over $100 million.
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ALA Midwinter 2012: Panel Tells Librarians to Go Forth and Digitize
Despite recent lawsuits over e-reserves, digital archives, and orphan works, at a two-hour program at ALA Midwinter, panelists urged librarians to go forth and digitize, that they already have the sturdy legal cover they need to proceed: fair use.
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After Protest, Legislators Withdraw Support for SOPA, PIPA
After what’s being called “the largest online protest in Internet history,” legislators are withdrawing support for the SOPA abd PIPA bills.
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SOPA, PROTECT IP Opponents Protest with Online Blackout
Thousands of Web sites which oppose the controversial “anti-piracy” bills SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) are protesting against the proposed legislation with a 24-hour blackout.
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White House, Congressional Leaders Come Out Against SOPA
In a statement, the White House this week said it would not support any bill that would “inhibit innovation,” for American business and vowed to protect "the openness of the Internet."
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Open Road Lawyers Up
In its first formal response to the lawsuit filed against it by HarperCollins over the e-book publication of Julie of the Wolves, Open Road Integrated Media yesterday announced that it plans to hire Michael J. Boni and Joanne Zack of Boni and Zack in association with Robert La Rocca of Kohn, Swift & Graf, PC.
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Harper Charges Open Road with Infringement in E-Release of 'Julie of the Wolves'
HarperCollins filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Open Road Integrated Media over its publication of the e-book edition of Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves.
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Google Files Motion to Dismiss Lawsuits
As expected, on Thursday Google filed a motion to dismiss the Authors Guild as an associational plaintiff from the long-running book-scanning case, and also moved to sever the American Society of Media Photographers from its related suit against Google.
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SOPA Mark-Up Session Delayed Until Next Year; An Opening for OPEN?
With Congress embroiled in a fight over extending the payroll tax cut, House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Kim Smith confirmed that Wednesday's scheduled Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) hearing has been delayed. Smith said the committee expected the bill to be taken up again "early next year."
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SOPA Will Be Taken Up Again Wednesday
According to a tweet from House member Darrell Issa (R-CA) the House mark-up of SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) is scheduled to resume on Wednesday, Dec. 21, at 9 a.m., after an unexpected delay stopped the bill from coming to a vote in the judiciary committee last Friday.
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Register of Copyrights Addresses Legislative Efforts
At a Copyright Clearance Center panel held December 12 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Maria Pallante, the register of copyrights, expressed support for the broad strokes of two copyright bills now before Congress—the Senate’s PROTECT IP bill and the recently introduced companion bill in the House, SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act). “Copyright is a tremendous factor in our economy,”
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SOPA Stalled: House Committee Adjourns Without Vote
A House Judiciary Committee adjourned Friday afternoon without voting on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), with no date set for a new vote, essentially stalling the bill despite what seemed like a fast track to approval. The delay comes as opposition mounts, including a scathing analysis this week from constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe who deemed the bill as written unconstitutional.
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Google Will Move to Dismiss Authors Guild Suit
Is the long-running legal drama over Google’s scan plan drawing down? In a scheduling order filed last week, Judge Denny Chin acknowledged that attorneys for Google indicated they would be asking for dismissal of both the Authors Guild and publishers’ suit, as well as the related visual artists case.
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HathiTrust Answers Authors Guild Lawsuit; Trial Schedule Set
Lawyers for the HathiTrust, the digitization initiative of some 40 university libraries, filed its answer to the Authors Guild lawsuit, asking the suit be dismissed for a variety of reasons and suggests it possible defenses.
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Monograph Wars
Back in 2000, at a meeting at netLibrary’s headquarters in Boulder, CO, then-CEO Nancy Talmey told a group of assembled university press publishers that one “medium-sized” university press had recently pocketed two sizable checks for its previous months’ e-book usage with netLibrary. One check exceeded $100,000. Could academic monographs really be so profitable? If it seemed too good to be true, it was. Within a few years, netLibrary was reduced from a campus in Colorado, to a few cubicles at OCLC.
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Use It, or Lose It
When it comes to copyright, the discussion today invariably focuses on piracy. For today’s large copyright-based industries, almost any unauthorized use of their content is considered stealing. But the real question may be what such a restrictive reading of copyright steals from the public. In Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (Univ. of Chicago, 2011) authors Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi look at the impact of today’s copyright policies on creativity and argue that fair use—that long-embedded if often misunderstood core principle of copyright—can help creators cut through the static of today’s confusing, contentious copyright environment.
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In Fight with Amazon, Libraries Caught in the Crossfire
When Penguin announced last week that it was disabling library e-book lending on the Kindle and pulling its latest e-book titles from all library lending platforms, libraries and readers took the hit, but to some observers they were collateral damage in a fight between publishers and Amazon about the control of publishers’ titles.
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Controversial Copyright Bill Goes Before Congress
The Association of American Publishers has thrown its weight behind a bill that critics say would dramatically scale back the “safe harbor” provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. On November 16, Congress heard testimony on SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), a bill that broadly targets foreign-based “rogue” Internet sites by going after companies that allegedly “engage in, enable, or facilitate” infringement. It is a companion of the controversial PROTECT IP act, which passed a Senate committee earlier this year.
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