Our advisory board members have been blogging away on their own blogs about copyright – specifically whether or not Nuremberg trial transcripts are in the public domain. Rich Stim started it and concludes YES, public domain. Peter Hirtle concurs but with slightly different analysis.
 

http://bit.ly/SWCiz  When the author signs rights away to publishers, some contracts allow authors to reclaim rights in the future. Given the two year window to opt out or remove one’s book, a publisher may assent to the google books agreement and the author is out of luck when the rights revert to him or her.   Copyright law, moreover, safeguards authors’ rights after about 35 years, allowing a chance to reclaim copyright.  Again, if the publisher already assents, the author’s power to remove the book has lapsed, despite the right to share in revenue.

A new Firefox extension helps you share PACER court docs. It’s called RECAP: Turning PACER Around — http://recapthelaw.org  Incredibly innovative way to share public domain docs that courts prefer to charge you for.