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Everybody is talking about "illegal copying" (most often in propagandist terms like "stealing" or "piracy"), but nobody of the opposite: Taking a work in public domain and slapping your copyright-notice over it; something which very much borders on plagiarism. And of course asserting to have a copyright on something which you are not entitled to is also a violation of copyright. The very funny thing is, there is a repository of thousands of books whose copyright is violated this way. It's books.google.com. Nowhere else, such a mass of works wrongly tagged "copyrighted material" can be found.

Check out the digital copyright slider. The tool itself is pretty simple. You basically slide the arrow up and down the years starting from "Before 1923″. The boxes on the left (Permission Needed? and Copyright Status/Term) tell you whether a work is still copyrighted or whether it's now in the public domain, free for you to use and repurpose any way you like. Unfortunately, actually figuring out the copyright status of a work isn't so simple as dragging your mouse-most of the years seem to be marked by a fuzzy period of "Maybe".

In preparation for WIPO's initiative on Exceptions & Limitations to Copyright, the US Copyright Office is currently soliciting comments on the topic of "facilitating access to copyrighted works for the blind or persons with other disabilities". Written comments are due next week (April 21st, 2009), and there will be a public meeting in Washington on May 18th. EFF will be sending our own submission, as will many other IP and disability groups. But if you've worked on software or hardware to overcome your own visual or other disabilities, or co-operated informally (perhaps in an open source project) to provide wider access to content for users with disabilities, or have dealt with a publisher regarding the accessibility of texts, we'd like to encourage you to send the copyright office your own stories - and cc: us at accessibility@eff.org.

"Overview This Flash-based tool was created by Michael Brewer and the Office for Information Technology Policy. It provides information on determining whether or not a particular reproduction or other use of a copyrighted work is covered by Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Code, the Library & Archives exemption. While the interactivity of this tool is not available to those using screen readers, such as JAWS, the following text provides all the information provided by this tool. For the fulltext of Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Code, go to: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#108. Please provide any feedback or address any questions on this tool to Michael Brewer, or to Carrie Russell at the Office for Information Technology Policy."

Copyrights and Accommodations Although there are numerous technical and financial challenges to making course content accessible, the implications of the restrictive copyright that comes along with the use of proprietary content may present challenges that are frequently overlooked. Various forms of accommodation require the creation and distribution of derivative works, which is a restriction that comes along with the default copyright license. On the up side, the materials in question may include intellectual property created and owned by the faculty member and/or educational organization offering the course, in which case you and the learner may be lucky, relatively speaking. If you had the foresight to create accessible versions of all course media, you are home free. If not, your primary questions may be simply how to find the resources and tools to create accessible versions of these items in a timely fashion, which is a technical and financial issue.

Every legislative and normative proposal recapitulates the worst mistakes of the spamfight: from Viacom's demand that Google automatically detect copyright-infringing videos while they're being uploaded; to the three-accusations-and-you're-offline proposal from the BPI; to the notion in the G8's Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement of turning copyright holders into judge, jury and executioner for what content can travel online and who can see it.

"DICE aims at providing support to teaching and non-teaching staff of Swiss higher education institutions in copyright management of digital content for eLearning. The goal of DICE is: (a) Increasing awareness of copyright issues related with digital content, in order to provide sound knowledge and eliminate unreasonable fears. (b) Developing fundamental skills in intellectual property and copyright management for higher education staff (e.g. understanding basic rules applicable in Switzerland, using Creative Commons licenses, etc.) (c) Increase the readiness and ability of authors to publishing open access resources (aka Open Educational Resources)"

I think we should permanently cut off the internet access of any company that sends out three erroneous copyright notices. Three strikes and you're out, mate.

So, you build on a BY-NC work and register your copyright. You license your new work also BY-NC. Someone violates the copyright on your work. You sue. You are entitled to statutory damages right? You collect. Are you now guiilty of violating the NC licneses of the works yours built upon?

Maximum Prophet recommends a NY Times piece on the growing phenomenon of unauthorized digital versions of copyrighted books showing up online. The problem has been growing exponentially, fed in part by the popularity of reading devices such as the Kindle and the iPhone. The article features the odd photographic juxtaposition of Cory Doctorow and Ursula K. Le Guin, who take opposite views on electronic editions, authorized or not. Ms. Le Guin: "I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?" Mr. Doctorow: "I really feel like my problem isn't piracy. It's obscurity."

Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it. Fair use enables the creation of new culture, and keeps current copyright holders from being private censors. With the Washington College of Law, the Center for Social Media creates tools for creators, teachers, and researchers to better use their fair use rights. Explore your fair use rights by clicking on one of the tabs above.

Here's the world's shortest, fairest, and simplest licence agreement: "Don't violate copyright law." If I had my way, every digital download from the music in the iTunes and Amazon MP3 store, to the ebooks for the Kindle and Sony Reader, to the games for your Xbox, would bear this - and only this - as its licence agreement. "Don't violate copyright law" has a lot going for it, but the best thing about it is what it signals to the purchaser, namely: "You are not about to get screwed."

"At a time when we have the technologies to enable global access to and distributed processing of scientific research and data, legal and technical restrictions are making it difficult to connect the dots. Even when research and data is made public, it's often locked up by regimes or contracts that prohibit changing file formats or languages, integrating data, semantic enrichment, text mining and more. These restrictions sharply limit the impact of published research, and prevent us from exploiting the potential of the Web for accelerating scientific discovery. In the Scholar's Copyright Project, Science Commons develops tools and resources for expanding and enhancing open access (OA) to published research and data. We believe that knowledge-sharing systems and formats based on the paper metaphor block innovation, and that open access is prerequisite for finding new ways to reap the value of the vast amounts of public research now being produced. For details on the resources we offer, continue reading below."

Video from the Swiss TV news where the IFPI.ch spokesperson announces that they will ask ISP's to cut the connection of people using P2P for copyrighted works

In the life+50 universe, which constitute the largest cohort of countries, including Canada, which collectively have the majority of the world's population, life-plus copyrights expired at midnight for those authors, or last-surviving of multiple authors, who died in 1958. Some notable life+50 entries into the public domain include life+50 copyrights for authors such as

A landmark study by the Institute of European Media Law (EML) found that a levy on internet usage legalising non-commercial online exchanges of creative works conforms with German and European copyright law, even though it requires changes in both. The German and European factions of the Green Party who had commissioned the study will make the "culture flat-rate," as the model is being called in Germany, an issue in their policies. The global debate on a new social contract between creatives and society is getting more pronounced by the day. Two models are emerging: a free-market approach based on private blanket licences and voluntary subscriptions, and a legal licence approach based on exceptions in copyright law and mandatory levies, that now has been proven legally feasible and appropriate by the EML study.

The blind and other readers have the right for books to be presented to us in the format that is most useful to us, and we are not violating copyright law as long as we use readers, either human or machine, for private rather than public listening. The key point is that reading aloud in private is the same whether done by a person or a machine, and reading aloud in private is never an infringement of copyright. Amazon has taken a step in the right direction by including text-to-speech technology for reading e-books aloud on its new Kindle 2". More details are available on the Forbes website.

" * Posted by amilla on September 14, 2010 at 2:26pm in Improvements to Ning Creators * View Discussions About the exclusion of the music player in the package "ning plus" I would like to inform the management of Ning that I demand from Ning administration to send me an e-mail with all the tracks that are blocked in order to protect the copyrighted material that now is blocked by the company Ning which has no right to withhold them. For these reasons I ask from Ning to send me the music files that was loaded up until the day that Ning music player was free for uploading for all networks. There is need for appropriate administration of music files with responsibility for all of the musicians members of my network. So I demand from Ning to send me all that music files. I am giving to Ning a period of two months to send me all the songs as attachments in the e-mail amilla.gr@gmail.com. Otherwise I have to inform the official intellectual property protecting organization of Greece for unauthorized restriction of intellectual property from the Ning. The same reasoning applies if the music files are deleted from Ning. Thank you and wait for response from Ning. Best regards The administration of www.amilla.gr"

How can we navigate through the information landscape that is only beginning to come into view? The question is more urgent than ever following the recent settlement between Google and the authors and publishers who were suing it for alleged breach of copyright.

Lots of info about copyright legislation, creative commons etc