Copyright is colonialism: Polish internet guru speaks
Speaking at the Brain Bar Budapest futurological congress in Budapest, Jaroslaw Lipszyc, Polish poet and President of the Modern Poland Foundation, recounted his own experience of the development of computing systems,...
EU to set publicly funded research free for open access
The European Union has decided that "all scientific articles in Europe must be freely accessible as of 2020," because "EU member states want to achieve optimal reuse of research data." This...
Jury finds Google’s Android reimplementation of Oracle’s Java APIs is fair use
Another copyright case just turned into a fair use case. We haven’t touched on this one before, given that it doesn’t touch on e-books directly. However, it directly affects the future...
Consumers believe they have more rights than they really do in digital media
To buy or to license? That is the question that’s stumped a lot of e-book and other digital media consumers over the years, recently culminating in an author’s lawsuit against Simon...
Teacher suspended for selling public domain book to students; should have used Project Gutenberg
I just ran across a story Nate Hoffelder posted on The Digital Reader, originally from the New York Post, about a Brooklyn English teacher, Todd Friedman, who’s been put on academic...
Australian official denies government interest in shortening copyright terms
If you were optimistic that Australia might reduce copyright terms to 20 years as recommended by the recent Australian Government Productivity Commission report, think again. A number of Australian authors have...
Author sues Simon & Schuster over ‘sale’ vs. ‘license’ royalty rates for e-books
The split-personality issue of digital content “sales” rears its ugly head again, as author Dr. Sheldon Blau files a class action suit against Simon & Schuster on behalf of all S&S...
DMCA roundtables offer little hope for improving the takedown process
Remember the discussions on amending the DMCA that came up lately, via Channel Awesome’s #WTFU campaign and the public comments campaign prompted by TakeDownAbuse.org? The Copyright Office has been holding roundtable...
IBM patents printer concept that could prevent printing copyrighted material
What if your printer wouldn’t print out text from your e-book? That’s the future IBM may envision if the patent application it just filed comes to fruition. Torrentfreak reports that IBM...
A national digital library for Canada? In Can-Con debate, Michael Geist thinks big
As I reported earlier, a public consultation is going on in Canada right now as the government seeks to reform its Canadian Content regulations. The issues most covered by the media...