ASCAP news release: "The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York today made public a decision in the proceeding to determine reasonable license fees to be paid to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) by AOL (Time Warner Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. for their online performance of musical works.

The decision covers license fees for periods starting as far back as July 1, 2002, and continuing through December 31, 2009, for the performance of musical works in the ASCAP repertory by AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo! Based on the formula established by the Court, the total payments to be made to ASCAP and its membership by these three services for that full period could reach $100 million. The Court's comprehensive 153 page decision was based on extensive evidence presented by both sides in the case regarding the online performance of musical works by AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo!"

The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (HR 5889 and S 2913) "attempts to create a system where new creators can use old works without fear of massive lawsuits, provided that a good faith effort has been made to find out if the work in question is copyrighted." [Link]

• Public Knowledge resource guide to Orphan Works and related posting.
  
• beSpacific postings on orphan works

"After nearly three years of intensive work, the independent Section 108 Study Group has issued its report and recommendations on exceptions to copyright law to address how libraries, archives and museums deal with copyrighted materials in fulfilling their missions in the digital environment...Section 108 is the section of the Copyright Act that provides limited exceptions for libraries and archives so that they may make copies to replace copyrighted works in their collections when necessary, preserve them for the long term and make them available to users."

IDC's Worldwide Software Pricing and Licensing Taxonomy and Report Guide, 2008, Mar 2008, Doc #210950: "This IDC study defines the classification scheme, or taxonomy, used by IDC's Global Software Business Strategies group to analyze the software licensing strategies of vendors and requirements of end-user organizations. IDC's software pricing and licensing taxonomy represents a fundamental view of the way software is created, priced, sold, and supported."

copyrighthistory.org: "This website provides a digital resource relating to the history of copyright in five jurisdictions (France, Germany, Italy, the UK and US) for the period up to 1900. It will include the 50 most important documents from France, Germany and the UK, and the 20 most important from Venice and the United States. The documents are in the process of being selected by national editors, under the guidance of an international advisory body. They will then be digitised, and where appropriate transcribed and translated. The national editors will also provide commentaries on the documents, explaining their significance and why they were selected." [Fred von Lohmann, EFF]

Creative Commons and Public.Resource.Org announced [February 11, 2008] that the first revision of a substantial corpus of U.S. federal case law is available for download by developers. The files are all clearly marked with the new Creative Commons CCØ label, indicating that the contents are Works of the United States Government and are thus free of copyright or other restrictions for their dissemination and reuse. Developers may access this information here. [This] release covers all U.S. Supreme Court decisions and all Courts of Appeals
decisions from 1950 on. The release is equivalent to 1,858 volumes of case law in book form, a stack of books 348 feet tall. The files have all been converted to the XHTML standard and make extensive use of
CSS style sheets to allow developers to build new search engines and user interfaces."

Google Book Search: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly, 1/1/2008, By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology.

The Threat Posed By Inflated Statutory Damages, Comments on the January 25, 2008 Meeting Hosted by the Copyright Office: "The PRO IP Act (H.R. 4279) proposes to weaken the long-established “one work” rule, which today imposes a measure of certainty on how copyright statutory damages are calculated. Under current law, a copyright plaintiff may seek up to $150,000 per work infringed. In the case of compilations, the one work rule recognizes that the compilation is being marketed as one work, although it may in fact consist of multiple components. Section 104 of the PRO IP Act seeks to undo a central underpinning of statutory damages: ensuring that the damages award for infringement of a compilation does not result in catastrophic multiple awards through a separate award for each component of that compilation. For example, current law authorizes a statutory damages award of up to $150,000 for a single infringement of a magazine containing 100 photos, or a software application containing 100 modules. The proposed changes in Section 104 would allow a plaintiff to claim up to $15 million for the same act of infringement."

"The University of Michigan's University Library has just put the millionth book from its collection on-line. That's one million out of the 7.5 million volumes in the library's current holdings. Digitized materials are made available publicly via the Mirlyn library catalog and MBooks. MBooks provides full text of works that are in the public domain, creating new ways for users to search and access U-M Library content. Materials that are currently in copyright are available for searching on-line, allowing users to assess the contents of a book before deciding whether to purchase it or borrow it from the library."

Press release: "The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced that three universities - [text of the guidelines linked as follows] Hofstra, Syracuse and Marquette — have reached agreement with the AAP on new copyright guidelines affirming that educational content delivered to students in digital formats should be treated under the same copyright principles that apply to printed materials. The guidelines, which were developed separately by the three universities, govern how librarians and faculty members distribute copyrighted content through library electronic course reserves systems, course management systems, faculty and departmental web pages and other digital formats. AAP worked with each of the three universities in cooperative efforts to establish easily understood and common-sense standards that help faculty and staff understand and interpret their rights and responsibilities when using copyrighted content in educational settings. Each of the guidelines reflects the specific needs of the particular university and is consistent with the principles of fair use while providing helpful guidance as to when permission from the copyright holder is required to copy or post materials in digital formats. AAP believes the guidelines, which are similar to those adopted by Cornell University last year, will serve as models for others colleges and universities."

Pew Internet Project Data Memo, Video Sharing Websites, January 9, 2008: "The audience for YouTube and other internet video sites has risen sharply the past year. Nearly half of online adults now say they have visited such sites. On a typical day at the end of 2007, the share of internet users going to video sites was nearly twice as large as it had been at the end of 2006."

New Study on Copyright and Creativity from the Center for Social Media, Posted by Hugh DAndrade: "Free video hosting sites like YouTube, Yahoo! Video, and Daily Motion are enabling creators to share video instantly with millions of viewers around the world. A new report from the Center for Social Media takes a close look at these user generated sites, and finds that there is much more at stake than the SNL and Daily Show clips often referenced in the usual Viacom v. YouTube debates on copyright infringement. Recut, Reframe, Recycle shows that far from simply uploading content, more and more users are remixing prior works to create new (and often surprising) works of transformative creativity. Users are borrowing from film, television, and pop culture at large to create parodies and satires, commentaries, pastiche, quotations, as well as archives of important work that cannot be shown due to copyright restriction. By illustrating each category with some of the best examples of user-generated content from the past few years, the study attempts to clarify "the difference between quoting for new cultural creation and simple piracy."

"CDT has created a list to alert consumers about music download Web sites that charge fees and claim a large selection, but do not appear to have obtained licenses to ensure that users' downloads from the site are legal. Consumers looking to download music lawfully for the new computers and MP3 players they receive this holiday season may want to check CDT's list before paying money to unfamiliar but legitimate-looking music services. CDT hopes that warning consumers about these sites can help avoid confusion and promote the continued growth of the lawful online music market."

This series is a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and Research Center for Information Law at University of St. Gallen. Authors, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser.

Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else, by Anne Broache, News.com: "New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also "alternatives" to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students. The U.S. House of Representatives bill (747 pages, PDF), which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student."

Press release: "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Committee member Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) Wednesday introduced bipartisan legislation to strengthen U.S. government efforts to combat copyright infringement and counterfeiting at home and abroad. The Judiciary Committee Wednesday also held a hearing today, Examining U.S. Government Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights. The Intellectual Property Enforcement Act introduced Wednesday by Leahy and Cornyn would strengthen law enforcement capabilities and resources in thwarting copyright theft. The bill [Section-By-Section Analysis] would give civil copyright enforcement powers to the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, and it would authorize additional funding to investigate and prosecute intellectual property crimes involving computers and the Internet. The bill also requires the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assign a minimum of 10 agents to work on intellectual property crimes, and it classifies both the importation and exportation of pirated works as infringement."

Press release: "Online video-hosting services like YouTube have ushered in a new era of free expression online, as well as vigorous copyright enforcement efforts. Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of leading public interest groups issued a "Fair Use Principles" document that sets out six concrete guidelines designed to minimize the collateral damage that copyright enforcement efforts may inflict on video creators who are "remixing" copyrighted material into new video
creations."

YouTube Video Identification Beta: "YouTube Video Identification will help copyright holders identify their works on YouTube. We have worked with Google to develop one-of-a-kind technology that can recognize videos based on a variety of factors. As its Beta status indicates, our Video Identification is brand-new, cutting-edge stuff, so we will be constantly refining and improving it. Early tests with content companies have shown very promising results. As we scale and refine our system, YouTube Video Identification will be available to all kinds of copyright holders all over the world, whether they want their content to appear on YouTube or not."

Press release: Several of the world’s leading Internet and media companies today announced their joint support for a set of collaborative principles that enable the continued growth and development of user-generated content online and respect the intellectual property of content owners. The principles serve as a comprehensive set of guidelines to help user-generated content (UGC) services and content creators work together towards their collective goal of bringing more content to more consumers through legitimate channels. The principles acknowledge a collective respect for protecting copyrights and recognize that filtering technologies must be effective and are only a part of what is necessary to achieve this goal. The companies supporting these principles include CBS Corp., Dailymotion, Fox Entertainment Group, Microsoft Corp., MySpace, NBC Universal, Veoh Networks Inc., Viacom Inc. and The Walt Disney Company."

"The Copyright Office is pleased to announce that it has implemented a new email subscription service to make it easier to receive messages on the topics that interest you. This service is an expansion and replacement of the existing NewsNet newsletter. At this time, we are offering three topics:

"Fair Use exceptions to U.S. copyright laws are responsible for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue for the United States, according to the findings of an unprecedented economic study released today. According to the study commissioned by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and conducted in accordance with a World Intellectual Property Organization methodology, companies benefiting from limitations on copyright-holders’ exclusive rights, such as “fair use” – generate substantial revenue, employ millions of workers, and, in 2006, represented one-sixth of total U.S. GDP. The exhaustive report, released today at a briefing on Capitol Hill, quantifies for the first time ever the critical contributions of fair use to the U.S. economy. The timing proves particularly important as the debates over copyright law in the digital age move increasingly to center stage on Capitol Hill."

Press release: "In a report released [August 29, 2007]...the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) provides the only comprehensive look at the four-year litigation campaign waged by the RIAA against music fans. The report traces the RIAA campaign from its beginnings in 2003 against a handful of students at Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic, and Michigan Tech to the current spate of "pre-litigation settlement" letters being sent to universities nationwide."
EFF Report - RIAA v the People: Four Years Later (25 pages, PDF)

Knowledge Networks pays $300,000 to settle internal copyright complaint - "Firm's marketing group distributed press packets to employees containing newspaper and magazine articles under copyright."

Memorandum and Decision Order in SCO v. Novell, Civil Case No. 2:04CV139DAK, Dale A. Kimball, United States District Judge, U.S. Distrcit Court for the District of Utah, Central Division, August 10, 2007. (102 pages, PDF - via Groklaw]

"On Thursday [July 5, 2007], a majority of the members of the Bundestag from the governing grand coalition and the FDP voted in favor of the government's controversial proposal (PDF file) for a second version of the country's Copyright Act for the Information Society, which includes the amendments proposed by the parliament's legal committee. [via heise online]

Google's response [via Google Watch] to Viacom's copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube.

WSJ free feature: Policing Web Video With 'Fingerprints' - Sharing Sites Say Technology Could Help Them Identify, Remove Unauthorized Clips: "Proponents of fingerprinting technology say it can help spot TV shows and films that are posted on video-sharing sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube without their owners' permission, so the sites can remove them or share advertising revenue."

"The Report on Digital Preservation, Orphan Works and Out-of-Print Works, Selected Implementation Issues is an advisory report on copyright issues to the European Commission, presented on 19 April by the EU's High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries - which includes, inter alia, stakeholders from the British Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Federation of European Publishers and Google."

Agence France-Presse CEO Pierre Louette commenting in a press release today: "The agreement will allow uses of AFP's content in ways that go beyond its typical use of content in Google's services, which features just headlines and snippets of text to provide just a taste of what an article offers..."

"The Copyright Renewal Database makes searchable the copyright renewal records received by the US Copyright Office between 1950 and 1993 for books published in the US between 1923 and 1963. Note that the database includes ONLY US Class A (book) renewals. The period from 1923-1963 is of special interest for US copyrights, as works published after January 1, 1964 had their copyrights automatically renewed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and works published before 1923 have generally fallen into the public domain. Between those dates, a renewal registration was required to prevent the expiration of copyright, however determining whether a work's registration has been renewed is a challenge. Renewals received by the Copyright Office after 1977 are searchable in an online database, but renewals received between 1950 and 1977 were announced and distributed only in a semi-annual print publication. The Copyright Office does not have a machine-searchable source for this renewal information, and the only public access is through the card catalog in their DC offices."

House Judiciary Committee Hearing on “Reforming Section 115 of the Copyright Act for the Digital Age,” March 22, 2007.

FindLaw: Viacom Files Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against YouTube and Google Over Unauthorized Use Of The Company's Shows: Viacom International, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., YouTube, LLC, and Google, Inc., March 13, 2007.

Now available: Determination of Rates and Terms for Webcasting for the License Period 2006-2010 in [Docket No. 2005-1 CRB DTRA] Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings and Ephemeral Recordings (155 pages, PDF)

Press release: "The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Elsevier have established an agreement to make author manuscripts of articles published in Elsevier and Cell Press journals publicly available six months following final publication. It takes effect for articles published after September 1, 2007...Elsevier will deposit author manuscripts of original research articles, along with an article's supplemental data, on which any HHMI scientist is an author - including HHMI investigators, group leaders and fellows at the Janelia Farm Research Campus, and other institute employees - to PubMed Central (PMC), the digital archive of biomedical and life sciences literature maintained by the National Institutes of Health. The author manuscript has been through the peer review process and accepted for publication, but has not undergone editing and formatting."

Press release: "Advancing its longstanding mission of bringing government closer to the people, C-SPAN announced today two major initiatives designed to greatly expand citizen access to its online video of federal government activities, such as congressional hearings, agency briefings, and White House events...[thanks to Peggy Garvin]

Press release: "...the Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released a report that concludes that the distributors of five popular filesharing programs repeatedly deployed features that they knew or should have known could cause users to share files inadvertently. The report, Filesharing Programs and "Technological Features to Induce Users to Share, identifies five features in recent versions of five popular filesharing programs that could cause users to inadvertently distribute to others downloaded files or their own proprietary or sensitive files. "Computer programs that can cause unintended filesharing contribute to copyright infringement, and they threaten the security of personal, corporate, and governmental data," noted Jon Dudas, under secretary of commerce for intellectual property-the Bush Administration's point person on copyright policy."

RIAA press release: "The recording industry today launched a new and strengthened campus anti-piracy initiative that significantly expands the scope and volume of its deterrent efforts while offering a new process that gives students the opportunity to avoid a formal lawsuit by settling prior to a litigation being filed. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), on behalf of the major record companies, today sent 400 pre-litigation settlement letters to 13 different universities. Each letter informs the school of a forthcoming copyright infringement lawsuit against one of its students or personnel. The RIAA will request that universities forward those letters to the appropriate network user. Under this new approach, a student (or other network user) can settle the record company claims against him or her at a discounted rate before a lawsuit is ever filed."

Press release: "U.S. Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and John Doolittle (R-CA), today introduced the Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007 (FAIR USE Act) to protect the fair use rights of users of copyrighted material and thereby enable consumers of digital media to use it in ways that enhance their personal convenience. The legislation contains several improvements to the Digital Media Consumer's Rights Act, similar legislation which the lawmakers introduced in the 108th and 109th Congresses. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) is an original cosponsor of the legislation."

Press Release: "The Fair Use Project of the Center for Internet & Society at Stanford Law School announced that it has teamed with Media/Professional Insurance and leading intellectual property attorney Michael Donaldson to provide critical support for documentary filmmakers who rely on the “fair use” of copyrighted material in their films...In order to help solve this problem, the Fair Use Project has announced that it will agree to provide pro bono legal representation to certain filmmakers who comply with the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use published by the Center for Social Media at American University." [via Darlene Fichter]

Follow up to previous postings on a legal dispute between a group of Belgian newspaper sites and Google over removal of copyrighted materials from the search engine index, news today that the court reaffirmed its decision against Google.

Google's Moon Shot, by JEFFREY TOOBIN - The quest for the universal library. New Yorker, Posted 2007-01-29

"This morning, February 6, 2007, ALA President Leslie Burger testified before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), concerning the recent closure of several libraries in the Environmental and Protection Agency (EPA). Link to Burger’s full testimony.

"Counterfeiting and piracy costs U.S. companies between $200-$250 billion a year and roughly 750,000 jobs to date. Nearly all industries are being affected, from apparel and footwear, high-tech industrial goods, medicines, autos and auto parts, food and beverages, and cosmetics to copyrighted works, including entertainment and business software, movies, music, and books. The U.S. Chamber through its National Chamber Foundation has launched a broad initiative to effectively thwart the growing global threat of counterfeiting and piracy to the U.S. economy, the global business community, and consumers."

Stanford Center for Internet and Society: " Kahle v. Gonzales - In this case, two archives ask the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to hold that statutes that extended copyright terms unconditionally — the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)— are unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and that the Copyright Renewal Act and CTEA together create an "effectively perpetual" term with respect to works first published after January 1, 1964 and before January 1, 1978, in violation of the Constitution’s Limited Times and Promote...Progress Clauses. The Complaint asks the Court for a declaratory judgment that copyright restrictions on orphaned works — works whose copyright has not expired but which are no longer available — violate the constitution."

Press release: "The Internet Archive Receives Grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to Digitize and Provide Open Online Access to Historical Collections from Five Major Libraries...The Sloan Foundation is proud to support the digitization of these high-value collections from five of the nation's leading cultural institutions and to ensure that these materials will always be available through public channels for future use...These collections include:

The following articles are available in the December 2006 issue of LLRX.com:

Live Search's WebLog: "The U.S. beta launch of Live Search Books is a big step forward in advancing the way people discover information through the integration of content that has been "off-limits" to the traditional Search experience, until now. This release makes tens of thousands of out-of-copyright books available from our library scanning initiative, including books from the University of California, the University of Toronto, and the British Library. In addition, we are announcing new partnerships with the New York Public Library and the American Museum of Veterinary Medicine...The team is also taking this opportunity to announce an update to the beta of Live Search Academic. We're adding millions of new articles—primarily bio-medical content. Live Search Academic now indexes thousands of academic journals in the computer science, engineering, physics, and bio-medical fields. We’re also now indexing theses, dissertations, and books within these disciplines."

Press release: "...Internet Archive has successfully advocated for an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA prohibits circumvention of technological measures employed by or on behalf of copyright owners to protect their works ("access controls"). Specifically, 17 U.S.C. §1201(a)(1)(A) provides, in part, that “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” In order to ensure that the public will have continued ability to engage in noninfringing uses of copyrighted works, such as fair use, subparagraph (B) limits this prohibition. It provides that the prohibition against circumvention “shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding three-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title” as determined in a rulemaking proceeding." [thanks to Darlene Fichter]

Follow up to September 18, 2006 - posting Belgian Court Rules Against Google in Copyright Dispute:

Inside Google Books Search blog: "...we've just launched a bunch of new features and a whole new interface to make your online book experience better. First, we made it easier to find books you may be interested in by improving the "About this book" page. If you're a bookworm looking for your next book to devour, you can easily find new books via the related books feature....If you're trying to beef up your research by uncovering relevant work, then you may want to check the references from books and scholarly works....Once you find a book you might be interested in, you can now see its chapter titles, key terms, and selected pages all on the same page, helping you get a feel for it. Next, we designed a new browsing interface. You can simply scroll through the pages, or, for full view books, view them in two-page mode and flip through just like a book. You can zoom in, switch to full screen, and jump directly to the chapters that interest you. If the book is part of the public domain, you can comfortably read it on screen or download it if you prefer. For an in-copyright book, just follow the links to buy it or to find it in a library."

Press release: "November 13, 2006 - Google Inc. announced today that it has closed its acquisition of YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos. In connection with the acquisition Google issued an aggregate of 3,217,560 shares, and restricted stock units, options and a warrant exercisable for or convertible into an aggregate of 442,210 shares, of Google's Class A common stock. The number of shares of Class A common stock issued and issuable by Google was calculated by dividing $1.65 billion less certain amounts (approximately $15 million) funded to YouTube by Google between signing and closing by the average closing price for the 30 trading days ending on November 9, 2006. 12.5% of the equity issued and issuable in the transaction will be subject to escrow for one year to secure certain indemnification obligations." [emphasis added] See also this AP article discussing the $200 million set-aside for potential future lawsuits.

Kahle v. Gonzales will be argued by Larry Lessig on November 13, 2006.

From the Official Google Blog, November 3, 2006: "The world's libraries are a tremendous source of knowledge, much of which has never been available online. One of our goals for Google Print is to change that, and today we've taken an exciting step toward meeting it: making available a number of public domain books that were never subject to copyright or whose copyright has expired. We can show every page because these books are in the public domain. (For books not in the public domain we only show small snippets of the work unless the publisher or copyright holder has given us permission to show more.)"

Follow-up to September 18, 2006 posting Belgian Court Rules Against Google in Copyright Dispute, reports that Begian news rights representative Copiepresse is continuing its breach of copyright action against Microsoft and will target Yahoo in future.

Press release: "Together, the UW-Madison and Google will expand access to hundreds of thousands of public and historical materials from the UW-Madison libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library. Some wonderful examples from their collection can be found here. The combined 7.2 million holdings of these libraries comprise one of the largest collections of historical documents and books to be found in the United States."

Following up on articles by Jonathan Band published on LLRX.com - The Google Library Project: The Copyright Debate, and The Authors Guild v. The Google Print Library Project - news from Bloomberg: "Google Inc. will subpoena information from Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. to help fight copyright lawsuits over its book-scanning project."

Press release: "Working together, Google and the University Complutense of Madrid will digitise the university's hundreds of thousands of public domain works, so that anyone, at anytime will be able to view, browse, read, and even download the full texts from the library's historic and special collections. The library of the Complutense University of Madrid is the largest university library in Spain."

Related news and postings:

Follow-up to September 18, 2006 posting Belgian Court Rules Against Google in Copyright Dispute, this press release from the World Association of Publishers, September 22, 2006:

Mazzone, Jason, "Copyfraud". Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 40 Available at SSRN [via Public Knowledge]

Google press release: "Starting today, readers can find new, and free, downloadable versions of some of the world's greatest books on Google Book Search. Working with our library partners, we're expanding access to books that are out of copyright and have become public domain material. Users can search and read these books on Google Book Search like always, but now they can also download and print them to enjoy at their own pace."

Related sources and information:

The Chronicle of Higher Education obtained a copy of the 13 page agreement between Google, Inc. and the Regents of the University of California that details the scope of the digitization project, as well as copyright and ownership issues.

Can Our Culture Be Saved? The Future of Digital Archiving, by Diane Leeheer Zimmerman, New York University - School of Law, July 25, 2006

Press release: The University of California libraries today (August 9, 2006) announced their partnership with Google to digitize books from the libraries' collections. UC becomes the latest partner in the Google Books Library Project, which was launched in December 2004 to digitize books drawn from the libraries of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, and the New York Public Library. The digitized books will be searchable through Google Book Search."

Matwyshyn, Andrea M., "Technoconsen(t)sus" (May 2006). Posted July 19, 2006 [Link to download]

Federal Judicial Center: Copyright Law, Second Edition, 2006, 241 pages.

Press release, June 14, 2006: Google Launches Shakespeare Website. See Google Search Beta's complete plays of Shakespeare

Related news:

New York Times Magazine, Scan This Book!, by Kevin Kelly, "senior maverick" at Wired magazine and author of Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World.

Mass Digitization: Implications for Information Policy , May 9, 2006 (NCLIS).

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA, April, 2006. This document is version 4. (15 pages, PDF, and HTML version)

Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks: WIPO Marks E-Renewal System

Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (PDF, 28 pages), by Timothy B. Lee

WSJ free feature - Google Wins Copyright Battle; Archiving Issue Is Still Unclear: "A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit accusing Google Inc. of wrongful conduct, including copyright infringement and defamation, providing the latest court opinion to weigh in on the contentious area of search engines and copyright."

Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property
Oversight Hearing on "The Report on Orphan Works by the Copyright Office."

Witness statements (in PDF):

How to Digitize a Million Books - Needed: scanning software for 430 languages and a system to organize the next big leap in the information age.

New York times: Ruling May Undercut Google in Fight Over Its Book Scans

See also this related commentary:

Press release: "Today, U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman unveiled the results of a top-to-bottom review of U.S.-China Trade Policy at a news conference. The report, U.S. - China Trade Relations: Entering a New Phase of Greater Accountability and Enforcement (29 pages, PDF), is the first comprehensive statement of U.S. trade policy towards China since it joined the WTO in 2001. The report was provided to Congress this morning with a cover letter (2 pages, PDF) from Ambassador Portman to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees. In this letter, he outlined his objective of closer collaboration with Congress on U.S.-China trade policy."

Related documents:

Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode, February 14, 2006 (27 pages, PDF), by J. Alex Halderman and Edward W. Felton.

John Batelle posted the text (PDF) of University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman's keynote address at the Association of American Publishers Conference, February 6. She defended her university's participation in the Google Library Project as well as the overall value and importance of library digitization programs in general.

"The Copyright Office has completed its study of problems related to 'orphan works'—copyrighted works whose owners may be impossible to identify and locate. As requested by Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Patrick Leahy, the Office submitted its Report on Orphan Works to the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 31, 2006. The Report is also available for download on this page in two versions, the Full Report with Appendices (207 pages, PDF), and the Main Text (no appendices) (133 pages, PDF)."

Press release: "A task force of global and European publishers organizations, led by the World Association of Newspapers, has agreed to work together to examine the options open to publishers to assert their rights to recognition and recompense, and to ultimately improve the relationships between content creators/producers and news aggregators and search engines."

Efficient Process or "Chilling Effects"? Takedown Notices Under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Summary Report, Jennifer M. Urban, Director, Intellectual Property Clinic, University of Southern California and Laura Quilter, Non-Resident Fellow, Samuelson Clinic, University of California, Berkeley. [Links and Law]

Senate Draft of the Digital Content Protection Act of 2006

From askSam, "Search and analyze the full text of the Copyright Law of the United States of America & related laws contained in Title 17 of the United States Code."

The January 15, 2006 issue of LLRX.com includes the following articles:

Related to yesterday's posting, Digital Rights Management: A Guide for Librarians, see Campus Copyrights and Responsibilities: A Basic Guide to Policy Considerations (39 pages, PDF), AAU, ARL, American University Press.

Digital Rights Management: A Guide for Librarians, by Mike Godwin (44 pages, PDF)

CRS Report - The Google Book Search Project: Is Online Indexing A Fair Use Under Copyright Law (6 pages, PDF), Published 12/28/2005, by Robin Jeweler, American Law Division.

Google's Great Works in Progress - Academics point to content errors in the ongoing Book program, but the search giant says fixes are coming

Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control (76 pages, PDF), by Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Free Expression Policy Project, December 2005.

Press release: "HarperCollins Publishers today announced they will create a digital warehouse for all of its content and will issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) this month as part of an effort to develop the necessary technical infrastructure to broadly exploit its content digitally. The plan is the first step in satisfying the demands of the marketplace, which is increasingly requiring that content be made available online and in numerous formats, while allowing the publisher to remain in control of its digital files and intellectual property."

"Online Rights Canada (ORC) is a grassroots organization that promotes the public's interest in technology and information policy. We believe that Canadians should have a voice in copyright law, access to information, freedom from censorship, and other issues that we face in the digital world." [press release]

From WSJ free features, Project Gutenberg Fears No Google is a Q&A with Project Gutenberg's founder, Michael Hart (the inventor of ebooks). His vision and determination are reflected in this project, which has been sustained for over three decades. The site, which currently offers over 17,000 full text books, has a million downloads per week.

From The Nutritional and Dietary Supplement Law Blog: "In a complaint filed last week in federal court in California, Salu, Inc., the owner of the popular cosmeceutical site SkinStore.com has sued the owners of competitor NewSkinSpa.com for trademark and copyright infringement accusing them of copying the SkinStore.com html code and using it to