But before Kindles, there were calculators, and students with time on their hands have long eyed the big LCD display panels of graphing calculators and seen yet another venue for video games. One hacker even created a primitive e-book reading application, though he could only read a couple of lines at a time.

The Wall Street Journal has a story on some recent TI-83 hackers and their run-ins with cease-and-desist orders from Texas instruments. TI feels the hackers are violating the DMCA, whereas the hackers (and the EFF, who is backing them) are demanding the right to innovate.

"That’s what it’s all about — taking such a limited device and doing the impossible with it," says [calculator hobbyist Brandon] Wilson, who also likes to take apart game consoles and put them back together. "There’s no greater feeling than being told something can’t be done and then showing them it can."

This seems reminiscent of the dichotomy between Apple protecting its iPhone platform and jailbreakers cracking the protection to extend the functionality of those devices. Perhaps it might set a precedent.

Wired has screenshots of one of the games that calculator hackers have created.

We spend a lot of our time at EFF trying to spot new proposals in copyright across the world, and understanding whether they’re good or bad for civil liberties. We’re not the only ones: our understanding depends on the work of hundreds of researchers worldwide who are constantly sifting through new drafts and consolidating older reforms in hundreds of nations.

It’s a global effort, and that’s why we’re happy to announce our involvement in a truly global project: Copyright Watch. Working with academics, libraries and copyright monitors from across the world, Copyright Watch brings together the most recent copies of laws from as many countries as we could find. And with that global team, we’ll be tracking new proposals, consultations, and freshly passed regulations: finding the promising changes, and highlighting the spectacularly bad ideas hopefully before they can take hold.

A single country’s copyright law can be truly byzantine (the United States’ seems to be the longest at around 130,000 words, although we’re pretty sure Afghanistan has the shortest, lacking as it does any copyright regulations at all). And right now, every one of the 184 countries in Copyright Watch’s database is struggling to reform their regulations to fit the difficulties and opportunities of the digital age.

It’s a real challenge to map all of these laws, and all of these changes. But it’s vital that we do so. Every shift in any of those countries might spread: whether it’s for good or ill, maximalist or reforming. Lawmakers eagerly look for track records in other nations, or are obliged to adopt another’s bad laws through treaty or trade agreement. Japan decides to model their new law’s exceptions on the United State’s broad fair use principles; politicians see France’s three strikes laws, and decide to import them wholesale. We’re hoping Copyright Watch will give the public as powerful a tool for monitoring the global copyright outlook as any private interest.

* Crain’s New York Business has a short piece on September 2009 e-book sales at Random House seeing a dramatic 700 perent increase over the same period in 2008—largely due to Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. Just imagine how much sales might go up if they actually sold their e-books at reasonable prices!

* PC World Magazine has a review of the bebook Mini e-book reader. They like it, on the whole, but note it has some interface issues.

* Buzzmachine writes about Rupert Murdoch’s nose-cutting face-spiting decision to start blocking Google. A German research group has analyzed how much damage Google would take from such publisher search-blocking, and come to about the same conclusion as the bulldozer operator from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: almost none at all.

* While this is not related directly to e-books, Wired has a piece looking at a “copyright time bomb” that will soon be giving the music industry more headaches. A 1976 copyright law had provisions that will allow recording artists to reclaim the copyright to their works from the record labels that currently hold them.

The article claims that this applies to all forms of copyrighted material, not just music, but does not go into any details as to how this could apply to non-musical works.

Copyright law was originally intended to protect those who create for profit (Lessig used the example of recording artist Britney Spears). But academics also create original works, he said, and they are — or should be — motivated by a desire to advance human knowledge, not line their pockets. Therefore, sealing their work behind copyright barriers does no social good.

The discussion highlighted the changes to publishing and text use that the digital age has wrought, and the fact that existing copyright law does not address those modern concerns.

According to Ars, William Patry’s Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars is a powerful screed by a copyright lawyer with 27 years of experience who is currently Senior Copyright Counsel at Google. “Patry wants to show that copyright owners use metaphors—especially that of the ‘pirate’ and the ‘thief’—in order to short-circuit critical thinking on copyright issues.”

To borrow a term from the Free Software vs. Microsoft wars, the book accuses copyright owners of using a classic FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) strategy to have their way with Congress. (Though as Ars points out, Patry flings enough scary metaphors himself that he could be considered to use this strategy as well.)

I have not read the book myself, but from the review it sounds like it might be worth a look.

1. Many contracts undermine the public interest exceptions in copyright law agreed by Parliament to foster education, learning and creativity. Addressing this issue is crucial so that existing and new exceptions are not over-ridden by contract law.

2. Libraries must be able to make preservation of copies of the material they acquire, including web harvesting of the UK domain.

3. 40% of the British Library’s collections are Orphan Works (where the rightsholder can no longer be found or traced). A legislative solution to Orphan Works would help provide access to the UK’s large historical collections over the internet.

4. Researchers and libraries need to be able to make available ‘fair dealing copies’ of anything in their collections, including sound and film recordings that Fair Dealing does not currently relate to.

5. Computer based research techniques, such as scientific research, needs to be allowed by future copyright law, in the same way that in the analogue world research activity is protected through ‘fair dealing’.

You can find the full press release here. Thanks to Resource Shelf for the link.

It addresses the basics of copyright law and the exclusive rights of the copyright owner, the major exemptions used by cultural heritage institutions, and stresses the importance of “risk assessment” when conducting any digitization project. Case studies on digitizing oral histories and student work are also included.

Available for purchase at https://www.createspace.com/3405063, and for free download here and here. The full press release is here.

Here is a quote from her post, a quote that makes a lot of sense to me:

Yes, publishing is tough these days. Publishers are turning away books they may have bought in the past. Booksellers are cutting back on their orders and contracts are being canceled. This is not the result of piracy, but you can certainly try to sell me on the idea that it is. I am convinced that the best thing for authors and publishers to do is to make sure that the pirate has the least attractive option. This is a phenomenal article on the futility of fighting piracy. Piracy, like the poor as Matthew says, will always be with us. Nothing the RIAA or MPAA has done in terms of anti pirate measures has worked. The pirates will always make material available for free. The goal then must be to make the legitimate purchase equal to or better than the pirating experience.

Here’s what the Electronic Frontier Foundation has to say:

“Free speech in the 21st century often depends on incorporating video clips and other content from various sources,” explained EFF Senior Staff Attorney and Kahle Promise Fellow Corynne McSherry. “It’s what The Daily Show with Jon Stewart does every night. This is ‘fair use’ of copyrighted or trademarked material and protected under U.S. law. But that hasn’t stopped thin-skinned corporations and others from abusing the legal system to get these new works removed from the Internet. We wanted to document this censorship for all to see.” …”The DMCA encourages a ‘take down first, ask questions later’ approach, creating an unfair hurdle to free speech,” said EFF Activist Richard Esguerra. “People who abuse this law to silence critics should be shamed publicly, and that’s what we’re aiming to do.”

Right now the Wall of Shame includes: NPR, Warner Music Group, De Beers, NBC, Polo Ralph Lauren, CBS News and others.

Yesterday a federal court, showing a degree of sanity in an ever stranger copyright world, held that a ringtone going off in public was not a “public performance” and did not infringe copyright as the playing was done “without the purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage”. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out this ruling will also keep the driver of a car who is playing of music with the windows down from infringing copyrights.

For the full details you can take a look at the EFF’s report and you can go to bed tonight listening to music and leave your windows open without fear that ASCAP will prosecute you.

Copyright Office Publishes Notice of Inquiry and Request for Comments on Facilitating Access to Copyrighted Works for the Blind or Other Persons with Disabilities

The Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office seek comment on possible solutions to enhance the accessibility of copyrighted works for the benefit of the blind or other persons with disabilities. Comments are specifically sought on the objectives and potential impact on existing U.S. law of a draft treaty prepared under the auspices of the World Blind Union and proposed formally at the May 2009 session of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. Interested parties are invited to submit comments on the topics outlined in the supplementary information section of the Federal Register notice. Initial comments are due on or before November 13, 2009. Reply comments are due on or before December 4, 2009. For further information, go to the Copyright Office website at www.copyright.gov.

You can get the full PDF document here. Thanks to ResourceShelf for the link.

The article in question covers the leaders of the Associated Press and News Corp making a lot of noise at the World Media Summit about how the time has come for news services to stand up to news aggregators and search engines and demand payment.

AP chief exec Tom Curley said that more people were using websites such as Wikipedia and Facebook to catch breaking news, rather than traditional news sites, and that services such as AP and News Corp need to act now to regain control of the news content they provide.

That’s right, Tom! Take back the web! Why, how dare those search engines and news aggregators and other such sites have the temerity to publicize your content for you? Let’s not forget, this is the organization that once claimed they would charge bloggers $675 a word for the “fair use” of excerpts longer than ten words, and then retracted the claim but refused to be specific about any new guidelines.

I really like the paragraph further down the page where it talks about the AP planning to set up a plagiarism-detection system to “help boost revenue for the not-for-profit news cooperative”. Did they actually write that with a straight face? If they’re not-for-profit, shouldn’t they be concerned about things other than their revenues?

(Well, all right, to be fair, the quote also mentions the AP’s member newspapers. Still, it looks funny on first read-through.)

You know what Google should do? Google should simply remove the AP and its member papers from its services entirely. No Google News, no Google Blogs if the papers host blogs, no Google search engine indexing at all. Let the AP be entirely defunct as far as Google is concerned.

Then the AP could just find out what would happen to its precious revenue.

Edit: Edited to remove direct link to and quoting in excess of ten words from the AP article. Just in case.

“Jefferson especially believed that no generation had a right to bind those that followed. “The earth belongs . . . to the living,” he wrote to Madison in 1789; “the dead have neither powers nor right over it.” That being the case, “perpetual monopolies” in arts “ought expressly to be forbidden,” Jefferson’s own suggestion being that copyright run no more than 19 years.”

and Daniel Defoe:

“Daniel Defoe offered a memorable image for the relationship between authors and their work: “A Book is the Author’s Property, ’tis the Child of his Inventions, the Brat of his Brain.” The line comes from an essay Defoe wrote in support of the first-ever copyright act, the 1710 Statute of Anne.”

and James Madison:

“James Madison explained that copyright is best viewed as “a compensation for a benefit actually gained to the community.” There were good reasons, he wrote, to give authors a “temporary monopoly” over their work, “but it ought to be temporary” ”

in an article about the pros and cons of the Google book settlement.

Another battle between Google and the publishing industry begins today, as a court case taken by France’s Publishers Association and Society of Authors kicks off in Paris.

According to AFP, the plaintiffs are contesting Google’s 2005 campaign to digitise books without the prior authorisation of publishers or authors. The complaint was first filed three years ago.

Herve de la Martiniere, whose eponymous publishing group controls the Seuil publishing house, told the newswire: “We need to be able to deal with Google on a solid legal basis . . . It is unacceptable that someone would arrogantly take your books and digitise them without asking.”

He estimated between 3,000-4,000 works published by his group had been digitised by Google without his consent.

You can find the rest of the story here.

Technorati Tags:
copyright, Europe, France, Google, Google book settlement, Paul Biba, TeleRead

It seems that Helprin’s book, Digital Barbarism, has been getting nearly universally panned by reviewers. But according to an op-ed by Helprin in the National Review, the reason for that is not that the book might be bad—it is because publishers assigned the very people Helprin slammed in the book to review it.

If nothing else, Helprin does not suffer from an inadequate ego. In the op-ed, he paints himself as some kind of lone holy warrior, defending the sacred trust of copyright against some vast Internet conspiracy theory:

Because corporate defenders of intellectual property think they need only protect established law, they sit inertially in their towers and forfeit the more general debate to their active and numerous opponents. Thus, unwittingly engaged and with neither allies nor organizational support of any kind, I thought the only way to respond to hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of critics mobilized by “public interest” groups richly funded by private interests such as Google, was to write a book.

Right, Mark. Just keep thinking that.

Strangely, Helprin insists he is actually not in favor of perpetual copyright. “And because it seems necessary to their physiology to think that I am for perpetual copyright — as an originalist, I can’t be, and anyway never have been — they continue to insist that I am.”

Well, whatever, Mark. I’ll confess that I haven’t read the book myself—I had a hard enough time wading through the florid prose in Helprin’s op-ed—but the excerpts other people quoted sure made it seem that way. I suppose that if you can’t defend your position any other way, you have to move the goalposts.

And as Masnick points out, Helprin does not actually address any of the criticism he received.

Again, he fails to respond to a single point raised by any of the reviews. Instead, he just whines that people thought he was clueless, but he insists he’s not. How could he be clueless? He quoted famous people!

For all that Helprin dislikes and distrusts the Internet, feeling that it sucks the intelligence and will out of anyone who uses it, he sure is doing a great impression of a forum troll.

The Scribd Lawsuit: Catch 22, Anyone?

Masnick also has an update on the Scribd lawsuit that I mentioned the other day. It seems that one of the claims the lawyers are making is that Scribd’s anti-infringement filter—the thing that prevents copyrighted material from being uploaded again after it has been noticed and taken down—itself violates copyright, because it has to store a copy of the copyrighted material so it can recognize the material if someone tries to upload it again.

One wonders if Joseph Heller is one of those people whose works have been uploaded illegally.

As Masnick puts it, “it’s quite a bizarre lawsuit that not only sues Scribd for failing to block an uploaded book, but at the very same time also sues the company—under the same law—for trying to block an uploaded book.” Fair use precedent seems to be on Scribd’s side in this matter.

It looks as if the lawyers have an issue with Scribd having the temerity to exist at all, and they would like to put an end to it.