Group items tagged

With the information explosion of the 21st century, copyright law is now considered a central element of the nation's information economy. Whether the issue is downloading music or distance education, traditional copyright principles are being applied to new technologies in a way few could have predicted. This research guide helps its readers select useful print and electronic materials on the American copyright law. The guide focuses on the Copyright Act of 1976, but refers to other intellectual property fields and international copyright where applicable.

I Came across this copyright timeline yesterday. Gives a good synopsis of some famous cases and how they brought about changes in the law.

My boyfriend works for Comedy Central and he helped with rebranding. I was very interested in how they came up with a logo that looked just like the copyright logo. It wasn't a coincidence. Comedy Central held a small press conference to herald its new clean, minimal logo: a small "c" enveloped in another larger, backwards "c" with the word "central," inverted. If it looks kind of like an "@" symbol, that's on purpose, says the network, which just released new iPad apps for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and "America's most horrific web videos" series Tosh.0.

Maria Pallante Appointed Register of Copyrights Register's Testimony: Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online: The ART Act, the NET Act and Illegal Streaming Register's Testimony: Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online: Legitimate Sites v.

posting for nadine

A review of the book, "Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright" - perhaps a fair use for dummies - academic edition.

Lessig starts with a story about a documentarian and the specter of litigation in that community of practice when it comes to fair use and clearing images, sounds, etc. in documentary filmmaking. He goes on to consider how to reframe copyright: "[W]e need an approach that recognizes the errors in both extremes, and that crafts the balance that any culture needs: incentives to support a diverse range of creativity, with an assurance that the creativity inspired remains for generations to access and understand."

I have now become fascinated with how celebrities use social media. As with anything, they aren't like us and really have to take some sort of precautions when posting tweets and photos...Well, they should anyway...I'm looking at you Courteney Love! Seriously though, there is now an actual business called WhoSay that helps celebrities control their online images. The article says, "A company called WhoSay - a little-known start-up with a clientele that is anything but little known - offers similar services, but grants ownership of the images to the stars themselves." It's another interesting facet of how social media is changing even the way celebrities must handle their image. Operating in "stealth mode" since last year, WhoSay runs from the Los Angeles office building of the Creative Artists Agency, which represents a Rolodex of household names, including Mr. Hanks. His WhoSay site includes "copyright Tom Hanks" branding and a stack of fine print at the bottom asserting his legal ownership of all content, placed against warnings of "fines and imprisonment" for improper use.

This is fascinating. Brings to mind things like "trending" and data mining." Is that what this company is doing?

Politicians should be all over this company.

"A Netflix law just hit the books. As of July 1 in Tennessee, Netflix password sharing can net you a misdemeanor conviction punishable by a $2,500 fine and/or a year behind bars." Do we just LOL at this? One end of an interesting spectrum of DRM approaches...

Commentary from Jessamyn West: "What we do know is that the US Government has indicted Aaron Swartz [who you may know around the internet for any number of things] for, apparently and allegedly, downloading 4mil articles from JSTOR without (I think?) the proper credentials. Aaron turned himself in. At issue are many points of JSTORs terms of service and what sort of access is given to guests of the university. As Aaron is a net activist, I'm certain this is some level of intentional move on his part, I'm quite curious to see where it goes."

Americans who illegally download songs and movies may soon be in for a surprise: They will be warned to stop, and if they don't, they could find their Internet access slowing to a crawl.

Ug.

"The state librarian of Kansas, with the backing of state attorney general's office, is planning to terminate the Kansas Digital Library Consortium's contract with ebook vendor OverDrive and is asserting the bold argument that the consortium has purchased, not licensed, its ebook content from OverDrive and, therefore, has the right to transfer the content to a new service provider."

This was the website Christine Borgman mentions in the lecture that can be searched for publisher's copyright conditions for authors archiving their work online.

Just to backtrack a couple of weeks: I came across this FAQ pulled together by the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy that might be handy as a pocket-guide for the future to supplement the wiki the presenting group compiled.

Sorry if this comes up twice, I've been having internet connection issues. This is a really great article about an artist who made a pixellated version of a Miles Davis photograph for his chiptune tribute.  The photographer sued him and the artist lost.  It's just really important to ask ourselves where the line between copy and transformative work should be drawn and the artist (who wrote the article) provides several examples of items for sale that he finds to be similar to his work, yet appear unchallenged.

JK: Messing with the muggles