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But the settlement would also create a class that includes millions of people who will never come forward. For the majority of books -- considered "orphan" works -- no one will claim ownership. The author may have died; the publisher might have gone out of business or doesn't respond to inquiries; the original contract has disappeared. Google would get an explicit, perpetual license to scan and sell access to these in-copyright but out-of-print orphans, which make up an estimated 50 to 70 percent of books published after 1923. No other provider of digital books would enjoy the same legal protection. The settlement also creates a Book Rights Registry that, in conjunction with Google, would set prices for all commercial terms associated with digital books. Broad access is the greatest promise of our digital age. Giving control over such access to one company, no matter how clever or popular, is a danger to principles we hold dear: free speech, open access to knowledge and universal education. Throughout history, those principles have been realized in libraries, publishers and legal systems. There are alternatives. Separate from the Google effort, hundreds of libraries, publishers and technology firms are already digitizing books, with the goal of creating an open, freely accessible system for people to discover, borrow, purchase and read millions of titles. It's not that expensive. For the cost of 60 miles of highway, we can have a 10 million-book digital library available to a generation that is growing up reading on-screen. Our job is to put the best works of humankind within reach of that generation. Through a simple Web search, a student researching the life of John F. Kennedy should be able to find books from many libraries, and many booksellers -- and not be limited to one private library whose titles are available for a fee, controlled by a corporation that can dictate what we are allowed to read.

The latest debate in the legal world is that intellectual property right (IPR) laws, meant to protect original creations, are serving private and not public interest. In order to highlight this fact, two students from Gujarat National Law University (GNLU), Gandhinagar, have authored a book on IPR laws. The book, Copyright Law Deskbook Knowledge, Access and Development, by Akhil Prasad and Aditi Agarwala examines the growing significance of IPR in today's knowledge-based economy. "In the chapter 'Debunking the Myth,' we have argued that the term intellectual property is a misnomer and should be replaced with the term intellectual asset. The term 'property' is tilted more towards private interests," says Prasad. The duo has also drawn attention to the fact that currently converting any book into Braille comes under copyright infringement and should be changed. "Whenever you convert a book into any other form without the author's knowledge, it is infringement of the copyright law and this holds true for books converted into Braille as well. Since it is difficult to take permission for each book before it is converted into Braille, we have drawn attention to the fact that this issue needs to be addressed," says Agarwala. Both Prasad and Agarwala started taking interest in IPR laws while pursuing their internship in Mumbai. "We had prepared an exhaustive 70-page petition on IPR during our internship. When we showed it to our former registrar he suggested we convert it into a booklet. However, we soon realised that there was a lot to write about and many issues needed to be addressed. So, we decided to author a 400-page book instead," says Agarwala.

"When Canada started a consultation on implementing these treaties in June, 2001, one of the first books I read was Jessica Litman's book "Digital Copyright". The website for the book is Digital-Copyright.com, and the similarity to the Digital-Copyright.ca name is not a coincidence. This book is the journey in the United States from 1993 and the Bruce Lehman Working Group, through the policy-laundering of their harmful ideas through WIPO in 1996, to the passage of the USA's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998. This is likely the best book to understand how the USA got their DMCA, and by extension why this harmful policy is now being pushed into Canada. It should be noted that even Bruce Lehman has stated publicly that his Clinton-era policies didn't work out well. Probably the best resource for understanding how the DMCA has harmed (and continues to harm) the United States is to read the DMCA archives of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This includes the paper Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA from April, 2006."

"Oded Shenkar, Professor of Business at Ohio State University, has written widely on the Chinese economy, notably in his acclaimed book "The Chinese Century" (2004). He has argued that China has been one of the main drivers and a primary beneficiary of the emergence of a 'copycat economy', where imitators increasingly win over innovators in capturing economic value. It's a subject he explores further in his new book, "Copycats: How Smart Companies Use Imitation to Gain Strategic Edge" (Harvard Business Press). In this talk, he will discuss whether Chinese businesses will, in the coming years, succeed in adding innovation to their repertoire, and whether this could result in a hybrid imitation/ innovation formula which will enable them to trump the competitive advantage of the world's major multinationals - or whether these multinationals will respond by learning the art of imitation themselves. Edwin Chan of the Harvard Design School and Tony Chen of Jones Day in Shanghai will also join in the debate on innovation and imitation in China. Moderated by Russell Flannery, Shanghai Bureau Chief of Forbes magazine."

"Wine, private jets, insurance policies, premium coffee and high-speed Internet service, even technology consulting, are just a few examples of the market niches that have been hit by lower prices in recent years because of widespread imitation and competition. That may be good news for consumers, but not for the small businesses that invested time and resources to create products and build markets. To survive and thrive, a small business has to learn to constantly innovate in every area, from back-shop operations to products to distribution, says management consultant Oren Harari. His book "Break From the Pack: How to Compete in a Copycat Economy," to be published in September by Wharton Publishing/Prentice Hall, is packed with advice for small businesses."

CHENNAI: The Cyber Crime Cell of the Chennai Central Crime Branch has registered a case on a complaint filed by a city advocate against Airtel mobile communication service that it was sending obscene messages to his phone without his consent. The police registered the case on a complaint filed by the advocate, V.S.Suresh of George Town here, to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM), Egmore. The CMM, R.Killivalavan, had forwarded the complaint to the City Central Crime Branch for registering an FIR, investigating the matter and filing the final report. The case has been registered against the Chief Executive Officer, Bharati Airtel Limited for offences, including under Sections 292 (Sale, etc., of obscene books) and 294 (Obscene acts and songs) of IPC.

Worth reading! "Such enthusiastic assessments also grace the rapidly growing body of academic and popular literature on digital natives in the United States and Western Europe. Books such as Born Digital by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott, iBrain by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan, and The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason, as well as a recent three-year study on digital youth by the MacArthur Foundation, come to mind. In these already-democratic societies, optimism about the Internet's impact on the civic engagement of young people-even the notion of "digital citizenship"-is a justified, if not particularly new, intellectual thread. "However, outside of the prosperous and democratic countries of North America and Western Europe, digital natives are as likely to be digital captives as digital renegades, a subject that none of the recent studies address in depth. If the notion that the Internet could dampen young people's aspirations for democracy seems counterintuitive, it is only because our media is still enthralled by the trite narrative of bloggers as a force for positive change. Recent headlines include: "Egypt's growing blogger community pushes limit of dissent," "From China to Iran, Web Diarists Are Challenging Censors," "Cuba's Blogger Crackdown," "China's web censors struggle to muzzle free-spirited bloggers.""

Handa (26) was arrested late on Saturday after the police traced the internet protocol address from which the profile was created to his residence at Four Bungalows in Andheri. Booked for breach of trust, forgery and under the Information Technology Act, 2000, he has been remanded in police custody. During interrogations, Handa admitted to the police that he had created the fake profile whom "he was interested in". Handa first met the victim two years ago when the latter had just started to make a career in astrology. The two became friends and for a while, they even shared an apartment in Andheri, the police said. However, the two subsequently fell out when the friend brushed aside Handa's "advances".