MIT Drops DRM-Laden Journal Subscription

MIT Drops DRM-Laden Journal Subscription
MIT Library News, publication date 16 March 2007
"The MIT Libraries have canceled access to the Society of Automotive Engineers’ web-based database of technical papers, rejecting the SAE’s requirement that MIT accept the imposition of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.

SAE’s DRM technology severely limits use of SAE papers and imposes unnecessary burdens on readers. With this technology, users must download a DRM plugin, Adobe’s “FileOpen,” in order to read SAE papers. This plugin limits use to on-screen viewing and making a single printed copy, and does not work on Linux or Unix platforms".

Another brick in the copyright wall

Another brick in the copyright wall
by STEVE JOHNSON
Chicago Tribune, publication date: 16 March 2007
"Viacom's legal action, undertaken after it and YouTube couldn't come to an agreement, probably signifies the long-simmering copyright question coming to a boil. What the courts may settle is this: Is copyright ownership enduring and inviolate, as old media companies believe? Or is it a more transitory function that technology is overrunning anyway, even as its weakening will ultimately be good for everyone?"

Adobe Steps Back From ALM Precipice

Adobe Steps Back From ALM Precipice
by ED FOSTER
Ed Fosters Gripelog, InfoWorld, publication date: 12 March 2007
"So why did Adobe change its mind? From what I've been hearing from readers, it appears that customers made it clear they weren't going to accept vendor-specific licensing tools. 'From what we've seen, Adobe did a reasonable job in keeping ALM relatively unobtrusive,' wrote one reader after his company had finished its analysis of ALM. 'But there's a slippery slope if we go down that road. What if 18 months from now Adobe's having a bad quarter and needs a quick boost to revenues? Will they hold to the privacy promises they're making now about not giving the sales side your licensing data? So we've told Adobe we won't be moving to 8.0 or any other product that's going to require ALM.'"

Dear Library of Congress...

Dear Library of Congress...
by KAREN SCHNEIDER
ALA TechSource, publication date: 7 March 2007
"It is both ironic and poignant that librarians are still worrying about “bibliographic control,” after ceding so much of the same to the companies that now rent them journal access per annum at usurious rates, digitize their book collections into DRM obscurity, or sell them ponderous, antiquated “management” systems that on close inspection do little more than serve as storehouses for the metadata specific to the formats of bygone eras, bold days when we saw our central roles as defenders and curators of our cultural heritage.



We have moved from the librarian as information artisan—a professional creating and using tools to manage information—to the librarian as surrogate vendor, facilitating what is essentially the offshoring of thousands of years of information into private hands. "

P2P Downloads Live On Long After Grokster Case

P2P Downloads Live On Long After Grokster Case
Brian Deagon | Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
publication date: 12 March,2007
"Even as the entertainment industry racks up wins in the courts and Congress, efforts to stop Internet users from swapping movies, music and other copyrighted content has proven far more difficult.

On an average day, about 9.3 million people worldwide log onto a software file-sharing services, up from 7 million in 2004, according to research firm Big Champagne, which tracks Internet usage. About a billions songs are traded illegally online per month.

Music sales have fallen 17% from its peak in 2000 of $12.7 billion, a trend the Recording Industry Association of America blames on illegal file swapping.

The Motion Picture Association of America says it lost $2.3 billion to Internet piracy in 2005."

Viacom sues YouTube over copyrights

Viacom sues YouTube over copyrights
By SETH SUTEL, AP Business Writer | publication date 13 March, 2007
"(AP) Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. is suing YouTube for $1 billion, claiming that the video-sharing site had built a business by using the Internet to 'willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale.' Other media companies also have major concerns about YouTube, but Viacom's was the first lawsuit filed by a major media owner. Several media companies have reached agreements to supply YouTube with clips, including CBS Corp., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and the British Broadcasting Corp., but many others remain reluctant to deal with the Web site because of copyright concerns."

Anxious Times for Net Radio

Anxious Times for Net Radio
by JASON FRY
The Wall Street Journal | Real Time, publication date: 12 March 2007
"Net-radio fans are angry, but they shouldn't be too hasty in blasting the Copyright Royalty Board. The real problem is a pair of misguided decisions made by Congress in the 1990s.

Tim Hanrahan and I wrote about this issue nearly five years ago, and it's depressing to see how little has changed. A brief recap: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, building on 1995's Digital Performance Rights in Sounds Recordings Act, said Net-radio firms had to pay performance royalties on songs played in addition to composer royalties on those songs. Terrestrial radio stations pay composer royalties, but they don't pay performance royalties, under the long-established rationale that record labels benefit from the promotional value of songs played on the radio."

Microsoft guns Open XML onto ISO fast track

Microsoft guns Open XML onto ISO fast track
by ERIC LAI
Computerworld, publication date: 12 March 2007
"The International Standards Organization (ISO) agreed Saturday to put Open XML, the document format created and championed by Microsoft Corp., on a fast-track approval process that could see Open XML ratified as an international standard by August.

That’s despite lingering opposition to Open XML by several key voting countries, including some of whom whose governments are moving forward to adopt the alternative Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) format, which the ISO approved as a standard last year."

In Congress's Crosshairs

In Congress's Crosshairs
by ELIZABETH REDDEN and DOUG LEDERMAN
Inside Higher Ed, publication date: 9 March 2007
"Throughout the hearing, members also alluded to the possibility that safe harbor requirements — those minimal standards a college must meet to combat piracy in order to avoid risk of litigation at an institutional level under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — could be expanded. If that happened, universities could face a bigger burden of responsibility, particularly when it comes to installing technology that could block peer-to-peer file sharing.

College leaders say there’s a good reason why such technology isn’t already commonly in place. Although a new “University Task Force on Requirements for Filtering Networks” has been established to facilitate the development of new filtering technologies, John Vaughn, executive vice president of the Association of American Universities, said that to date, no technology exists that satisfies the three-pronged test. Colleges, Vaughn said, want filtering technology that is cost-effective, protects student privacy, and can discriminate between illegitimate file sharing and legitimate uses of peer-to-peer technology for research and other academic purposes.

"

Policy Makers call for University Internet Filters

Policy Makers call for University Internet Filters
by ALEX CURTIS
Public Knowledge, publication date: 8 March 2007
"Unfortunately, the point of this hearing was less about finding actual solutions to the high-content-demand on university campuses, and more of a “notice of intent” from certain members of the committee to ISPs (commercial or educational) that the content industry intends to drain your safe harbor."

Senators: Not so fast on Broadcast Treaty

Senators: Not so fast on Broadcast Treaty
by ERIC BANGEMAN
Ars Technica, publication date: 7 March 2007
"In a letter sent to the Register of Copyrights and the director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the ranking Republican member of the Committee expressed their concerns about the scope of the treaty. 'The Revised Draft Broadcasting Treaty appears to grant broadcasters extensive new, exclusive rights in their transmissions for a term of at least 20 years, regardless of whether they have a right in the content they are transmitting,' read the letter."
Also covered at EFF

Best Practices in Tech Transfer

Best Practices in Tech Transfer
by MIKE MADISON
Madisonian.net, publication date: 7 March 2007
"Licensing directors at 11 leading American research universities have released “In the Public Interest: Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology,” a best-practices-style white paper summary of strategies for university-based technology transfer. The points are:
...
Point 8
Be mindful of the implications of working with patent aggregators"

Google, Baidu race to set up online library in China

Google, Baidu race to set up online library in China
by SOPHIE TAYLOR
Yahoo News, publication date: 7 March 2007
"Baidu has already secured a strategic partnership with Peking University Library in Beijing, one of Asia's largest academic libraries, in preparation for the launch of its online book service, publishing and Internet sources familiar with the situation told Reuters on Thursday."

C-SPAN press release about copyright

C-SPAN TAKES LEAD IN MAKING VIDEO OF CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS, WHITE HOUSE AND OTHER FEDERAL EVENTS MORE WIDELY AVAILABLE TO THE ONLINE COMMUNITY
C-SPAN press release, release date: 7 March 2007
"C-SPAN is introducing a liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency-- about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN television networks--which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution."

Copyright dispute puts Lennon film back on the shelf

Copyright dispute puts Lennon film back on the shelf
by STEVEN ROSENBERG
The Boston Globe, publication date: 7 March 2007
"In a letter that was sent to Berwick Academy, Dorothy Weber, Ono's attorney, asserted that Ono owns the tapes shot by Cox. 'Mrs. Lennon owns all rights, title and copyrights in and to all film, outtakes and videotapes embodying the images of the late John Lennon and herself as filmed by Anthony Cox in 1970,' wrote Weber."

Yahoo! China sued for alleged copyright breach

Yahoo! China sued for alleged copyright breach
Reuters, publication date: 7 March 2007
"Music industry giants including Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG.N: Quote, Profile , Research) are suing Yahoo! China for alleged copyright infringement by providing links to unlicensed music, trade organisation IFPI said on Wednesday.

Beijing's no. 2 Intermediate Court has accepted the case, which was filed in early January by 11 companies and seeks damages of 5.5 million yuan ($710,686), said Leong May-seey, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's (IFPI) Hong Kong-based regional director for Asia."

Patent fights are a legacy of MP3's tangled origins

Patent fights are a legacy of MP3's tangled origins
by DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER
The New York Times, publication date: 5 March2007
'The chairman of the MPEG group, Leonardo Chiariglione, is frequently given that designation in the international news media, though he rejects the title.

“I am not the father of MP3,” he said. “I am the inventor of the machine” that led to MP3 and other digital media technologies, by which he meant the MPEG group, which he helped establish.

For those confused about where to turn to obtain an MP3 license for a new device or piece of software, he offers little solace. “The rule is that the MPEG working group is not allowed to consider patent issues in our technical work, so there is nothing I can do about it,” he said, “even though I consider the situation in general not positive for the wide adoption of the standard, which is what I have been working on.”'

Justice Department takes aim at image-sharing sites

Justice Department takes aim at image-sharing sites
by DECLAN MCCULLAGH
CNet News.com, publication date: 2 March 2007
"Only universities and libraries would be excluded, one participant said. 'There's a PR concern with including the libraries, so we're not going to include them,' the participant quoted the Justice Department as saying. 'We know we're going to get a pushback, so we're not going to do that.'"

Microsoft attacks Google on copyright

Microsoft attacks Google on copyright
by JOHN GAPPER
Financial Times, publication date: 5 March 2007
"Mr Rubin will tell the AAP's annual meeting that Google's decision to take digital copies of all books in various library collections, unless publishers tell it not to, 'systematically violates copyright, deprives authors and publishers of an important avenue for monetising their works and, in doing so, undermines incentives to create'."

Return to Sender

Return to Sender
The Wired Campus Blog, publication date: 5 March 2007
The Chronicle of Higher Education
"But North Dakota officials told The Bismarck Tribune that they cannot pass those [RIAA prelitigation] messages along because they cannot conclusively match misbehaving students to the IP numbers. The university only keeps computer logs for 30 days, according to Dorette Kerian, its director of information technology, and the alleged copyright infractions took place more than a month ago."