http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm Duke's source for advice and information about copyright and publication issues Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:54:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In the brief time since the Amended Google Books Settlement was filed with the court (on Friday the 13th) and released to the public, there has been a flurry of commentary from a variety of perspectives.  Two interesting themes have emerged, however, from those on both sides of the great ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/11/17/plus-ca-change-plus-cest-la-meme-chose-gbs-again/ This recent post on the TechDirt blog drew my attention (and that of may others) to an earlier note on the Freakonomics blog about an artist who pays an annual fee plus a percentage of his earnings to the University of Texas, Austin for the right to paint pictures of ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/11/13/architectural-overreaching/ As promised in the last post, here is a very different look at the copyright incentive and the need to be thoughtful and cautious when we talk about copyright as an author’s right. In the Autumn 2009 issue of The American Scholar, William J. Quirk writes an absolutely fascinating reflection on ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/11/09/copyright-should-be-an-author%e2%80%99s-right-part-2/ It seems like such a simple point.  And the rhetoric of authors’ entitlement to the fruits of their labors has always been prominent in copyright debates, although it was usually on the lips of printers and publishers whose real concerns were much different.  Two very different articles have once again ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/11/04/copyright-should-be-an-author%e2%80%99s-right-part-1/ It is getting both monotonous and annoying to write repeatedly about badly reasoned court decisions in the area of copyright.  Unfortunately, when they directly impact higher education, we cannot ignore these pernicious errors by our federal courts. Earlier this month, a district court in Michigan handed down such a decision in ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/10/29/through-the-copyright-looking-glass/ Jon Kuniholm may not have been an obvious choice for an Open Access Week speaker at Duke, but as the final participant in a panel on global access to health information yesterday, he made a profound impression.  The panel, called "Open Access, Local Action," was all very interesting to the ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/10/24/open-access-for-hardware/ There has been some really good attention paid recently to the issue of how our linguist choices really frame the debates about copyright law and, often, prejudge them.  In his new book, William Patry (who will be speaking at Duke Law School on October 22) devotes quite a bit of ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/10/18/technological-neutrality-as-a-rhetorical-strategy/ No, the title, a paraphrase of a famous remark by Justice Potter Stewart, does not refer, in this instance, to pornography, but to non-commercial uses of copyrighted works. One of the persistent criticisms -- or perhaps reservations is the correct word -- about the Creative Commons licensing scheme has been that ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/10/13/i-cant-define/ This article from the Guardian UK about how "Google Books deal forces us to deal with copyright" had me nodding in agreement, right up until its last few paragraphs.  Like author Nick Harkaway, I am cautiously relieved by the intervention from the Department of Justice that has forced a postponement ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/10/07/falling-down-before-the-finish/ Some copyright cases just don't grab one's attention, and I have to admit that I saw reports of the decision in Omega v. Costco several times before the potential impact on academic libraries began to sink in.  The case involves chapter 6 of the Copyright Act, referred to as the ... http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2009/10/01/manufacturing-controversy/