Ebook pledge aims to protect libraries and authors from publishers’ growing abuse of copyright
There’s a whole chapter of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) devoted to the serious attack on libraries and their traditional functions that is being carried…
A fan’s unique recordings of the Beatles won’t be available online, because of “copyright issues”
There’s a story in the Mail on Sunday that underlines why it is important for people to make copies. It concerns the re-surfacing of rare recordings of the…
Will analogue academic textbooks be the next to move to the Spotify digital licensing model?
Last December, a post noted that Spotify is a rising digital giant, despite its lack of profitability. As well as representing a concentration of power – something seen…
Interview | Alex Sayf Cummings: Music Piracy, Alternative Remuneration Models, Blurred Lines, SOPA, and Out of Control Copyright Terms and Penalties
Alex Sayf Cummings is a historian of law, technology, labor, public policy, and American cities. A leading voice on pop culture and public history, she has published on…
Interview | Salvador Alcántar Morán: Mexican Copyright Unfit-for-purpose in the Digital age, the Public Domain as a Human Right, and the Need for a True Multistakeholder Approach and a Global Perspective on Copyright
Salvador Alcántar Morán is a lawyer, focused on digital copyright, educational technology and digital communications. He is the co-founder of Wikimedia Mexico and of Creative Commons Mexico. He…
Interview | Brewster Kahle: Libraries’ Role, 3 Internet Battles, Licensing Pains, the National Emergency Library, and the Internet Archive’s Controlled Digital Lending Efforts vs. the Publishers’ Lawsuit
Brewster Kahle is founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, one of the largest libraries in the world. Next to his mission to provide universal access to…
Guest post | #ebooksos crisis: price gouging publishers
Despite only 10% of university reading list items being available in ebook format, “everything is available in E-format” is a sentence librarians hear often. In the so-called digital…
Rights retention: one small step for academics, one giant leap for global access to knowledge
A few weeks ago, we wondered whether academic publishers might try to shut down the amazing General Index of scientific journals that Carl Malamud has created. There’s a…
Does copyright give companies the right to search your home and computer?
One reason why copyright has become so important in the digital age is that it applies to the software that many of us use routinely on our smartphones,…
Unleashing the power of online sharing for all: the birth and rise of Creative Commons
Effortless copying lies at the heart of the Internet. As digital data is passed from location to location, copies of it are made at the intersection of the…