From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL.net), and other international copyright experts joined together today to launch Copyright Watch — a public website created to centralize resources on national copyright laws at www.copyright-watch.org. . .
. . . Copyright Watch is the first comprehensive and up-to-date online repository of national [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Intellectual Property Issues category.
International Activists Launch New Website to Gather and Share Copyright Knowledge
From India – Centre protests ‘copyright violation’ by Google Books
From the Financial Express:
Web portal Google Books’ initiative to create a digital library by scanning printed publications has triggered alarm bells in India, forcing the Centre to take up the matter with the US government. In a meeting held in the last week of October here, senior Indian officials told their US counterparts that the [...]
Revised Google Settlement Offers Minor Changes on Antitrust Issue, No Response on Library Pricing
From Library Journal:
Shortly before midnight last night, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers released a revised version (PDF) of the Google Book Search Settlement, with some clear concessions to foreign rightsholders (as noted by Publishers Weekly), a vague—and, to critics, fatally inadequate—concession on orphan works. There was also no response to [...]
Google Book Search Settlement Revised: No Reader Privacy Added
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Late Friday night the parties to the Google Book Search class action submitted a revised settlement agreement to the federal court in New York that is hearing the case.
Unfortunately, the parties did not add any reader privacy protections. The only nominal change was that they formally confirmed a position they had [...]
Modifications to the Google Books Settlement
From the Google Public Policy blog:
The changes we’ve made in our amended agreement address many of the concerns we’ve heard (particularly in limiting its international scope), while at the same time preserving the core benefits of the original agreement: opening access to millions of books while providing rightsholders with ways to sell and control their [...]
Copyright overreach goes on world tour
From the Washington Post:
. . . We may be watching a sequel to the DMCA story today. An international copyright agreement, negotiated under unusual secrecy, could impose a further round of restrictions on our use of digital technology.
This Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, represents an attempt by the United States and other countries to set [...]
EU Breaks Deadlock in Debate Over Right to Internet Access
From PC World:
After months of often bitter debate, European Union lawmakers reached agreement on how to preserve citizen’s rights to Internet access in a meeting that ended in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The issue, which pits citizens’ civil liberties against the rights of content owners such as record and movie companies to protect creative [...]
The Global Antitrust Battle Over Google’s Library
From Time:
Who knew there was so much fight in those dusty books? When Google announced plans in 2004 to scan millions of tomes tucked into library stacks across the country, admirers embraced the ambitious project as a digital undertaking as visionary as Magellan’s setting sail around the world. The project would throw open musty archives [...]
Open Book Alliance Releases Baseline Requirements for Revised Google Book Settlement Proposal
From the Open Book Alliance:
Like many others, the Open Book Alliance awaits the release on November 9 of a revised proposed settlement from Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. If repeated signals from Google and its partners over the last month are to be taken at face value, we don’t expect [...]
Google Settlement Due in Court November 9; Open Book Alliance Issues “Requirements”
From Library Journal:
Will the Google Book Search settlement agreement have changed much when it’s unveiled in federal court on November 9? The Open Book Alliance (OBA), which includes industry heavyweights like Microsoft and Amazon, the Internet Archive, and the New York Library Association and SLA, has issued a caution about the settlement document expected.