LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Copyright interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:52:37 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/11/germany-national-license-for-springer-ebooks-signed-largest-ebook-deal-ever-signed-in-germany/ From the Announcement: The German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) and the German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED) have signed an extensive and ground-breaking agreement for access to Springer eBooks on SpringerLink. The agreement represents the largest eBook deal ever to have been signed in Germany, and is, in fact, a national license for all English-language chemistry, materials science and medicine titles of the copyright years 2005 – 2008. Concretely, this means that all researchers, students and staff at all publicly funded universities, technical colleges and research institutions will have access to the content included in the deal. The agreement was made possible by support from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Source:Springer Science+Business Media (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:16:20 +0100 825618 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/fnOG2VNRM6A/poetry-pop-yeats-auden What is it about Yeats that is so attractive to rock stars, and why does Auden have the crowd moshing at the Forum? Graeme Thomson meets the musicians turning poetry into popOne day in 2005, Mike Scott decamped to his music room armed only with a long-cherished dream and a copy of WB Yeats's greatest hits, a brick-like anthology of the late poet's collected works. For a fortnight, the leader of the Waterboys sat at his piano and ploughed methodically through the book, pushing and prodding at the words on each page until some began to offer a glimmer of a song."If the first line of any poem suggested a tune in my head, I'd persevere with it, and if it didn't I'd pass on to something else," says Scott. "I started at page one and worked through to page 600-and-something, and then I started again in case I missed any. I must have done that nine or 10 times, to give the opportunity for each line to sing to me. At the end of the first two weeks I had about 10 songs." He has since doubled that number, and the result is An Appointment With Mr Yeats, a series of concerts (and, all going to plan, a studio album) in which the Waterboys recontextualise the words of Ireland's most venerated poet by setting them to rock music.Scott has form when it comes to Yeats: as early as 1986 he was dropping The Four Ages of Man into the Waterboys' live sets, and he later recorded The Stolen Child for Fisherman's Blues and Love and Death for Dream Harder, both of which will be revisited in the new show. However, he's far from the only rock-seer in thrall to the Irishman. Yeats's words have inspired numerous musicians, including Van Morrison (Crazy Jane on God), Joni Mitchell (Slouching Towards Bethlehem, adapted from The Second Coming) and Bono (Mad as the Mist and Snow). ... Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:05:00 +0100 825527 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/34gl-KqY1dg/ Tech review maven Walter Mossberg has posted a review of the Irex DR800SG e-book reader. This reader costs $140 more than the Kindle e-reader and is compatible with the Barnes & Noble store among others. Mossberg was not terribly impressed, pointing out a number of areas where its design and user interface could use improvement. In observation of Read An E-Book Week, DriveThruRPG and White Wolf are offering a free watermarked-PDF download of the 224-page World of Darkness rulebook (list price $24.99) for as long as the week lasts. Enjoy! A recent survey shows that 90% of academic publishers have seen a growth in e-book sales over the last two years. E-book sales now make up almost 10% of total e-book sales in those markets—twice the level of e-book sales in general. Academic publishers have apparently been much quicker to adapt to the e-book market than trade presses. The survey found that academic publishers were also relatively unconcerned about the various challenges presented by the shift towards digital books. Although piracy was one of the biggest concerns, [report co-author Laura] Cox said very few publishers thought of it as a serious problem. It appears the next smartphone platform to receive a Kindle reader will be Android. jkOnTheRun reports on an Engadget posting of leaked documents from Dell stating that the Dell Streak (aka Mini 5), an Android device, will include a Kindle reader application (as well as several other Amazon services). Sony is bringing more newspaper and magazine content to its e-book store. Probably in a bid to strengthen its position before the iPad arrives, ReadWriteWeb reports, it is adding 20 new papers and magazines, including the New York Times and Boston Globe. (Sony press release here.) Google is slowly conquering Europe. Or at least Europe’s great libraries. ... Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:15:00 +0100 825603 http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/03/11/whither-the-google-book-settlement/ Maybe we’ll hear soon and maybe this will drag on like Tasini…. But this graphic from the Library Copyright Alliance gives many potential scenarios. Click on the graphic for a larger version. Stephen (Source: Stephen) Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:53:37 +0100 825448 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/bK4n1CxtnAw/ Gizmodo has a great article by Matt Buchanan laying out the “Tower of E-Babel” problem: different readers have their own different, restricted file format ecosystems. There is not a lot new to long-time TeleRead readers, but it would be great to show anyone just getting into e-books, or thinking about it. The article starts with a Steve Jobs quote about Apple using the EPUB format because of its “openness,” and proceeds to fill in what he is not saying: “open” or not, DRM-locked iBooks books will not be readable on other DRM’d EPUB capable readers, nor vice versa. And don’t expect that DRM to be going away any time soon: You may be thinking that it’s just a matter of time before ebook stores all go DRM free. That would be wishful thinking at best. While ebooks might seem a lot like digital music circa 2005, you can’t rip a book, so the only way to get a bestseller on your reader is to buy it legally, or to steal it. It’s pretty much that simple. There will be free books, there will be unencrypted books, and the torrents will rage with bestsellers (as they already do). Still, DRM’s gonna be a hard fact of life with every major bookstore, since they’re going to at leasttry to keep you from stealing it. You don’t see Hollywood giving up DRM, do you? It also explains why every device except the Kindle reads EPUB, and the way the Kindle’s Mobipocket-based formats and Barnes & Noble’s eReader-based format hark back to PDA legacy formats. I found it particularly interesting that the article complained about the chance of getting an eReader-format book when you want an EPUB-format one, given that we carried a story about someone in exactly the opposite situation. The article concludes with the suggestion that creating custom apps to contain books might be the way to go. (I’m not entirely sure whether it’s talking about appbooks, or just individual apps from specific publishers. ... Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:15:00 +0100 825443 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/EhZ9CwH9CXw/ Given that Baen is frequently used as a counter-example whenever the matter of printing costs making up a small fraction a a hardcover’s total cost comes up, I thought it would be a good idea to hear from Baen about how it is able to keep its prices so low. Consequently, I arranged this e-mail interview with Toni Weisskopf, Baen’s publisher. Weisskopf has many interesting things to say about Baen’s overall strategy, pricing, and the question of e-books “cannibalizing” printed books. The interview begins below the jump. (Links added by me.) Many voices in the publishing industry are proclaiming that, since printing costs are only a couple of dollars out of a hardcover’s total price, selling e-books at a price point of $9.99 is "unsustainable." But Baen has been selling e-books for less than that for over ten years, even of books released in hardcover, and has become the counterexample that everybody holds up in response to other publishers’ claims about printing costs. TW: Well, part of the “secret” there is that we don’t pay for expensive DRM (“digital rights management”) schemes. I’ve never understood why we should add to our costs with the sole outcome that it’s harder for readers to buy and read the books we want to sell. On the contrary, I want to make it as easy as possible for my readers to find, purchase and read my books. That goal influences every publishing decision I make from our marketing to what typefaces we use. How is Baen able to sustain selling e-books at such low prices? Is it simply that Baen considers them mainly another form of promotion for the print books (as suggested here), and so does not assign the same share of manuscript production fixed costs (editing, typesetting, etc.) to e-books that other publishers do? TW: Certainly when we started we viewed the ebooks as an experiment. In some ways mass market paperbacks are also a “form of promotion” for future hardcovers. ... Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0100 825444 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/XchpRJccm7o/google-to-digitise-ancient-italian.html "The Italian government has signed a deal with Google to put the contents of two national libraries on the internet. Up to one million antiquarian books - including works by Dante, Machiavelli and Galileo - will be scanned and made available free on Google Books. There is no copyright issue as all the works were published before 1868. The Italian authorities welcomed the scheme as budget pressures have cut the amount that can be spent on preserving the collections in Rome and Florence. Mario Resca of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage said the deal would help save the books' content forever, noting that the 1966 Florence flood ruined thousands of books in the city's library. Previous attempts by Google to scan books have run into legal troubles in the US and France. A French court ruled that Google had committed copyright violation to the detriment of three publishers by scanning entire books or excerpts and putting them online. Google is appealing the ruling. And Google had to settle a 2005 class action lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers, which also charged the company with copyright infringement" - BBC (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:32:43 +0100 825415 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14589 Director of Information Services/Librarian (American Philatelic Society, Pennsylvania) The American Philatelic Society, a public charity, has an immediate opening for its Director of Information Services/Librarian. The Director’s primary responsibility is to develop and implement a plan to improve access to and use of its unparalleled resources by members and stamp collectors throughout the world, most of whom use the library remotely. A successful plan includes enhancement of the online union catalog, development of finding aids, digitization of materials, recruitment and management of volunteers, and development of grant proposals/fundraising. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:50:02 +0100 825246 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/DflFOA94q84/europees-parlement-stemt-tegen-acta.html Schuif het gerust op mijn onwetendheid of Paranoia, maar eerlijk gezegd dacht ik tot vandaag dat die enge ACTA er moeiteloos doorgedrukt zou gaan worden. Maar wat lees ik vandaag nu? De lieverds van het Europees Parlement hebben hard tegengestemd. Hard, dames en heren! Het Europees Parlement! Ik zeg alleen maar: 'joepie!', en geef Brussel grijnzend een ovatie (en geloof me, dat is een zeldzaamheid!). Ik citeer tot slot Nu.nl: Het Europees Parlement wil geen geheimzinnigheid bij onderhandelingen over een internationaal verdrag dat inbreuken op intellectueel eigendom moet tegengaan. Het heeft daartoe woensdag een resolutie aangenomen. Het gaat over de zogeheten ACTA-besprekingen die de EU voert met onder meer de Verenigde Staten en Japan. Die moeten ervoor zorgen dat het intellectueel eigendom beter wordt beschermd. Maar het Europarlement vreest dat er maatregelen uit de bus komen die de vrijheid van internetgebruikers aantasten. Zij zouden bijvoorbeeld van het web kunnen worden geweerd als ze een aantal malen zijn betrapt op illegaal downloaden. Het Europees Parlement stoort zich er vooral aan dat de onderhandelingen in het diepste geheim worden gevoerd. Het eist meer transparantie. Bovendien wil het dat de besprekingen zich beperken tot het tegengaan van namaak van merkkleding en dergelijke. Copyrights en auteursrechten moeten erbuiten vallen.Meer lezen: Parlement EU eist volledige openheid bij Acta-akkoord (Trouw) Copyright, piraterij en internetrechten: de messen worden geslepen Bibliothecarissen, de originele piraten Red Jim, de ACTA-onderhandelaar EU Parliament votes 663-13 against ACTA's enforcement measures (BoingBoing) @ (Source: Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek) Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:16:00 +0100 825320 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/10/google-announces-digitization-project-in-italy-updates-maps-with-biking-info-u-s/ First, Mountain View has announced that they’ve made an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and will work with the Rome and Florence National Libraries to digitize up to a million out-of-copyright works. The librarians at each library will decide what will be digitized. The Google news release also contains a comment about Europeana, a European Commission project to digitize cultural materials from around Europe. For those interested, this page lists the organizations participating in the Europeana program. According to their web site, they have six million items (images, texts, books, sounds, videos) digitized so far. In addition to Europeana there is also the European Library Material in this database comes from National Libraries throughout Europe. On the topic of other digitization in Europe, the Google Blog notes: Digitization of books is a tremendous undertaking, requiring the joint effort of a great number of public and private stakeholders. For this reason, we’re supportive of many other efforts at digitization, such as the European Commission’s Europeana. We want to see these books have the broadest reach possible — the books we scan are available for inclusion in Europeana, of which the Florence Library is a contributing member, and other digital libraries. The more of the world’s historical, cultural treasures we can bring online, the more we can unlock our shared heritage. Stay tuned. It will also be interesting to see what other digital library projects ask for access to the scanned content. See Also: Medieval Tomes Slated for Digitization (via AP) This article reports that works by Galileo will be included in the digitization. 2) The other news from Google is about Google Maps. Beginning today, biking directions are available. The company says this has been a very frequent request of users. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:37:52 +0100 825331 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/TthdAA_wS5s/google-italian-book-scan-deal Google and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage have reached an agreement to digitise up to a million out-of-copyright works at the national libraries in Florence and Rome, including some by Galileo.And it's just two weeks after an Italian court gave three Google executives suspended prison sentences over a video of bullying on YouTube that had been removed once the company was told about it. Google is not only to work closely together with the Italian libraries, but also with the Italian ministry of culture – the first time that the search engine has had a government department a such a close partner on such a project. Google called it a "groundbreaking deal". "The libraries will select the works to be digitised from their collections, which include a wealth of rare historical books, including scientific works, literature from the period of the founding of Italy and the works of Italy's most famous poets and writers," says Google's strategic partner development manager, Gino Mattiuzzo, in a blogpost announcing the deal.While the costs will be covered fully by Google, the company will pass the scans on. The books will be available to groups including the EU's Europeana project, which already has scanned 6 million digital items of cultural value. "We believe today's announcement is an important step, and we look forward to working with more libraries and other partners," says Mattiuzzo. Google has similar arrangements with Oxford University, Madrid's Complutense University, the Bavarian state museum and others. However, it's not clear whether Google is creating the world's biggest library or the world's biggest bookshop. Some fear the search engine is exploiting cultural heritage as a cheap context for advertising. Recently, a New York judge postponed a decision on whether the company should be allowed to display parts of books still in-copyright. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:48:42 +0100 825227 http://libx.org/editions/50/51/5051E541/libx-5051E541.xpi I just updated the library browser tool bar.  If you need assistance, contact me.I provide support for it.  The help desk does not. LibX Tompkins Cortland Community College Library Edition Click here to install LibX Tompkins Cortland Community College Library Edition Version 1.5.29 for Firefox Click here to install LibX Tompkins Cortland Community College Library Edition Version 1.5.29 for Internet Explorer If you have trouble installing LibX, see below. LibX Tompkins Cortland Community College Library Edition is a Firefox and Internet Explorer extension that provides direct access to your Library's resources. It features: Toolbar & right-click context menu: Search your library catalog directly from the LibX toolbar or using the right-click context menu. Support for off-campus access via EZProxy/WAM: Using the Library's off-campus proxy, you may reload a page through the proxy, or follow a link via the proxy, making it appear as though you are coming from an on-campus computer. Quick full text access to journal articles: LibX uses Google Scholar to search for articles and directs the user to the electronic copy subscribed to by your Library. Select a citation, then drag-and-drop it onto the Scholar button on the toolbar. You can use this feature even from inside a PDF file, which makes retrieving papers referenced in a PDF file a snap. To use this feature, your library must be a Google Scholar library, or you must activate this link in the Firefox profile in which LibX is installed: Activate Google Scholar support. (See also LibX FAQ Question 11) Support for embedded cues: LibX places cues in web pages you visit if your library has resources related to that page. Whenever you see the cue, click on the link to look at what the Library has to offer. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:31:00 +0100 825377 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5981 BERKMAN CENTER FOR INTERNET & SOCIETY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITYMarch 10, 2010 // Upcoming events and digital media [1] [TODAY 3/10/10] Institute of Politics Forum Event Co-Sponsored by the Berkman Center: "Digital Governance -- From the State House to the White House" with Aneesh Chopra: United States CTO; Ann Margulies: CIO, Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Teri Takai: CIO, State of California Event Moderator: Jerry Mechling: Lecturer in Public Policy, HKS (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/03/digitalgovernanceforum) [2] [TUESDAY 3/16/10] Berkman Center Luncheon Series: "Cyber-pluralism: Can We Get Along with Each Other in a “Splitting” Internet?" with Donnie, Hao Dong, Berkman Fellow (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2010/03/dong) [3] [REGISTER NOW! 4/9/10] Conference: Journalism's Digital Transition: Unique Legal Challenges and Opportunities, organized by the Citizen Media Law Project and Cyberlaw Clinic (http://www.omln.org/conference) [TODAY] IOP FORUM on DIGITAL GOVERNANCE==================================================================================3/10/10, 6:00PM, JFK Jr. Forum, Harvard Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School Topic: Digital Governance -- From the State House to the White HouseGuests: Aneesh Chopra: United States CTO; Ann Margulies: CIO, Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Teri Takai: CIO, State of California Event Moderator: Jerry Mechling: Lecturer in Public Policy, HKS The Berkman Center will co-sponsor a panel discussion with chief technology officers and information officers from the White House, State of CA, and State of MA. Panelists include: * Aneesh Chopra: United States CTO;* Ann Margulies: CIO, Commonwealth of Massachusetts;* Teri Takai: CIO, State of California* Event Moderator: Jerry Mechling: Lecturer in Public Policy, HKS This event will be webcast live; for more information and a complete description, see the event web page: http://cyber.law.harvard. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:55:12 +0100 825360 http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/03/10/top-50-ereader-ebook-trends-for-2010/ Quite a few new good summaries if you’re following eBooks and trying to come to terms with ths rapidly changing segment of the content world. Here are three: Educause has a new 7 Things doc out: 7 Things You Should Know About E-Readers (ID: ELI7058) Abstract: E-readers are portable, low-power, high-resolution devices that display digital versions of written material from books, magazines, newspapers, and other printed sources. They typically use e-ink, a display technology designed to simulate printed paper that offers similar resolution as newsprint and, relative to an LCD screen, eliminates glare and reduces eyestrain. Digital texts can be updated easily and often include advanced features such as annotation, hyperlinking, cross-linking, saved views, interactive quizzes for individual study, analyses, and shared commentary. E-readers are changing the economics of text-based intellectual property, including educational materials, and a move to digital texts would have broad implications both for the traditional campus bookstore and for an institution’s library.” Access To Full Text Available here. Next check out the whole post from the Kindle blog: Top 50 eReader + eBook Trends for 2010 2010 was supposed to be the Year of the eReader but it’s morphing into the Make or Break Year for the Dedicated eReader (and perhaps the make or break year for eBooks). Here are the top 50 eReader and eBook trends for 2010. “1. iPad vs Kindle – There is a possibility that Apple steals away Kindle #1 market position. 2. Multi Purpose Devices vs Dedicated eReaders – Will dedicated eReaders be able to survive the onslaught of do-everything devices? 3. Color eReaders – By end 2010 we should have color screen eReaders. We get to find out whether color really does increase sales. 4. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:22:26 +0100 825191 http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023713.html Official Google Blog: "Today we’re announcing an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage [to] digitize up to a... (Source: beSpacific) Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825430 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/PfWqxG3qQK8/digital-renaissance-partnering-with.html The Renaissance, Europe's period of cultural, political and scientific rebirth, began in Florence around 600 years ago. At Google we're interested in a (small “r”) renaissance of a different kind — a digital one. Since the launch of Google Books, we’ve been working with libraries and publishers around the globe to bring more of the world's books to more readers around the globe. Any school child should be able to access the works of Petrarch, Dante or Vico (or, if they're so inclined, Machiavelli). In the case of these more famous authors, this is already largely possible, but what about the work of Guglielmo il Giuggiola or Coluccio Salutati? We want all of the great literature and writings of Italy to be accessible to the general public.Today we’re announcing an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage that will push this vision forward. Working with the National Libraries of Florence and Rome, we’ll digitize up to a million out-of-copyright works. The libraries will select the works to be digitized from their collections, which include a wealth of rare historical books, including scientific works, literature from the period of the founding of Italy and the works of Italy's most famous poets and writers. It marks the first time we’ve ever joined forces with Italian libraries, and the first time we've worked with a ministry of culture.Around Europe and the rest of the world, we are effectively witnessing a digital renaissance, with an increasing number of organizations running ambitious and promising book digitization projects. We're not the only ones who have seen the need to bring the world's books into digital form. Digitization of books is a tremendous undertaking, requiring the joint effort of a great number of public and private stakeholders. For this reason, we’re supportive of many other efforts at digitization, such as the European Commission's Europeana. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825238 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/5Xjjmnmvjkg/ Christopher Kenneally, Copyright Clearance Center, moderator; John Silbersack, Trident Media Group; Sara Pearl, Trident Media Group John Silbersack: literary agent. even for major authors electronic book sales only account for a few percentage points. Meeting with ebook companies who want to explain their ebook models almost every week, but still very little money being generated on these deals. Most companies don’t offer an advance but higher royalties. These companies are also selling a marketing platform. Probably not the time to fight the battle about who owns backlist ebook rights because of low monetary value. But it is a battle that will have to be fought eventually. 700 backlist works in the Isaac Asimov estate. How does the agent make them available? Time to try short term licenses and experimentation to find best way. Often these new products will be sold side-by-side with the original book. What makes this content different and takes it out of verbatim rights? For out of print books that have reverted to the author, spending a lot of time now sending termination notices to publishers. For the last 50 years in publishing has been a pretty common practice to use orphan works without permission and put aside some money in case someone comes forward. Not so different than what Google is doing now. For the working writer the Google settlement doesn’t make much difference because can opt in/out. How Amazon take a larger percentage of revenue from an ebook sale than the author gets. Sara Pearl: lawyer. Amazon thinks of themselves as publishers. Their view is that they are creating a new product. For front list publishers very clear that they keep verbatim rights, for “new media rights” those tend to be reserved by author. Author contributes about 20% of “enhanced” work and a lack of clarity about who creates the remaining 80% and what rights are involved. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:57:25 +0100 824960 http://litablog.org/2010/03/deadline-extended-ex-libris/ The deadline for submission of manuscripts for the LITA/Ex Libris Student Writing Award has been extended to March 24, 2010. The award for the best unpublished manuscript submitted by a student or students enrolled in an ALA-accredited graduate program consists of $1,000, a certificate and publication in LITA’s refereed journal, Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL). The purpose of the award is to recognize superior student writing and to enhance the professional development of students. The manuscript can be written on any aspect of libraries and information technology. Examples include digital libraries, metadata, authorization and authentication, electronic journals and electronic publishing, telecommunications, distributed systems and networks, computer security, intellectual property rights, technical standards, desktop applications, online catalogs and bibliographic systems, universal access to technology, library consortia and others. At the time the unpublished manuscript is submitted, the applicant(s) must be enrolled in an ALA-accredited program in library and information studies at the masters or Ph.D. level. To be eligible, applicants must follow the detailed guidelines and fill out the application form. Send the signed, completed forms by March 24, 2010, to Krista Clumpner, LITA/Ex Libris Student Writing Award Committee chair, Northern Michigan University, Lydia M. Olson Library, 1401 Presque Isle Ave., Marquette, MI 49855-5305. Submit the manuscript to Krista electronically at kclumpne@nmu.edu by March 24, 2010. The award will be presented at the LITA President’s Program during the 2010 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC. (Source: LITA Blog) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:40:05 +0100 825517 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/09/awesome-new-comprehensive-online-database-of-ansel-adams-photographs-now-online/ This is one superb database (and digitization effort) that will be interest and use to many. We can’t wait to spend some serious time with it. The content–Ansel Adams photos–are simply amazing (understatement). According to the Ansel Adams Gallery Blog, the database contains more then 2600 digitized images including several rare ones. The database homepage begins with a brief bio of Ansel Adams and also includes info about copyright and the database itself. The Ansel Adams Archive at the Center for Creative Photography includes more than 2,500 fine prints, along with correspondence, interviews, unpublished writings, memorabilia, publications, negatives, transparencies, work prints, photographic equipment, and files documenting his commercial projects, exhibitions, affiliation with the Sierra Club and Friends of Photography. The Center provides digital scans and facilitates permissions in collaboration with The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, which holds copyright to all works by Ansel Adams. See http://www.creativephotography.org/rights/ for more information. Users will need to register (it’s free and fast) to see large size images. You can either browse or search to find imagery. To browse and find images of Old Faithful we began with the letter “O” and found several. We also looked under the letter Y and found several more. So, if necessary try different letter/words. To view a large size image, click the small image found with every entry and if you’re logged-in, it should appear in a matter of seconds. Yes, all of this takes a bit of guessing but on the way to finding the image you’re looking for you’ll come across material that’s likely new to you. Serendipity still works. You’ll also be “learning” the database that will over time help to make retrieval easier. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:58:04 +0100 824997 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/7Zir71RSI8Y/ Margo Baldwin, President, Chelsea Green Publishing; Clint Greenleaf, President, Greenleaf Book Group; Robert Miller, President, HarperStudio; Sara Nelson, Books Editor, O, the Oprah Magazine, Moderator Margo Baldwin: needed to be niched to stay in business – environment and sustainable living. Try to get a book out from manuscript to bound book in 4 to 5 weeks. Can get well known authors this way. Their books don’t require big advances. They have a mission to help save the world and tends to attract like minded authors. Their specialty books require little marketing and people can easing find them on the internet. Do own distribution cause this helps them control their cash flow. Don’t do business with Borders because think will be gone soon. Their big growth is in specialty retailers (garden stores, for example). The overall pie can grow, not shrink, for certain kinds of books because you can make multiple kinds of products surrounding a single book. Pie for hardcovers will shrink but other parts of the pie will grow. If have a brand can role out many different versions of a book. Big worry is that they are becoming a technology company and it means that every job in the company has to be rethought. Very hard to move retail chains off returns. Worries about piracy and will be more of an issue if consumers don’t get prices they want. In total expects an expanded marketplace with access to a lot of people who didn’t buy books before. Clint Greenleaf: done well because broke from the traditional model. Publishing is only business where if someone self-funds is looked down upon. Clients pay for up front costs. But only take 3% of the books offered to them because won’t sell crap. Will do editing. Found ” everything” didn’t work because buyers wouldn’t take them. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:06:43 +0100 824963 http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6722043.html?rssid=191 Library Copyright Alliance diagram shows many potential routes. (Source: Library Journal News) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:23:00 +0100 824821 http://careercenter.sla.org/jobdetail.cfm?job=3318837 US - PA - Bellefonte, The position requires knowledge of current library information trends, changes in information technology, intellectual property management, national library data standards, and cataloging software. D (Source: SLA Career Center Search Results []) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:59:00 +0100 825069 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/SJ4J_qlebV0/books-overtake-games-iphone-apps In what is predicted to be a pivotal year for ebooks, with next month's iPad launch, the number of books available as iPhone apps now exceeds the number of gamesThe electronic book passed another milestone this month, with the number of books available on the iTunes App Store passing the number of games for the first time. According to data released earlier this month by the mobile phone advertising company Mobclix, there are more than 27,000 books now available as apps. Games lag behind, with 25,400 published this year, followed by entertainment, education and travel.It's a trend that seems to be gathering momentum, with the number of book apps outnumbering games almost two to one over the past month. Next month's launch of the iPad, Apple's new tablet reader, alongside a dedicated book store, is set to accelerate the shift to electronic reading still further."The iPhone has always been perceived as a games-centric device, said Canongate's digital editor, Dan Franklin, "so the idea that books are outranking games is very exciting."Franklin, who moved into digital publishing a year ago, said that his first thought on getting the job was, "When are Apple going to do something?" because "they have form". A move from Apple into the ebook market will "bring new people to reading like they have brought new people to music with the iTunes store", he added."It's a very exciting time," agreed Penguin's digital publisher, Jeremy Ettinghausen. "It's very exciting that people are using iPhones to read books.""I travel on the tube every day," he continued, "and you do see people reading books, reading newspapers and playing games. As publishers we need to be on the things that people are using during that distraction time, that commuter time. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:02:24 +0100 824855 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Copyright_Flack Breaking news is now copied and redistributed on thousands of websites across the Internet within minutes - producing a World Wide Web of carbon copi (Source: pligg - all) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:00:17 +0100 824799 http://lisnews.org/world_without_public_libraries On the whole, I'm not much of a book reader. Most of my reading is done online; I read a handful of books every year, mostly non-fiction, based on various whims. Right now, I'm reading The World Without Us, a captivating exploration about how the world would revert (or not revert) back to a pre-human emergence. Some of these things have been dramatized into a series on the History Channel by a different name, providing the added element of CGI to show how buildings would collapse, infrastructure would fail, nature reclaims the suburbs, and how all that would remain for future archeologists is our stainless steel cookware. For the scientist in me, it's fascinating to see everything humans have made becoming undone by the natural forces of this world. So, in touching upon the premise of the book, I thought, "What would the world be like without libraries?" How would our demise come? Unlike the book, which asks the reader to suspend disbelief and accept the total sudden disappearance of humankind, I cannot propose nor fathom asking the same for libraries. In attempting to avoid hyperbole, I think the mechanisms of the library’s demise have already proven themselves present. It will not come through lack of innovation or adoption of technology or practices; our relevance and willingness to change in this digital information age has certainly been established. No, the end will come as it has for some libraries over the past two years: through budget cuts. Funding for all library types (public, academic, school, and special) has hung in the balance for the last couple of years after budgets tighten and communities and companies look to trim their expenditures. You need go no further than typing in the words “library budget” in a Google News search to see the current toll that is being exacted.  One problem, as I see it, is that the library as a community service does not fit nicely into any government spending niche. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:47:19 +0100 824748 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Digitization101/~3/WgyFr1FuX_s/blue-ribbon-task-force-report.html Below is a press release that I received via email. The idea of preserving our digital knowledge is something we all know and something that many of us ignore. The fact is that our reliance on digital information means that our knowledge could be lost very quickly, if saving it is not made a priority.Blue Ribbon Task Force Report: Preserving Our Digital Knowledge Base Must be a Public Priority Dollars Won't Do It Alone: Deluge of Digital Data Needs Economically Sustainable Plans Addressing one of the most urgent societal challenges of the Information Age - ensuring that valued digital information will be accessible not just today, but in the future - requires solutions that are at least as much economic and social as technical, according to a new report by a Blue Ribbon Task Force.The Final Report from the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access, called "Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-term Access to Digital Information", is the result of a two-year effort focusing on  the critical economic challenges of  preserving an ever-increasing amount of information in a world gone digital. The full report is available online at http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf ."The Data Deluge is here.  Ensuring that our most valuable information is available both today and tomorrow is not just a matter of finding sufficient funds," said Fran Berman, vice president for research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and co-chair of the Task Force. "It's about creating a "data economy" in which those who care, those who will pay, and those who preserve are working in coordination."The challenge in preserving valuable digital information - consisting of text, video, images, music, sensor data, etc. generated throughout all areas of our society - is real and growing at an exponential pace. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824895 http://hurstassociates.blogspot.com/2010/03/blue-ribbon-task-force-report.html Below is a press release that I received via email. The idea of preserving our digital knowledge is something we all know and something that many of us ignore. The fact is that our reliance on digital information means that our knowledge could be lost very quickly, if saving it is not made a priority.Blue Ribbon Task Force Report: Preserving Our Digital Knowledge Base Must be a Public Priority Dollars Won't Do It Alone: Deluge of Digital Data Needs Economically Sustainable Plans Addressing one of the most urgent societal challenges of the Information Age - ensuring that valued digital information will be accessible not just today, but in the future - requires solutions that are at least as much economic and social as technical, according to a new report by a Blue Ribbon Task Force.The Final Report from the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access, called "Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-term Access to Digital Information", is the result of a two-year effort focusing on  the critical economic challenges of  preserving an ever-increasing amount of information in a world gone digital. The full report is available online at http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf ."The Data Deluge is here.  Ensuring that our most valuable information is available both today and tomorrow is not just a matter of finding sufficient funds," said Fran Berman, vice president for research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and co-chair of the Task Force. "It's about creating a "data economy" in which those who care, those who will pay, and those who preserve are working in coordination."The challenge in preserving valuable digital information - consisting of text, video, images, music, sensor data, etc. generated throughout all areas of our society - is real and growing at an exponential pace. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824845 http://lisnews.org/copyright_flack Breaking news is now copied and redistributed on thousands of websites across the Internet within minutes - producing a World Wide Web of carbon copies. First Amendment lawyer David Marburger argues that this redistribution is hurting newspapers financially and that the fault lies with the Copyright Act. If embedded player does not show you can hear and read full story here. (Source: LISNews.org) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:54:06 +0100 824682 http://www.librarystuff.net/2010/03/08/googles-digital-library-faces-key-hurdles/ Mercury News – “Sometime in the near future, a federal judge will decide whether Google can proceed with its plan to create a digital library and bookstore out of millions of old books scanned from libraries around the world. Google Book Search has already spawned a class-action lawsuit, and now, a surge of opposition from scholars, consumer advocates and business competitors who claim the plan gives Google too much control over a priceless store of information. The legal issues are complex. But the impact and implications of the plan, which would create a copyright framework for old books that would persist into the 22nd century, could be huge, some say.” (Source: Library Stuff) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:00:56 +0100 824576 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/leyPWmHZ1p4/ Steve Forbes, Chairman & CEO, Forbes Media; David Granger, Editor-in-Chief, Esquire Magazine As economy recovers will certain forms of media lead the way in growth: all past patterns thrown out the window because of changes with the web plus bad economy at the same time. Shouldn’t look to the past for comfort or discomfort the question is whether the changes made now will work. Will see advertising creating content now. How does need for integrity mix with need to ally with advertisers: this is where brand is critical. People will rely on a brand to help them plough through all the information available. Important to use web to slice and dice to appeal to unique audiences. Are media’s difficulties a good thing? No, but unavoidable. What the web is doing to media is just the beginning. Patterns in terms of advertising and classified changing made worse by recession. Not end of world, just means we have to figure out how to change content. One size fits all marketing no longer works. You need to devise specific solutions for each advertising client. Ge over platforms and delivery and figure out what is value added. People still want useful content. Get over idea that everything is corralled, can’t do it in age of digitization, but new models will emerge. Can we get consumer to pay more of the freight? People accustomed to free content and will only pay if they truly feel they are getting value added information. Can’t be commodity news. Want unique information. Will pay for specialized information. However, whatever amount people will pay, it will not match revenue from advertising. Valued added: way presented, user delivery, content. Aggregators may be able to charge for specialized aggregation. What about iPad and other platforms: there is an upside, but tablets will not do what Google did. These platforms will help your micro-pricing – pay 59 cents for this or that. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:53:47 +0100 824584 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/mrvOlBK3xfw/ Cynthia Cleto, Springer Science + Business Media; Joshua Talent, eBook Architects, moderator; Pablo Defendini, Tor.com; Jeffrey Yamaguchi, Knopf Doubleday Cleto: in STM market things are different. First move was into electronic journals, so STMs tend to have their own platform for sales to scientists. Large proportion of business is sales to institutions and libraries. STM does everything in house cause already have platform and content is highly technical so it must be absolutely correct. Have 35,000 ebooks on their platform and is easier for the work flow to have everything in house. PDF and HTML formats. Library distribution: sign a contract with libraries and then open up access to whole university for simultaneous user access to both journals and electronic books. Paying for a license but get open access, but has to be for the entire collection. Launched ebook collection in 2006 and have massive adoption even before devices came along. For trade stuff have specific marketers and partner with retailers like Amazon. Also market trade stuff to libraries and actually have people who help librarians to market trade books. Want to keep usage high so that libraries renew the contracts. Have created some social networking through society portals, but since are working in a collection individual authors less important. In their market are DRM free. Defendini: Tor has own print bookstore on line. Use Ingram for delivery. Haven’t found a consumer friendly solution to buying ebooks on the site, so that’s why print sales only. Macmillan-wide outsource ebook production to companies that have ebook production services. Very little QA goes on and allows a lot of crappy ebooks to hit the market. Personally believes that this QA process should come in-house. Tor deals with libraries through third parties, such as Baker & Taylor. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:23:26 +0100 824585 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/08/new-europe-annual-report-for-europeana-eu-digital-online-museum-archive/ From the Executive Summary: Europeana.eu is Europe’s online museum, library and archive. It brings together digitised content from Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage organisations, and makes that content accessible to Europe’s citizens and to the wider world. [Snip] The overall objective of Europeana v1.0 is the creation of the fully-operational Europeana service. This will be achieved in two stages: the launch later this year of the Rhine release, followed in 2011 by the final Danube release. This first year has seen successful internal outcomes in terms of achieving our funding target, recruiting the workforce, automating the content ingestion process and building the technical infrastructure. We have ingested 5.9 million records and are on target for 10 million for the Rhine release, in which we will be able to present a balanced and representative selection of material from all the Member States of the European Union. Outward-facing achievements have included developing an active partner network of 180 organisations, well ahead of our target. We have worked closely with the group of projects that are contributing content and technology to Europeana’s operational service. We have identified issues such as intellectual property rights that have significance for all the projects, and have collaborated on a strategic approach. Going forward, Europeana will work mainly with aggregators of content – either national, or domain. National aggregators include CulturaItalia, who bring together content from a range of Italian heritage organisations; domain aggregators include The European Library, who aggregate content from Europe’s national libraries. This model is sustainable in the longer term, and makes best use of expertise and resources at the national and domain level. Access the Complete Report (23 pages; PDF) Source: Europeana.eu (via LIBER) (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:36:32 +0100 824608 http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2010/03/acta-end-secrecy-democracy-now.html Thanks to Michael Geist for keeping us posted on leaks from the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).Under discussion: international intellectual property laws, such as anti-circumvention measures, notice and notice versus notice and takedown - see Geist for as much as we've been able to figure out so far. Until recently, these kinds of discussion were a matter of national law-making, for most of us under democratic principles.Today, these discussions are held in secret, with no opportunity for democratic participation.Have we - all of us in the so-called free world, that is - lost the franchise? ACTA - and all of the countries involved in these discussions: END THE SECRECY! Let's have DEMOCRACY - NOW!!A huge thanks to whoever is responsible for the leaks. (Source: The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825072 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/15923 REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN THE TECTONICS OF DIGITAL CURATION: A Symposium on the Shifting Preservation and Access Landscape MAY 25-26, 2010 The Ray and Maria Stata Center Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Cambridge, MA PRESENTED BY the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) HOSTED BY the MIT Libraries THE TECTONICS OF DIGITAL CURATION explores the sustainability of cultural collections created for and maintained on the Web. At this two-day symposium, a diverse faculty of national experts will examine the forces at play in our increasingly networked society. TOPICS WILL INCLUDE: divergence and complexity in information networking; digital preservation repositories; electronic copyright and intellectual property; collaborative and commercial preservation models; digital archiving strategies; open access to scholarly communication; the networked self; preservation of CAD models; and preservation of community-built digital creations (video games). WHO SHOULD ATTEND? Librarians, archivis (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824662 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/ZaVM65Pozz8/ First web copyright crackdown coming http://icio.us/ntafpv # Smoke got in my eyes http://icio.us/ctr1zq # Federal Intellectual Property Enforcement Gears Up http://icio.us/10roe2 # People and Ideas on the Future of Repositories-in-the-Cloud http://icio.us/3pp4is # DigitalKoans Break http://bit.ly/9hqtHe # HighWire Press 2009 Librarian eBook Survey http://bit.ly/beJZTz # Librarian for Digital Technologies and Learning at NCSU http://bit.ly/blD1Cw # "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement" http://bit.ly/bIXDTe # Systems and Electronic Services Librarian at Lebanon Valley College http://bit.ly/bW2B4q # SPARC: Campus-Based Open-Access Publishing Funds http://bit.ly/d5zdDU # Northeastern University Libraries sign SCOAP3 Expression of Interest http://icio.us/j4zxdm # The Ethics of Open Access and Copyright Infringement http://icio.us/ue4fvp # EFF demands FCC close copyright "loophole" in net neutrality http://icio.us/0rysff # Digital Video: Peter Suber on the Future of Open Access http://bit.ly/dvJ2uR # Applications Programmer/Analyst Associate at University of Michigan http://bit.ly/961HjL # Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA http://bit.ly/cUgwo9 # Programmer/Analyst, Digital Library Tools at Indiana University http://bit.ly/c0T97y # DSpace 1.6 Released http://bit.ly/9WlK0l # Supreme Court Sends Tasini Case Back to Appeals Court http://icio.us/kas5b5 # Library Groups Join in Filing Motion on Copyright Appeal http://icio.us/vproo3 # BURO crashes through 9000 items barrier http://icio.us/2sw1jw # Open Access to Research Outputs Institutional Policies and Researchers' Views: Results From Two Surveys http://icio.us/eddeo1 # Aptara Survey Reveals Publishers’ Evolving Response to eBooks http://icio.us/khh3lz # Digital initiative starts http://icio.us/sflmuz # Fighting a Copyright Charge http://icio.us/th1tii # Top 10 Best Security Plugins for Wordpress http://icio. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:00:00 +0100 824224 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/07/last-weeks-digitalkoans-tweets-2010-03-07/ First web copyright crackdown coming http://icio.us/ntafpv # Smoke got in my eyes http://icio.us/ctr1zq # Federal Intellectual Property Enforcement Gears Up http://icio.us/10roe2 # People and Ideas on the Future of Repositories-in-the-Cloud http://icio.us/3pp4is # DigitalKoans Break http://bit.ly/9hqtHe # HighWire Press 2009 Librarian eBook Survey http://bit.ly/beJZTz # Librarian for Digital Technologies and Learning at NCSU http://bit.ly/blD1Cw # "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement" http://bit.ly/bIXDTe # Systems and Electronic Services Librarian at Lebanon Valley College http://bit.ly/bW2B4q # SPARC: Campus-Based Open-Access Publishing Funds http://bit.ly/d5zdDU # Northeastern University Libraries sign SCOAP3 Expression of Interest http://icio.us/j4zxdm # The Ethics of Open Access and Copyright Infringement http://icio.us/ue4fvp # EFF demands FCC close copyright "loophole" in net neutrality http://icio.us/0rysff # Digital Video: Peter Suber on the Future of Open Access http://bit.ly/dvJ2uR # Applications Programmer/Analyst Associate at University of Michigan http://bit.ly/961HjL # Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA http://bit.ly/cUgwo9 # Programmer/Analyst, Digital Library Tools at Indiana University http://bit.ly/c0T97y # DSpace 1.6 Released http://bit.ly/9WlK0l # Supreme Court Sends Tasini Case Back to Appeals Court http://icio.us/kas5b5 # Library Groups Join in Filing Motion on Copyright Appeal http://icio.us/vproo3 # BURO crashes through 9000 items barrier http://icio.us/2sw1jw # Open Access to Research Outputs Institutional Policies and Researchers' Views: Results From Two Surveys http://icio.us/eddeo1 # Aptara Survey Reveals Publishers’ Evolving Response to eBooks http://icio.us/khh3lz # Digital initiative starts http://icio.us/sflmuz # Fighting a Copyright Charge http://icio.us/th1tii # Top 10 Best Security Plugins for Wordpress http://icio. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824483 http://outofthejungle.blogspot.com/2010/03/copyright-for-fashion.html The Globe also reports on Harvard Professor and Guggenheim fellow Jeannie Suk's argument that fashion designers need a tailored (ahem!) copyright provision covering their designs. Professor Suk's article, The Law, Culture, and Economics of Fashion, in vol. 61 Stanford Law Review (March, 2009), is summarized in the abstract, in part: Despite being the core of fashion and legally protected in Europe, fashion design lacks protection against copying under U.S. intellectual property law. This Article frames the debate over whether to provide protection to fashion design within a reflection on the cultural dynamics of innovation as a social practice. The desire to be in fashion - most visibly manifested in the practice of dress - captures a significant aspect of social life, characterized by both the pull of continuity with others and the push of innovation toward the new. We explain what is at stake economically and culturally in providing legal protection for original designs, and why a protection against close copies only is the proper way to proceed. We offer a model of fashion consumption and production that emphasizes the complementary roles of individual differentiation and shared participation in trends. Our analysis reveals that the current legal regime, which protects trademarks but not fashion designs from copying, distorts innovation in fashion away from this expressive aspect and toward status and luxury aspects. The dynamics of fashion lend insight into dynamics of innovation more broadly, in areas where consumption is also expressive. We emphasize that the line between close copying and remixing represents an often underappreciated but promising direction for intellectual property today. The Globe article tells that Senator Charles Schumer of New York is sponsoring a bill to create copyright protection for fashion designers. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824370 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/Kn6MLyLM7B0/ E-books are not the only medium that has to suffer from Digital Rights Management (DRM). In the past, we covered the backlash against the restrictive DRM bundled with Electronic Arts’s computer game Spore—including a one-star Amazon review campaign that was a precursor to the Amazon/Macmillan one-star review campaign Ficbot mentioned a few weeks ago. In recent days, another computer game’s DRM has been taking the spotlight. Ubisoft has come out with a much more restrictive than usual DRM system, in place on its game Assassins Creed 2, that actually requires gamers to be connected to the Internet continuously throughout their entire gaming session—even if they are only playing a single-player game. There are on-line-only e-book readers, of course—web apps such as Ibis—but just imagine if your Kindle required you to be connected to Whispernet at all times or else your e-books would not open. What if you had to dial in to Fictionwise every time you wanted to read an eReader book? Internet Lockdown vs. Unreliable Internet The rationale behind this restrictive DRM was that it would supposedly be more effective and harder for pirates to crack, so the games would be limited to people who actually paid the money to buy them. The problem is that this ends up hurting gamers with less reliable connectivity—most notably, American soldiers stationed overseas. The issue is Internet connectivity. "Net connectivity on some of the larger [Forward Operating Bases]—I’m on Victory Base, it’s HUGE and very built-up—is not terrible. However, we all have severe bandwidth caps with the ‘government sponsored Internet,’ drops in connectivity, or we have to pay a high price for ‘civilian’ Internet," [one soldier] explained. Other groups affected would include people in rural areas that don’t have access to broadband, people who can’t afford it, and travelers. ... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0100 824041 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/1aQynGWXOUs/carl-e-lert-366.html CARL E-Lert # 366, March 5, 2010 from Canadian Association of Research Libraries. Some of this week's items: Clement on Copyright: A Made-in-Canada Approach; Select press coverage of what's in Budget 2010 for research; Library Copyright Alliance Releases Diagram Charting Many Ways Forward For Google Books Settlement; Blue Ribbon Task Force Issues Final Report on Economics of Ensuring Long-Term Access to Digital Information (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:45:27 +0100 824020 http://www.llrx.com/features/geolocation.htm Nicole L. Black highlights how our net activities are carefully monitored and meticulously tracked by some of the biggest players, including Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook. Our individual online footprints, from the Web sites we visit, the items we purchase, the people with whom we communicate, to the locations where we access the Internet, are extremely valuable commodities that are increasingly sought after. (Source: LLRX.com) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:15:25 +0100 824843 http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023681.html An investigation by Katie Scott: "A proposal that could give select institutions the power to take snapshots of websites without... (Source: beSpacific) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824134 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/05/gbs-march-madness-paths-forward-for-the-google-books-settlement/ The American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries have released "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement." Here's an excerpt from the press release: This diagram, developed by Jonathan Band, explores the many possible routes and outcomes of the Google Books Settlement, including avenues into the litigation and appeals process. Now that the fairness hearing on the Google Books Settlement has occurred, it is up to Judge Chin to decide whether the amended settlement agreement (ASA), submitted to the Court by Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers, is "fair, reasonable, and adequate." As the diagram shows, however, Judge Chin’s decision is only the next step in a very complex legal proceeding that could take a dozen more turns before reaching resolution. Despite the complexity of the diagram, it does not reflect every possible twist in the case, nor does it address the substantive reasons why a certain outcome may occur or the impact of Congressional intervention through legislation. As Band states, "the precise way forward is more difficult to predict than the NCAA tournament. And although the next step in the GBS saga may occur this March, many more NCAA tournaments will come and go before the buzzer sounds on this dispute." Related Posts "The Amended Google Books Settlement is Still Exclusive" "Academic Author Objections to the Google Book Search Settlement" Stanford University Signs Amended Google Book Search Settlement Agreement "The Long and Winding Road to the Google Books Settlement" "Google Book Search and the Future of Books in Cyberspace" (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:03:58 +0100 823993 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/X9rWOMIh1Ec/ The American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries have released "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement." Here's an excerpt from the press release: This diagram, developed by Jonathan Band, explores the many possible routes and outcomes of the Google Books Settlement, including avenues into the litigation and appeals process. Now that the fairness hearing on the Google Books Settlement has occurred, it is up to Judge Chin to decide whether the amended settlement agreement (ASA), submitted to the Court by Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers, is "fair, reasonable, and adequate." As the diagram shows, however, Judge Chin’s decision is only the next step in a very complex legal proceeding that could take a dozen more turns before reaching resolution. Despite the complexity of the diagram, it does not reflect every possible twist in the case, nor does it address the substantive reasons why a certain outcome may occur or the impact of Congressional intervention through legislation. As Band states, "the precise way forward is more difficult to predict than the NCAA tournament. And although the next step in the GBS saga may occur this March, many more NCAA tournaments will come and go before the buzzer sounds on this dispute." Related Posts "The Long and Winding Road to the Google Books Settlement" Digital Video: The Google Books Settlement: Issues and Options The Google Books Settlement: Who Is Filing And What Are They Saying? Google Book Settlement Fairness Hearing Postponed "Antitrust and the Google Books Settlement: The Problem of Simultaneity" (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:03:06 +0100 824228 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/05/archiving-britains-web-the-legal-nightmare-explored/ An investigation by Katie Scott. From the Report: A proposal that could give select institutions the power to take snapshots of websites without their owners’ permission is being ruminated by our Government. Civil servants at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport are now processing opinions on whether we should be archiving websites for future generations. [Snip] It is this act [2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act] that stipulates that a copy of every printed publication made in this country is sent to The British Library, and, on request, to five other “deposit libraries”, which include the National Library of Scotland; the National Library of Wales and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The institutions argue that the act needs to be adapted to include websites, allowing them to archive websites without contacting the owners. The British Library has, in fact, been archiving websites for six years. Last week, it unveiled the culmination of this work — an archive of 6,000 websites it deems culturally significant — called the UK Web Archive. These include the websites of high street shops that fell prey to the recession; and the website for Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth art installation in Trafalgar Square. The archive has been available to the public since the end of last year. However, as Stephen Bury, head of European and American collections told Wired: “The new website is more useful as you can search by subject.” But the archivists are being held back by the law, he says. The team currently has to contact the copyright holder of every website it wants to archive and this process has just a 24 percent response rate. The Internet Archive including Heritrix and Archive-It are mentioned. The WebCite Project is also noted. Access the Complete Article Source: Wired (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:56:01 +0100 823881 http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2010/03/05/the-mind-of-the-researcher-daniel-russell-akla10.html Daniel Russell, Google Search Quality & User Happiness 2010 Alaska Library Association Conference, opening keynote speaker Lewis & Clark left without a decent map it’s a complicated world out there and you don’t want to end up like the Donner Party (hey, go that way; it looks good) what does the current information map look like? let’s be adventurers but keep our eyes and minds open did a demo of Google Earth cost to put the flyover together = $0 and four minutes of time Google will crawl it within 48 hours when Lewis & Clark published about their trip, it took 10 years we see the world differently, and the library isn’t what it used to be stacks are no longer a core competence — the information landscape has radically changed 1200 exabytes of new content are generated each year (1.2 yottabytes if that helps or 1.2 billion terrabytes) 3.6 zetabytes per person per year (mostly music and video) libraries don’t have to curate and manage that — it stream to you text words per pseron per year = .1% of that total the good news is that the amount of reading per person per year has gone up by 3X since 1980 (primarily due to internet access); happening online, not print so need to develop new skills and new literacies showed Google Books can click on the places in a book and travel to all of them can actually recapitulate Huck Finn’s journey down the river LoC has 10 terabytes of text data or .01 petabytes he has 2 LoCs at home an exabyte = 50,000 years of DVD or 10 billion copies of The Economist (there aren’t enough trees in Alaska to print them all) we’re supporting this renaissance of access to print culture at the same time we’re expanding online content 1. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:23:16 +0100 823913 http://www.lisnews.org/judge_tosses_universal039s_defenses_youtube_case Universal Music failed to convince a federal judge in San Jose that a Pennsylvania homemaker knew she was infringing its copyrights when she posted a YouTube video of her toddler son dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." Stephanie Lenz said Universal forced YouTube to remove her video, and then YouTube sent her a "takedown notice" saying subsequent copyright infringement activity would lead to the deletion of her account. She sued the record label under a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which states that a copyright holder "who knowingly materially misrepresents" that someone misused its material "shall be liable for any damages ... incurred by the alleged infringer." U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel denied Universal's motion to dismiss the complaint in an August 2008 ruling that some hailed as a victory for fair-use rights. Full article (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:26:15 +0100 823763 http://lisnews.org/judge_tosses_universal039s_defenses_youtube_case Universal Music failed to convince a federal judge in San Jose that a Pennsylvania homemaker knew she was infringing its copyrights when she posted a YouTube video of her toddler son dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." Stephanie Lenz said Universal forced YouTube to remove her video, and then YouTube sent her a "takedown notice" saying subsequent copyright infringement activity would lead to the deletion of her account. She sued the record label under a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which states that a copyright holder "who knowingly materially misrepresents" that someone misused its material "shall be liable for any damages ... incurred by the alleged infringer." U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel denied Universal's motion to dismiss the complaint in an August 2008 ruling that some hailed as a victory for fair-use rights. Full article (Source: LISNews.org) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:26:15 +0100 823730 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/kWB7my_um7s/ Changes: A Vietnamese interface translation has been added. LitRes integration, which was broken in the previous version, has been fixed. HarperCollinsPublishers announced the launch of its Print on Demand (POD) service which will allow Australian and New Zealand readers the chance to purchase individual copies of books that were previously out of print. See the Google Book Monster attack at Book Patrol along with a mind-boggling chart from the Library Copyright Alliance. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:27:22 +0100 823869 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/LDi_vyP78eI/ Editor’s Note: Back in May of last year we published an article about the start of Adamo Books in Hungary. At that time I wrote to Atilla and asked him to keep us informed as to how he was doing. I am very proud that I received the following email: I am Attila Lukács from Adamo Books, the Hungarian ebook site that started last year. You wrote that you would like to have more info on how things are going at Adamo Books. Here is their report PB Our site, Adamo Books (www.adamobooks.info) started to operate on June 15, 2009 offering password-protected PDFs. At the beginning we only had 23 titles to offer for download. It took a while for us to realize that we had to change our security method, but a couple of months later we did: we dropped password-protected ebooks and chose to sell PDF files into which customer’s data are copied into while being downloaded. At the same time we started to use Google Analytics to have information on site visitors. We noticed that most visitors came from the capital Budapest. We thought that most of our customers would be from Budapest,but we were wrong: although our first downloader, a woman was from Budapest, later most customers downloaded ebooks from other towns or settlements in Hungary. Int he first five months of our operation, we had customers from the following places: Budapest, Budaörs, Dunaújváros, Nemesnádudvar, Szarvas, Halásztelek, Vértessomló, Sóskút, Gödöllő, Albertirsa, Nyíregyháza, Tatabánya and Veszprém. But because our sales numbers are still tiny (weeks ago I joked my business partner Peter about selling our sales data to BookScan…) it doesn’t mean a lot. What’s more, latest data indicate that „Budapesters” will buy more ebooks from our site than customers from any other settlements or towns in Hungary. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:00:16 +0100 823645 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/bvfqR_rANcg/ Journalist-blogger Alan D. Mutter writes on his blog Reflections of a Newsosaur that the first big web copyright content crackdown is going to commence later this month. Jim Pitkow, CEO of Attributor—the company we covered a few days ago for its survey claiming that e-book piracy had cost the publishing industry $2.8 billion so far—says that “about a dozen” publishers and other media organizations are part of the coalition engaging Attributor to carry out this crackdown. They will start with sites that repost “80% or more of copyrighted stories more than 10 times per month.” After offering violators a chance to come into compliance, Attributor will then, under the DMCA, ask search engines to remove offending pages from search, and banner ad operators to stop serving ads for those pages—and if worst comes to worst, they will ask hosting services to shut the sites down. “We are not going after past damages” from sites running unauthorized content said Pitkow. The emphasis, he said is “to engage with publishers to bring them into compliance” by getting them to agree to pay license fees to copyright holders in the future. According to Pitkow, the sanctions can be effective even against offshore websites, because most of them use banner ad providers located in the United States. He also notes that Attributor has had “a 99% success rate” in taking down unauthorized e-book postings on the web. I found this entry interesting, but it left me with a good deal of puzzlement. I can certainly understand Attributor taking action against illicit e-book postings. In fact, since major companies got on the web ten to fifteen years ago, overt piracy on websites (such as the “W4R3Z” scene) has been rare given how easy it is to find and shut down. But since the organizations Pitkow talks about are “wire services, traditional print publishers and ‘top-tier blog networks,’” I find myself wondering exactly who this crackdown is going to target. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0100 823646 http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-2968 This bill has been passed by the Senate and House and now awaits the signature of the President before becoming law. [This event matched these trackers: Intellectual property ] Check our new spin-off GovTrackInsider.com for original and syndicated reporting of what is happening in Congress. (Source: Intellectual property -- Tracked by GovTrack.us) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824740 http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023674.html Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search: "Now that the fairness hearing on the Google Books Settlement has... (Source: beSpacific) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 823847 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LawLibrarianBlog/~3/pRI3Hd0YaZ0/piracy-as-a-positive-force.html OK, so I have absolutely no programming "chops" to crack DRM and don't even try but then I haven't bought an eReader to read a licensed book because, at least I know "this too shall pass." How? Hackers will break... (Source: Law Librarian Blog) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 823744 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/04/unintended-consequences-12-years-under-the-dmca/ The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA. Here's an excerpt from the announcement: EFF today released Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA. This is the sixth update to the report, which aims to catalog all the reported instances where the DMCA's ban on tampering with DRM have been abused to stymie fair use, free speech, and competition, rather than to attack "piracy." Congress enacted the DMCA's ban on bypassing DRM at the urging of entertainment industry lobbyists who argued that DRM backed by law would quell digital copyright infringement. Of course, 12 years later, that exactly hasn't worked out. Nor is it likely to ever work out. But lots of industries have recognized that these provisions of the DMCA are good for other things—like impeding scientific research and legitimate competition. The Unintended Consequences report collects these stories, including oldies like Lexmark's effort to block toner cartridge refilling and new cases like the lawsuit against RealDVD. Other new additions to the report include Apple's use of the DMCA to lock iPhone owners to Apple's own App Store for software, Apple's DMCA threats against Bluwiki for hosting discussions about iPod interoperability, and Texas Instruments' use of the DMCA to threaten calculator hobbyists trying to write their own operating systems. Related Posts Google Book Search Settlement Hearing Transcript "Academic Author Objections to the Google Book Search Settlement" "The Long and Winding Road to the Google Books Settlement" Lessig: "For the Love of Culture: Google, Copyright, and Our Future" "Google Book Search and the Future of Books in Cyberspace" (Source: DigitalKoans) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:03:40 +0100 823998 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/Nipa8yWvzQY/ The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA. Here's an excerpt from the announcement: EFF today released Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA. This is the sixth update to the report, which aims to catalog all the reported instances where the DMCA's ban on tampering with DRM have been abused to stymie fair use, free speech, and competition, rather than to attack "piracy." Congress enacted the DMCA's ban on bypassing DRM at the urging of entertainment industry lobbyists who argued that DRM backed by law would quell digital copyright infringement. Of course, 12 years later, that exactly hasn't worked out. Nor is it likely to ever work out. But lots of industries have recognized that these provisions of the DMCA are good for other things—like impeding scientific research and legitimate competition. The Unintended Consequences report collects these stories, including oldies like Lexmark's effort to block toner cartridge refilling and new cases like the lawsuit against RealDVD. Other new additions to the report include Apple's use of the DMCA to lock iPhone owners to Apple's own App Store for software, Apple's DMCA threats against Bluwiki for hosting discussions about iPod interoperability, and Texas Instruments' use of the DMCA to threaten calculator hobbyists trying to write their own operating systems. Related Posts "Looking for Fair Use in the DMCA's Safety Dance" Jonathan Band’s Testimony on the DMCA Film Clip Compilation Exemption Library of Congress Releases Audio Files of Washington DMCA Exemption Hearings “The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books” (Source: DigitalKoans) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:03:24 +0100 824233 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/04/the-march-2010-issue-of-arls-e-news-is-now-online/ Access the March, 2010 Issue Here are Just a Few of the Articles Included in the Issue: + Library Copyright Alliance Releases Issue Brief on Streaming Films for Educational Purposes + IMLS Solicits Thoughts on the Future of Museums and Libraries in “UpNext” Wiki + SPARC Announces Sparky Award Winners, Opens People’s Choice Contest—Deadline to Vote March 7 + Save the Date for Open Access Week 2010: October 18–24 + UK Report Analyzes Disciplinary Approaches to Data Sharing + ARL Annual Statistical Surveys Update Source: Association of Research Libraries (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:36:25 +0100 823503 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/04/google-book-search-march-madness-paths-forward-for-the-google-books-settlement-diagram/ Just Released. Here’s a well done “info rich” diagram (it’s cool too!) developed by Jonathan Band and released by the Library Copyright Alliance. If the chart sorta/kinda reminds you of NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets, that’s the concept. However, you’ll not find b-ball pairings here but rather some of the potential paths (more are possible) that the Google Book Search case could take going forward. Access the Diagram (PDF) Jonathan Band Writes: [This] chart attempts to diagram some of the possible paths forward. Notwithstanding the complexity of the chart, it does not reflect all the possible permutations. For example, it does not mention stays pending appeals nor whether litigation would proceed as a class action. Moreover, the chart does not address the substantive reasons why a certain outcome may occur, e.g., the basis for Judge Chin accepting or rejecting the settlement. And it doesn’t begin to address the issue of Congressional intervention through legislation. In short, the precise way forward is more difficult to predict than the NCAA tournament. And although the next step in the GBS saga may occur this March, many more NCAA tournaments will come and go before the buzzer sounds on this dispute. Access the Diagram (PDF) The diagram was designed by Tricia Donovan from ARL. Source: Library Copyright Alliance ALA, ARL, and ACRL are Members (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:00:09 +0100 823509 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/03/04/uk-digital-economy-bill/ A recent Out-Law.com tweet caught my eye with the headline YouTube threatened by changes to Digital Economy Bill. The article has some good links and background information, including: Courts will have the power to block access to entire websites from the UK because of allegations of copyright infringement under an amendment to Government legislation that has been adopted by the House of Lords. The amendment currently being debated in the Lords deals with injunctive powers to block content rather than the current practice where YouTube removes copyright infringing content when given notice by the copyright owner. We haven’t talked about the Digital Economy Bill at Slaw, nor do we usually spend time discussing foreign legislation. There are excellent resources from the UK Parliament – much like our LEGISinfo site – to give background information on the bill, track the progress, and of course, see all of the documentation and latest version of the bill. The bill makes some very significant chamges to the Communications Act 2003. That act is intended: “to confer functions on the Office of Communications; to make provision about the regulation of the provision of electronic communications networks and services and of the use of the electro-magnetic spectrum; to make provision about the regulation of broadcasting and of the provision of television and radio services; to make provision about mergers involving newspaper and other media enterprises and, in that connection, to amend the Enterprise Act 2002; and for connected purposes.” Considering the global impact of these changes to UK legislation, should they come to pass, we had best inform ourselves. (Source: Slaw) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:00:07 +0100 824452 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/-KrMx-CY0Ls/ Rupert Murdoch has confirmed that the Wall Street Journal will be on the iPad. Meanwhile, the Washington Post just launched a paid subscription mobile news app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. The price isn’t bad—$1.99 for 12 months—but this could go up after the first year. From Nate’s Ebook News comes word that Opera has updated its e-book reader widget. Only reads DRM-free EPUB, but Nate seemed to find it a decent reading experience. The EFF has updated “Unintended Consequences”, its annual “__ years under the DMCA” whitepaper. The time count now stands at 12, and the paper piles up ever more cases of abuses of process’s chilling effects on free speech, scientific research, competition, and innovation. (Found via BoingBoing.) MacRumors has found an Apple job posting for a manager for an “Asia Pacific & Canada” iBooks division. A number of other jobs postings are mentioned, too, including account managers. Wired’s “Gadget Lab” blog reports that the iPhone news-reading app Instapaper Pro has updated to version 2.2, with a number of new features including an option for page-turning rather than scrolling, dictionary lookup, and an in-app browser. I use Instapaper quite a lot and find it really handy; the new features are great! Engadget has a couple of posts about some new Internet tablets coming out from Archos. The Archos Home Slates are 7” and 8” LCD tablets that are meant for home/family use. With only 2 GB of on-board storage, they seem to be pretty clearly meant for surfing and viewing on-line movies while connected to the Internet. However, depending on what apps are available, they could also make decent e-readers; after all, you could still fit quite a number of e-books into 2 gigabytes. Here’s a hilarious review of the Nook, “The Real Man’s Electronic Reader,” from The Faster Times. Don’t miss it. I visited the Nook counter with my boyfriend, John, who, most decidedly, is not a wimpy hipster. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:15:00 +0100 823474 http://creativelibrarian.com/882/unintended-consequences-twelve-years-under-the-dmca-electronic-frontier-foundation/ This document collects reported cases where the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been invoked not against pirates, but against consumers, scientists, and legitimate competitors. It will be updated from time to time as additional cases come to light. Previous versions remain available. via Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years under the DMCA | Electronic Frontier Foundation. (Source: Creative Librarian) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:36:01 +0100 824251 http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6721705.html?rssid=191 (Source: Book News) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:00:00 +0100 824038 http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/03/looking-for-a-president-with-clout.html As names of potential candidates for the presidency of the University of Massachusetts surfaced in academic circles, professors and education officials said the university system needs a leader with academic clout and political savvy to push the Commonwealth to bolster higher education funding. Jack Wilson, president of UMass since 2003, announced yesterday that he would retire in June 2011. While many in the system touted Wilson’s ability to raise money through entrepreneurial ventures, research grants, and intellectual property income, some faculty criticized him for allowing state support to erode during his tenure, leading to higher tuition and fees for students but fewer professors to teach them. Read more at: (Source: The Kept-Up Academic Librarian) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 823278 http://epist.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/e-book-for-the-classroom-of-the-classroom-and-by-the-classroom/ Today I had my mental model* of the e-book completely shook up. I went to a brown bag presentation here on the UIUC campus called “Encounters with E-Texts“.  Catherine Prendergast from the Undergraduate Rhetoric Program talked about the adoption of an in-house developed e-textbook for the freshman composition classes.  Here’s the description that went out to campus listservs: “Cathy Prendergast discusses the process of adopting an e-text from preliminary research and implementation to student evaluation and feedback. Join us for a peek between the pages of teaching with e- textbooks.” My notes below from the brown bag might not be entirely accurate, so please keep a look out for the video of the talk which will be up on the brown bag website eventually. The Undergraduate Rhetoric Program: 4,000 students per year 65 Teaching Assistants (graduate students) 27 Adjunct Instructors new paper textbooks every 3 years, roughly students usually have to pay about $130 for the paper textbooks Prendergast devoted a year and collaborated with several campus departments to develop a UIUC-centric textbook that would work better for the Rhetoric Program, be accessible, be cheaper for the students, be more flexible and allow more creativity. Now, when I first saw the brief description for this brown bag, I imagine the kind of e-books I’m used to reading on my iPhone:  basic epub files that I downloaded from Feedbooks.com or Project Gutenberg, mostly fiction that doesn’t have any fancy formatting, looks pretty much just like a paper book. The e-textbook for the Rhetoric Program, however, is a different animal altogether.  The keywords here are *flexible* and *interactive*.  I don’t mean the old-fashioned “ooo, we have hyperlinks” interactive. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:08:48 +0100 824189 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/6N7U3V054-k/ Duke University's Digital Futures Task Force has written a "Draft Discussion Document for Duke Open Access Policy" for consideration. Here's an excerpt: Each Faculty member grants to Duke University permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to reproduce and distribute those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to Duke University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do so, provided that the articles are not sold. The Duke faculty author remains the copyright owner unless that author chooses to transfer the copyright to a publisher. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Provost or Provost's designate will waive application of the license for a particular article or delay access for a specified period of time upon written request by a Faculty member. To assist the University in distributing the scholarly articles, each faculty member will make available, as of the date of publication or upon request, an electronic copy of the final author’s version of the article at no charge to a designated representative of the Provost’s Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost's Office. The Provost's Office will make the article available to the public in Duke’s open-access repository. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:05:48 +0100 824236 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/03/duke-university-draft-open-access-policy/ Duke University's Digital Futures Task Force has written a "Draft Discussion Document for Duke Open Access Policy" for consideration. Here's an excerpt: Each Faculty member grants to Duke University permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to reproduce and distribute those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to Duke University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do so, provided that the articles are not sold. The Duke faculty author remains the copyright owner unless that author chooses to transfer the copyright to a publisher. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Provost or Provost's designate will waive application of the license for a particular article or delay access for a specified period of time upon written request by a Faculty member. To assist the University in distributing the scholarly articles, each faculty member will make available, as of the date of publication or upon request, an electronic copy of the final author’s version of the article at no charge to a designated representative of the Provost’s Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost's Office. The Provost's Office will make the article available to the public in Duke’s open-access repository. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:05:19 +0100 824001 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/03/the-amended-google-books-settlement-is-still-exclusive/ James Grimmelmann has self-archived "The Amended Google Books Settlement is Still Exclusive" in SSRN. Here's an excerpt: This brief essay argues that the proposed settlement in the Google Books case, although formally non-exclusive, would have the practical effect of giving Google an exclusive license to a large number of books. The settlement itself does not create mechanisms for Google's competitors to obtain licenses to orphan books and competitors are unlikely to be able to obtain similar settlements of their own. Recent amendments to the settlement do not change this conclusion. Related Posts "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement" "Academic Author Objections to the Google Book Search Settlement" Department of Justice Files Statement about Amended Google Book Search Settlement Stanford University Signs Amended Google Book Search Settlement Agreement "The Long and Winding Road to the Google Books Settlement" (Source: DigitalKoans) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:03:55 +0100 824003 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/LZYQkz1Nj10/ James Grimmelmann has self-archived "The Amended Google Books Settlement is Still Exclusive" in SSRN. Here's an excerpt: This brief essay argues that the proposed settlement in the Google Books case, although formally non-exclusive, would have the practical effect of giving Google an exclusive license to a large number of books. The settlement itself does not create mechanisms for Google's competitors to obtain licenses to orphan books and competitors are unlikely to be able to obtain similar settlements of their own. Recent amendments to the settlement do not change this conclusion. Related Posts Stanford University Signs Amended Google Book Search Settlement Agreement Objections to the Google Books Settlement and Responses in the Amended Settlement: A Report Google Book Search Settlement Amended Pamela Samuelson: "DOJ Says No to Google Book Settlement" “The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books” (Source: DigitalKoans) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:03:22 +0100 824238 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/03/coming-tuesday-may-4-2010-day-against-drm/ The event is being organized by the Free Software Foundation. Social justice and online rights groups today announced that Tuesday May 4, 2010 will be this year’s International Day Against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). The Day Against DRM will unite a wide range of projects, public interest organizations, web sites and individuals in an effort to raise public awareness to the danger of technology that restricts users’ access to movies, music, literature and software; indeed, all forms of digital data. Many DRM schemes monitor a user’s activities and report what they see to the corporations that impose the DRM. [Snip] Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group said, “DRM is a disaster for legitimate uses of music, film and books. They are designed to lock people into specific software and devices, destroying your rights to free speech uses like criticism, education and review. DRM means you lose control, and are at the mercy of vendors.” Learn More About Free Software Foundation DefectiveByDesign Anti-DRM Campaign Source: Free Software Foundation (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:17:44 +0100 823162 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/03/justices-reinstate-settlement-with-writers/ From the NY Times: The Supreme Court on Tuesday resurrected a possible settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by freelance writers who said that newspapers and magazines had committed copyright infringement by making their contributions available on electronic databases. The proposed settlement was prompted by a 2001 decision from the Supreme Court in favor of six freelance authors claiming copyright infringement in The New York Times Company v. Tasini. After the Tasini decision, many freelance works were removed from online databases. Most publishers now require freelance writers to sign contracts granting both print and online rights. [Snip] The publishers in the suit included Reed Elsevier, The New York Times Company, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, Dow Jones & Company, now owned by the News Corporation, and Knight Ridder, which the McClatchy Company bought in 2006. [Snip] On Tuesday, in Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick, No. 08-103, the court unanimously reversed the lower court ruling. In an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court said some plaintiffs’ failure to comply with the registration requirement did not deprive the lower courts of jurisdiction to consider the settlement. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who had ruled in favor of the publishers in Tasini as a trial court judge in New York, did not participate in the Supreme Court ruling. Much More in the Complete Article Source: NYT See Also: Full Text of Supreme Court Opinion (PDF) Hat Tip: TeleRead (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:33:45 +0100 823166 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/1R_makhBIQk/ A few months ago, I answered a questionnaire for John Hilton III, who was writing a journal article about motivations for creating Creative Commons-licensed derivative works. He was interested in interviewing me based on the version of Cory Doctorow’s book Content that I marked up for eReader. Now Hilton has gotten the paper published in First Monday, and here it is. He starts out by explaining what derivative works are, reasons for allowing them to be made from one’s own works, and that the study focuses on derivative works of the sort meant to extend the audience of the original rather than new creative efforts based on it. Hilton finds that there are two reasons people create derivative works: to make the work more accessible to others (e.g. converting into an audiobook for the blind), and to make the work more useful to oneself (e.g. converting into an eReader file for one’s PDA). The average time spent creating such a work, Hilton says, is 19 hours. Participants were on the whole glad they had created their derivative works, and had several ideas for encouraging the creation of more such works. I found this to be a decently-written study, even if the results did not exactly surprise me. It’s good that the Creative Commons is getting more attention. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:06:00 +0100 823124 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreakonomicsBlog/~3/9YLfvcXgKMA/ Is copycatting good for the fashion industry? (Source: Freakonomics Blog) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:30:30 +0100 823085 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/ekWXkG8G-Ss/ VentureBeat has a story about a new study claiming that e-book piracy has cost American publishers $2.8 billion so far. The study estimates that 10,000 copies of each e-book are downloaded via peer-to-peer (13,000 for best-sellers), and some books can lose as much as $1 million dollars each. The biggest source for illicit books is RapidShare, with a 35.6% share of e-book piracy, says the study. The study comes from Attributor, a company that sells anti-piracy services to authors and publishers, which immediately set off some alarm bells for me. Of course, the biggest reason to take such studies with a grain of salt is that they necessarily assume that if the “pirated” e-books had not been downloaded, they would instead have been purchased. In fact, it is likely that the majority of downloaded e-books are never even opened by the downloader. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0100 823135 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/VACfN7ju5uA/ This is a great comic entitled Why DRM Doesn’t Work or How to Download an Audio Book from the Cleveland Public Library. Unfortunately, the way is presented doesn’t let me reproduce it, copyright permitting, here. It is simply too big and if I made it smaller it would be unreadable. Be sure to go over and take a look. Thanks to Adam McDiarmid for the heads up. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:10:06 +0100 823136 http://creativelibrarian.com/878/why-drm-doesn%e2%80%99t-work/ via The Brads – a comic about web design » The Brads – Why DRM Doesn’t Work. Why file-sharing is still so popular. (Source: Creative Librarian) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:37:22 +0100 824252 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Justices_Reinstate_Settlement_With_Freelance_Writers The Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated an $18 million settlement between publishers and freelance writers in a copyright case about work included in (Source: pligg - all) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:00:07 +0100 822964 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/02/kansas-university-working-to-increase-public-access-to-published-research/ From the Article: Kansas University [Gary's alma mater, Go Jayhawks!] is trying to make the research done at the school available to a wider audience. A new policy asks KU researchers to retain some of the copyright on their work if they wish to, allowing journal articles, e-books and other scholarly work to be posted online on a KU Web site for all to see. The repository is at http:// kuscholarworks.ku.edu. [Snip] Ada Emmett, scholarly communications librarian, has been working with a KU task force to implement the policy. She said she hoped to have 25 percent of the total research KU does posted online over the next two years, though the output of research done at KU is difficult to quantify. Not all journals agree to give up the copyrights — and when that happens, the policy does not interfere with professors publishing their work as usual. Access the Complete Article Source: Lawrence Journal-World (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:46:51 +0100 822844 http://lisnews.org/justices_reinstate_settlement_freelance_writers The Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated an $18 million settlement between publishers and freelance writers in a copyright case about work included in online databases. The Supreme Court was unanimous in its decision, which overturned an appeals court ruling that threw out the settlement. The publishers had appealed to the high court in an effort to reinstate the settlement, reached in 2005 after about four years of negotiations over writers’ assertions that their contracts did not allow for publication of their work electronically. The publishers included Reed Elsevier, The New York Times Company, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, the News Corporation’s Dow Jones & Company and Knight Ridder, which was bought by the McClatchy Company in 2006. Full article in the New York Times (Source: LISNews.org) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:57:20 +0100 822925 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/02/research-from-northwestern-u-tell-me-more-finding-the-facts-that-online-news-leaves-out/ Automatically “enhancing” and updating a news story (with newer content) is currently being developed at the Intelligent Information Lab at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. From a New Scientist Article: Even the most conscientiously crafted news story can leave out information that might have changed your opinion. Some may even do so deliberately. A prototype web service changes that, by sourcing additional quotes, figures and other information to augment any given online news article. Unlike existing news aggregators or “related stories” features, the new service, called Tell Me More, presents (fresh details without repeating information in the original story) and other material left out of the original story (for a variety of reasons). [Snip] The software then trawls Google News, Yahoo News or other news aggregators to find related articles. These are analysed in the same way as the original story so that a comparison can be made to uncover any information not included in the initial article. [Snip] By subtracting named entities, quotes and numbers from one document to the other you can determine what information is genuinely new,” says Francisco Iacobelli of Northwestern University, who co-developed Tell Me More. “We then characterise this information as additional actors, figures or quotes and present the information next to the initial story.” Iacobelli intends Tell Me More to give readers a more balanced view of events by presenting them with additional and perhaps conflicting information not included by their initial news source. Two More Points: 1) As pointed out in the article, Tell Me More might have some serious copyright issues to overcome. 2) The software is not for public use. You can read about a test that New Scientist conducted using Tell Me More software near the conclusion of the article. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:27:54 +0100 822849 http://lisnews.org/copyright_not_only_thing_matters_online BBC Contributor Bill Thompson chronicles more evidence of a copyright system used as a cudgel; "It seems that copyright, a legal framework developed over 300 years to ensure a balance between the interests of the wider community and those of the creative artist has become so tipped towards those of the "rights holder" that few of us can go through a day without breaking the law in one way or another." (Source: LISNews.org) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:30:43 +0100 822803 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/qRCfsVj-KSM/ In this sixth post in my Kindle “shakedown” series, I find that the Kindle shakes and falls when it comes to note-taking. Reading my first book on the Kindle, I was satisfied with the way it let me highlight text. The functions for entering and editing notes were also acceptable. One immediate limitation I found was that notes must be linked to a particular location in the text. When I wanted to jot down a general note, I improvised by creating a general notes section at the beginning of the text. Jumping back to it was a bit of a pain. It is possible that a reader will never want to do another thing with their notes, other than view them again on some future re-reading of the book. Good old-fashioned marginalia. If so, that reader may be satisfied with the Kindle’s note-taking functions. Many readers like myself make notes so we can do something with them: homework, research, a book review, or a journal entry. These tasks require copy-pasting the notes into other files, operations not easily performed on a Kindle.In order to use the notes, I had to find a way to transfer them to my computer. I plugged the Kindle into my computer and inspected the files on its disk. Each book is associated with an “.azw” file, Amazon’s protected file format. You can open the file with the free Kindle for PC software. I was delighted to see the book content with highlights and notes neatly lined up beside it. I then discovered that I could not copy-paste from it! Furthermore, the software is tied to my purchased books. I cannot use it to view other files I may have read on the Kindle, nor does it show my newspaper subscription. The Kindle has an unprotected file, “My Clippings.txt”, in which I found the highlights and notes for all my books and subscriptions. I could copy-paste this content. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:30:24 +0100 822830 http://www.sla.org.uk/blg-jisc-collections-for-schools.php State-funded and independent schools across the UK can now benefit from nationally negotiated agreements on a choice of over 20 specially selected, high quality online subscription resources. These include copyright-cleared image and video libraries, newspaper archives and general and subject-focused reference databases, which provide support across the curriculum from Key Stage 1 to A/AS level and the International Baccalaureate. Full list of resources link Discounts of up to 75% as well as generous licensing terms have been achieved by JISC Collections for Schools through direct negotiation with publishers and suppliers on behalf of UK schools at a national level. The JISC Collections for Schools initiative, funded by Becta, is an extension of the work of JISC Collections in the Further Education and Higher Education sectors, where 100% of universities and over 85% of further education colleges take advantage of the discounts and terms JISC Collections has negotiated with digital content providers through its well-established central licensing role.Examples of pricing Discounts are available to individual schools but the greatest savings can be achieved by schools subscribing together in a buying group. A growing number of School Library Services, as well as individual school librarians, are taking an active role in coordinating buying groups. Areas where buying groups are under development include the South West, Berkshire, North Yorkshire, Shropshire, Northumberland, Durham and London. Contact Liz Parkin at JISC Collections for Schools ( jcs-info@jisc.ac.uk ) to join an existing group or to propose or coordinate one for your area.Buying groups The resources offered through the JISC Collections for Schools initiative offer a host of benefits to teachers and learners alike. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:13:57 +0100 824320 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14504 Collection Development Coordinator (Atlanta University Center, Georgia) POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT JOB TITLE: Collection Development Coordinator The Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center is an organization undergoing dynamic transformation. Our strategic direction toward building a 21st century learning community includes the strengthening of our digital and information technology initiatives. Our uniqueness among academic libraries is our service to four historically black institutions in the Atlanta University Center – Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and the Interdenominational Theological Center. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:30:01 +0100 822544 http://caslisottawainformation.blogspot.com/2010/03/open-data-policy-for-ottawa.html The Information Technology Sub-Committee of City Council considered the benefits of an open data policy at its meeting yesterday.Executive Summary of report prepared by city staff:Open data is a philosophy and practice requiring that certain data are made freely available to the public, in machine readable format without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.  Most commonly, Open Data focuses on non-textual material such as geographic information systems (GIS) data.  The Open Data movement is gaining momentum worldwide with significant steps being taken by government agencies (at all levels) in Europe and North America.In the public sphere, the goal of Open Data is to remove barriers to access to information created or managed by government institutions, while respecting privacy and sensitivity concerns.  Facilitating access to this information allows entrepreneurs, academics, community groups and others to study communities and develop applications that leverage the data to improve community experience and stimulate economic growth.The Mayor’s Task Force on eGovernment and City Council and Council have recognized the value and importance of Open Data, and have been key drivers for the City to adapt its policies and practices to embrace this movement.The City is now taking concrete and measured steps to join the ranks of other Canadian municipalities who have instituted Open Data programs.  Corporate Communications and ITS have partnered to create an infrastructure, raise awareness and connect with the public in the development of City of Ottawa’s Open Data initiative.  Staff  have worked closely with members of the public who have experience with Open Data initiatives and who have expressed an interest in Open Data at the City of Ottawa to inform and validate the City’s approach and vision. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 823362 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/01/harvard-business-school-adopts-open-access-policy/ The Harvard Business School has adopted an open access policy. Here's the policy: The Faculty of the Harvard Business School is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows of Harvard College permission to make available articles that he or she has prepared for journal peer review and to exercise the copyright in those articles. More specifically, each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of these articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. The policy will apply to all such articles authored or co-authored while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. Since the policy will apply only to articles prepared for peer review, it thus does not apply to Harvard Business School Cases and Notes, or to articles written for the Harvard Business Review or other publications that are not peer-reviewed. The Dean or the Dean's designate will waive application of the license for a particular article upon express direction by a Faculty member. Each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of the author's final version of each article to the Division of Research and Faculty Development (DRFD) no later than the date of its publication. DRFD will submit the article to the Harvard University open access repository; the Provost's Office may make it available to the public. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 822686 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogjunction/~3/nVvZ4BlDPSo/ Thanks to everyone who attended our first-ever online conference last month, especially those attendees who took a few minutes to respond to our post-event survey. The main goal for this conference was to give a conference experience to those who would are not able to attend other conferences due to budget issues or other resource constraints. We also wanted to give members an opportunity to try out online learning, social tools, and to collaborate with colleagues from across the miles. Finally, we wanted to pilot the online conference format to evaluate its effectiveness and see if it is something that we could conceive of doing more frequently. I think we can safely say that we met our goals across the board. Here’s what we learned: Of the 1160 people who registered, most were from public libraries (47%) and academic libraries (29%), and more than half serve populations of fewer than 25,000 people. We also had students and unemployed professionals in attendance. The top 5 states in terms of attendance were Indiana, Georgia, Illinois, California, and Minnesota. There were also 39 people from outside of the U.S. who registered. Average attendance at each of the 10 sessions was 291 people. Some folks went to just a few sessions, while some attended every session. We also heard from libraries who set up a room for multiple staff to watch and listen. The top responses to our survey question about what went well was that the in-session chat area was informative and engaging and that technical issues were fixed quickly. Also noted were that the presenters were knowledgable and prepared, that session timing was managed well, and that audience participation was excellent. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:37:48 +0100 824195 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/03/01/berkman-podcast-interviews-carl-malamud/ The latest Radio Berkman podcast has Dave Weinberger interviewing Carl Malamud about his efforts to make US law more accessible and copyright free. (Source: Slaw) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:55:56 +0100 824465 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/HDD8B5vlF7w/ Kassia Kroszer at Booksquare has a great wrap-up of the Tools of Change conference, in which she talks about her own and others’ presentations, links to interesting blog articles, and shares some general thoughts on the state of the e-publishing industry at this point. There are far too many interesting observations to summarize, so I’ll just pick out a few to mention here. Early on, Kroszer points out that “all publishing is already digital”—insofar as manuscripts are by and large now submitted electronically, rather than as typewritten or handwritten pages. But publishers are still using an old-fashioned print-based workflow, and there is room for some savings by going to a more streamlined digital workflow instead. Later, Kroszer talks about emerging markets around the world. Piracy in these markets, she says, may indicate that there is a demand that is not being served—which is an opportunity to develop a viable marketplace in those markets. “I firmly believe viable marketplaces are the first line of defense when it comes to piracy.” Near the end, she notes a distinct lack of participation by major trade publishers. Their representatives are attending the conferences, but not making the sorts of presentations on innovation or new initiatives that the smaller publishers are. I get the need for big surprises and playing cards close to the vest, but as I lead into my final point, I think the fact that large trade publishers aren’t sharing information plays into a larger industry criticism. Where is the innovation? Where is the leadership? Individuals and small publishers are openly sharing their work, but where are the big publishers? It is the actions by those trade publishers that we hear the most about—for example, when Macmillan’s insistence Amazon change its pricing model caused Amazon to pull Macmillan’s books. They are the ones who essentially make the news. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:15:00 +0100 822455 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/lwmOtkDnSP0/ I suspect that Macmillan’s upper management feel elated after getting Amazon to agree to an agency distribution and pricing model. But a few pin pricks to deflate that elation are probably warranted. Macmillan showed some, but not much, gumption when it stood up to Amazon. Would Macmillan have taken the stand it did in the absence of Apple paving the way? I doubt it; Macmillan hasn’t shown any strategic or tactical brilliance in the ebook wars — this was its first bold stroke. None of the publishers who are pushing the agency model have shown much initiative. All of the initiative has come from outside the publishing world, which is not a good sign. So I will again suggest a way for publishers to lead the way: an international repository. Yes, I’m tooting that horn again. eBooker anger will not go away and ebookers will not suddenly be willing to live with restrictive DRM and high prices without knowing that they will be able to read the book they lease today on the device of today, tomorrow, and of 10 years from now. Publishers are rubbing salt into the wound by agitating for higher ebook prices yet not addressing the most pressing issues – that publishers want a high price for a leased book that has a relatively short useful life because of DRM. (I understand that for some people the most pressing issue is geographical restriction, followed by DRM. I am also aware that some ebookers can easily remove DRM, but the vast majority of ebookers cannot and do not remove DRM.) When it took on Amazon, Macmillan was the public relations loser with its ultimate audience, the ebooker. If there was a winner in that debacle, it was Amazon, not that Amazon deserves any prize for caring about its customers. Contrary to public perception, I think Amazon caved to Macmillan’s demands so quickly because it gave Amazon an excuse to make a profit yet shift the blame for higher pricing. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:55:15 +0100 822458 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/umjyGAZ5hfU/ A few days ago I mentioned that independent book publisher Author Solutions had announced an e-book distribution deal with Scribd. Today it comes out they have announced a similar deal with Barnes & Noble for the Nook. As with the Scribd deal, AS e-books will be set at a default price of $9.99, but authors may choose to set their own prices instead. Erin Cox at Publishing Perspectives notes with some amusement that, shortly after Nintendo announced a classic e-books cartridge, Random House has now announced it will be making video games. The Wall Street Journal article is fairly sparse on details, but notes that this is an effort to find a new revenue stream due to economic pressure from publishing cutbacks and the likelihood that the increasing popularity of e-books will cause lower revenues. Also on Publishing Perspectives, Edward Nawotka posts an editorial wondering whether the e-book age means an end to the serendipity of finding a good book through browsing bookstores and junk shops. A couple of stories from the UK: TechDirt’s Mike Masnick notes that UK consumer rights group Consumer Focus has issued a report saying copyright law is “outdated” and so confusing that millions of people are breaking laws without even realizing it. (Meanwhile, in America, an appeals court just struck down an “innocent infringement” defense—that it was possible to fileshare music without realizing it was wrong—in a music filesharing case.) Unfortunately, the Digital Economy Bill (which I mentioned earlier today) seems to be going in exactly the wrong direction. Catherine Neilan at TheBookseller.com reports that UK libraries are especially vulnerable to local council budget cuts, with an estimated 25,000 jobs endangered by the recession. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:45:30 +0100 822460 http://www.govtrackinsider.com/articles/2010-03-01/bills-on-floor This article on GovTrack Insider is relevant to one of your trackers. [This event matched these trackers: Intellectual property ] Check our new spin-off GovTrackInsider.com for original and syndicated reporting of what is happening in Congress. (Source: Intellectual property -- Tracked by GovTrack.us) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:35:00 +0100 822548 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/MRsvIf0fx_U/ Charlie Stross has posted the third in his series of “Common Misconceptions About Publishing” posts, and this one is a must-read for anyone who wonders about the terms of publishing contracts. Stross takes one of his old contracts and dissects it in extreme detail, explaining what provisions it has and what each provision means. Of particular interest to e-book fans will be the discussion of contracting books separately by geographic region, and how this relates to e-book editions. My UK publisher has the exclusive right to sell ebooks in the UK and associated territory, and my US publisher has ditto in their regions. This is why, as often as not, if you go to somewhere like Fictionwise or Diesel and try to buy an ebook edition of one of my books, it’ll let you get as far as proffering payment then tell you to sod off because you live in the wrong country. This is stupid, sucky, and serves nobody’s best interest (not even the publishers), but as I mentioned in the first of these posts, group-wide policy on e-rights is set by executives so high up the totem pole they can’t even see the ground, much less the realities of ebook publishing. Discussion of how things should be arranged, as opposed to how they are arranged, is deferred for another posting. In the comments that follow, Stross promises to devote a future entry expressly to how and why the e-book market is messed up and what might be done to fix it—and perhaps provides a bit of a preview when he explains that to do e-books properly, Tor would have to amend literally thousands of existing contracts that were made before e-books. Another interesting note has to do with Stross’s discussion of copyright, since Stross lives in the UK where copyright laws are subtly different from in America. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:15:00 +0100 822461 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/booksquare/~3/e7SuPAjPUB0/ My mark of a good conference is how I feel when it’s over. It’s a given that I’ll be exhausted (I am an introvert after all), so the test is whether or not I’m inspired to do something. Read, write, create, think. This is how I felt at the end of this year’s Tools of Change conference. Ready to roll. There are a lot of of conferences focused on the changes facing publishing. Some might say too many, but I disagree. Over the next few decades, we will see all sorts of shifts in publishing, and these conferences — which thanks to the magic of technology have extended beyond the in-person realm to include far-flung audiences via social media discussions, webinars, and more — tackle the wide range of opportunities, challenges, and imaginative thinking that leads to innovation. As I explore my takeaways from this year’s Tools of Change, I start from this position: all publishing is already digital. Granted, there may be a few authors out there who submit handwritten or typewritten manuscripts (and if so, dear publishers, allow me to express my sympathy). Those are the exceptions. Every manuscript begins its life in digital format. So. All publishing is already digital. What I see as one of the biggest challenges facing existing (or traditional) publishers is that they still haven’t managed to make the shift from a print-based workflow to a digital workflow. Motoko Rich of the New York Times wrote about the costs of producing a book, yet didn’t explore the fact that some (not a lot, granted) savings could be realized through more efficient workflow. (Actually, there is a lot of to chew on in Rich’s piece, including the ever-popular advances-not-earning-out problem, something that increases costs for everyone.) I’ve watched this conference evolve from a curiosity to a conversation. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:54:40 +0100 822366 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/02/28/filtering-piracy-surveillance-and-disobedience-2/ Sonia Katyal, Professor of Law at the Fordham University School of Law, has self-archived "Filtering, Piracy Surveillance, and Disobedience" in SSRN. Here's an excerpt: There has always been a cyclical relationship between the prevention of piracy and the protection of civil liberties. While civil liberties advocates previously warned about the aggressive nature of copyright protection initiatives, more recently, a number of major players in the music industry have eventually ceded to less direct forms of control over consumer behavior. As more aggressive forms of consumer control, like litigation, have receded, we have also seen a rise in more passive forms of consumer surveillance. Moreover, even as technology has developed more perfect means for filtering and surveillance over online piracy, a number of major players have opted in favor of “tolerated use,” a term coined by Professor Tim Wu to denote the allowance of uses that may be otherwise infringing, but that are allowed to exist for public use and enjoyment. Thus, while the eventual specter of copyright enforcement and monitoring remains a pervasive digital reality, the market may fuel a broad degree of consumer freedom through the toleration or taxation of certain kinds of activities. This Article is meant largely to address and to evaluate these shifts by drawing attention to the unique confluence of these two important moments: the growth of tolerated uses, coupled with an increasing trend towards more passive forms of piracy surveillance in light of the balance between copyright enforcement and civil liberties. The content industries may draw upon a broad definition of disobedience in their campaigns to educate the public about copyright law, but the market’s allowance of DRM-free content suggests an altogether different definition. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 822696 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/zuI368SUwZU/ Sonia Katyal, Professor of Law at the Fordham University School of Law, has self-archived "Filtering, Piracy Surveillance, and Disobedience" in SSRN. Here's an excerpt: There has always been a cyclical relationship between the prevention of piracy and the protection of civil liberties. While civil liberties advocates previously warned about the aggressive nature of copyright protection initiatives, more recently, a number of major players in the music industry have eventually ceded to less direct forms of control over consumer behavior. As more aggressive forms of consumer control, like litigation, have receded, we have also seen a rise in more passive forms of consumer surveillance. Moreover, even as technology has developed more perfect means for filtering and surveillance over online piracy, a number of major players have opted in favor of “tolerated use,” a term coined by Professor Tim Wu to denote the allowance of uses that may be otherwise infringing, but that are allowed to exist for public use and enjoyment. Thus, while the eventual specter of copyright enforcement and monitoring remains a pervasive digital reality, the market may fuel a broad degree of consumer freedom through the toleration or taxation of certain kinds of activities. This Article is meant largely to address and to evaluate these shifts by drawing attention to the unique confluence of these two important moments: the growth of tolerated uses, coupled with an increasing trend towards more passive forms of piracy surveillance in light of the balance between copyright enforcement and civil liberties. The content industries may draw upon a broad definition of disobedience in their campaigns to educate the public about copyright law, but the market’s allowance of DRM-free content suggests an altogether different definition. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:03:38 +0100 822381 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/JNbCfwW818o/2561-the-italian-google-case.html This week an Italian court sentenced three Google executives to six months in prison for allowing users to post a video on YouTube. The video, which was uploaded in 2006, showed kids bullying a child with Down’s syndrome. Sickening video Let there be no doubt about our position on publishing such videos online. It sickens us, and it must be possible to bring such cases to court. But it is the one that uploaded the video that should be brought to justice. The Social Web The problem is that the Italian judge clearly does not understand the nature of the Social Web. He has a mental lock-in based on the old paradigm of print and broadcasting media, from a time when publishing was for the few and the editor could control what content appeared in their newspapers or on their TV channels. The whole idea of allowing people to comment on blogs, participate in online discussions and upload their videos makes it impossible to exercise an editorial regime of the old type. Google and YouTube cannot watch every video uploaded to their sites before allowing them to be published. There are simply too many of them. The Italian government of Berlusconi is even planning a new law making online video services like YouTube liable for invasions of privacy, violations of copyright and other transgressions that occur in user-generated content. Don’t blame the postman Paolo Brini, a spokesman for Movimento Scambio Etico, a group that campaigns for an unfettered Internet made the following point after the trial: “In all of history, nobody ever thought you had to put in jail a postman because a package contained something illegal.” He has a point, although you would expect the Post Office to help the authorities track down illegal materials like weapons and illegal drugs. Google did act What you can expect Google to do is to remove illegal material when they find out about it. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:11:32 +0100 822791 http://www.librarystuff.net/2010/02/28/this-law-is-my-law/ Radio Berkman – “This week we sit down with Carl Malamud, who with the group Public.Resource.org is pushing to put law in the public domain. We covered the issue of copyright on law a few months ago in Radio Berkman 129 where Steve Schultze introduced us to RECAP – a software that helps legal researchers bypass hefty fees for access to legal documents.” (Source: Library Stuff) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:00:14 +0100 822155 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/DMX2EoB5WPw/ Here are a pair of governmental policy changes for the Internet that may have the potential to affect e-book-related matters. The bigger change is that the Obama administration has announced the government is revising its policy on the Internet. Whereas for the first few decades of its life, the government chose to take a strictly hands-off approach, now it will be holding discussions on key areas of Internet policy, such as cybersecurity, Internet governance, and copyright protection. The outcomes of such discussions will be “flexible” but may result in recommendations for legislation or regulation, [Assistant Commerce Secretary Lawrence Strickling] said in a speech at the Media Institute in Washington this week. In a sense, it was only a matter of time before the government stepped in. It has a history of regulating communication media, after all. This may also have been prompted, in part, by the recent court decision stating that the FCC was overreaching when it tried to enforce network neutrality. But looking at Strickling’s original presentation, the whole thing is awfully vague. And it’s worth pointing out that the government has not quite been as lassaiz-faire about the Internet as the article would seem to suggest. The Communications Decency Act, the Child Online Protection Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—the government has already been more or less "regulating the Internet,” or trying to, since at least the mid ‘90s. And it is a bit worrying that this comes at the same time as various European governments are pushing for world-wide “three strikes” Internet access revocation provisions to be recommended as part of the ACTA counterfeit and copyright treaty at the same time as our own government is one of the driving forces behind keeping ACTA away from the public eye. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:15:00 +0100 822166 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/Ar_JRgJyFMU/ Philpapers Breaks New Ground for Discipline Based Repositories http://icio.us/nl1wfu # Jewel in the Open Content Crown Needs Help http://icio.us/mjxpa1 # OASPA: act now or lose credibility forever http://icio.us/a3w2cr # 50+ CSS Techniques Designers Should Know http://icio.us/xzl4h3 # Epub reader plugin for Firefox http://icio.us/0quiwr # January 2010 Profile: Michael Healy [Executive Director, Google Book Rights Registry] http://icio.us/tgooxz # E-Books and ISBNs: a position paper and action points from the International ISBN Agency http://icio.us/uygmsb # Europe 'will not accept' three strikes in Acta treaty http://icio.us/b5cffd # New Mexico State Must Cut Materials Budget by 27% http://icio.us/i2qnrq # 500,000 journal articles listed on RePE http://icio.us/nprlmy # Three-strikes petition gets attention of 10 Downing Street http://icio.us/lty5j0 # Next Generation Connectivity: A Review of Broadband Internet Transitions and Policy from Around the World http://bit.ly/az3fHe # RSA System Administrator/Manager at Alliance Library System http://bit.ly/aULzUz # 2010 Publication Schedule for the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography http://bit.ly/bSjT26 # Systems Librarian at Florida Institute of Technology http://bit.ly/devcGr # Modelling Scholarly Communication Options: Costs and Benefits for Universities http://bit.ly/b2rXwj # When using open source makes you an enemy of the state http://icio.us/stzzzn # European Commission Gets Tough Treatment From Parliament Over ACTA http://icio.us/mj4vps # How efficient is our licensing system? http://icio.us/mwudov # The Big Brother of Europe?: France Moves Closer to Unprecedented Internet Regulation http://icio.us/lfih1b # RIAA ’statutory damages’ argument trashed? http://icio.us/aozzu1 # Third RIAA trial for Jammie Thomas-Rasset http://icio.us/xrkoek # Riggio: Barnes & Noble to Become E-Commerce Retailer http://icio. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:00:00 +0100 822384 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/02/28/last-weeks-digitalkoans-tweets-2010-02-28/ Philpapers Breaks New Ground for Discipline Based Repositories http://icio.us/nl1wfu # Jewel in the Open Content Crown Needs Help http://icio.us/mjxpa1 # OASPA: act now or lose credibility forever http://icio.us/a3w2cr # 50+ CSS Techniques Designers Should Know http://icio.us/xzl4h3 # Epub reader plugin for Firefox http://icio.us/0quiwr # January 2010 Profile: Michael Healy [Executive Director, Google Book Rights Registry] http://icio.us/tgooxz # E-Books and ISBNs: a position paper and action points from the International ISBN Agency http://icio.us/uygmsb # Europe 'will not accept' three strikes in Acta treaty http://icio.us/b5cffd # New Mexico State Must Cut Materials Budget by 27% http://icio.us/i2qnrq # 500,000 journal articles listed on RePE http://icio.us/nprlmy # Three-strikes petition gets attention of 10 Downing Street http://icio.us/lty5j0 # Next Generation Connectivity: A Review of Broadband Internet Transitions and Policy from Around the World http://bit.ly/az3fHe # RSA System Administrator/Manager at Alliance Library System http://bit.ly/aULzUz # 2010 Publication Schedule for the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography http://bit.ly/bSjT26 # Systems Librarian at Florida Institute of Technology http://bit.ly/devcGr # Modelling Scholarly Communication Options: Costs and Benefits for Universities http://bit.ly/b2rXwj # When using open source makes you an enemy of the state http://icio.us/stzzzn # European Commission Gets Tough Treatment From Parliament Over ACTA http://icio.us/mj4vps # How efficient is our licensing system? http://icio.us/mwudov # The Big Brother of Europe?: France Moves Closer to Unprecedented Internet Regulation http://icio.us/lfih1b # RIAA ’statutory damages’ argument trashed? http://icio.us/aozzu1 # Third RIAA trial for Jammie Thomas-Rasset http://icio.us/xrkoek # Riggio: Barnes & Noble to Become E-Commerce Retailer http://icio. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 822699 http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/02/wordle-closed-alternatives.html Users of the Wordle resource have been dismayed by the notice that's currently posted to the website, which states that Wordle.net is down until further notice. "I am seeking pro bono legal advice, to evaluate a trademark claim against my use of the word "Wordle" for this web site. If you're an intellectual property lawyer, with expertise in trademark law, and you wish to offer professional advice on this matter, please contact me." I think it would have been helpful if some more details had been given, since there's rumours rife on Twitter at the moment regarding who the conflict is with. Some suggest IBM (for reasons that I don't quite get), and other people are pointing a finger at the producers of an app called Wordle, which has been submitted as an app to the Apps store. I've left a comment on their blog page asking them to clarify this - boycott suggestions are already appearing on Twitter, so they're going to dragged into this one way or another. [Edit to add: There is a  live trademark for the use of the word owned by an American photographer - but no idea if he's involved with this issue at all.] It's also worth saying that this doesn't mean that Wordle is 'dead'. I think it's really stupid and irresponsible of people to say that it is. 'Down until further notice' does not mean 'dead' - it means, oddly enough, that it's down until further notice. Even if it can't continue under that name there's no reason why it shouldn't come back under another name. Meanwhile, what are the alternatives to Wordle? There are a variety of choices that people may wish to consider. TagCrowd is a free alternative that can be used without any kind of registration. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 822144