Larry Lessig points out that the Obama team is now using a the freest creative commons license on its change.gov site. This meshes well with the principles of open government, though it doesn’t go so far as to dedicate the content to the public domain.
Hat tip to Cicely Wilson.
You can watch Larry Lessig’s interview on Charlie Rose 11/21/08 in full or in clips Larry Lessig (full segment), Larry Lessig (clips). Matt Rutherford summarizes the show at TechCrunch.
RDR Books, represented by Anthony Falzone of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, has appealed their case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Anthony Falzone writes about the court’s decision to stop publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon, ruling against Fair Use. All is not over. He writes:
Finally, remember that avada kedavra — the killing curse — is not always fatal. One wizard survived it. Three times. And it was he who cast the spell (and won’t be named here) that ultimately suffered for it. Maybe someday the Lexicon will be known as The Book That Lived.
Here is Stanford’s offical press release:
STANFORD, Calif., September 8, 2008– Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project has released the following statement on behalf of RDR Books and its counsel regarding today’s decision on Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. et al v. RDR Books et al issued by U.S. District Judge Robert B. Patterson:
“We are encouraged by the fact that the Court recognized that as a general matter authors do not have the right to stop the publication of reference guides and companion books about literary works. As for the Lexicon, we are obviously disappointed with the result, and RDR Books is considering all of its options, including an appeal.”
Court decision and filings here at Justia: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. et al v. RDR Books et al
Minow: Tell us about the new Digital Copyright Slider. How does it work and what is its purpose?
Brewer: The “Is it Covered by Copyright?” Slider was created as the first in a series of simple tools to help librarians, educators and others with their copyright questions.We first created a print version as a slide chart, but realized that a digital version could be much more useful, though perhaps not as fun to play with. Thus, the digital version was born.Both versions of the slider help the user to determine whether or not a work is in the public domain in the United States , and, if not, what the period of protection is.
Our next tool, a Section 108 “spinner” (library/archival reproductions for preservation, replacement or for users) will be released shortly both in print and online, so stay tuned.
Minow: What is the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy Copyright Committee?
Brewer: The American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy Copyright Advisory Subcommittee promotes copyright education programs and initiatives and advises the OITP copyright specialist. We meet twice a year at ALA annual and mid-winter. Our meetings are open to any interested ALA members.Many members are actively involved in the Copyright Advisory Network at http://www.librarycopyright.net/
Michael Brewer is Team Leader for Undergraduate Services, University of Arizona Library and a member of the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy Copyright Advisory Subcommittee.
The outcome of the hearing we previously blogged about is that the Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee will not assert copyright on the Oregon Revised Statutes.
Public.resource.org has put up video of the hearing in 6 segments. Find out more on public.resource.org/oregon.gov/.
Audio recording of Legislative Counsel committee hearing in Oregon on copyright status of Oregon Revised Statutes – June 19, 2008. Listen for Tim Stanley’s vision of building on the Statutes with technology and community. E.g. include earlier versions, tagging, allowing law professors and others to add comments, and more. Here’s the Justia site.
(thanks, Tim, Cicely and Nick)
Justia has made the Yoko Ono Lennon v Premise Media court documents available. Congratulations to the Stanford Fair Use Project for its Fair Use defense.
The Stanford University Libraries are pleased to announce that the full dataset for its Copyright Renewal Database is now available for download.
A link to the file is found on the CRD database website or download the dataset directly: http://collections.stanford .edu/copyrightrenewals/files /CopyrightRenewalRecords200804 26.zip
Provision of the dataset is an additional service that we hope will be useful to those of you who are interested in setting up internal copyright search systems of your own. The web interface will remain the same for those of you who want to use it for occasional research.
The libraries continue to be asked about plans to expand our data set to include other classes of works. While we have not ruled it out, we do not have plans for such an effort at the moment. This is primarily a funding issue, but it is important to remember that for the book database we were able to leverage the extraordinary work of Project Gutenberg in transcribing the Catalog of Copyright Entry text. Since those transcriptions don’t exist for classes other than books, there is an additional layer of effort required to add additional data classes.
Mimi Calter
Special Projects Librarian and Intellectual Property Manager
Stanford University Libraries
The Stanford Copyright & Fair Use site continues to updates its current featured cases, dockets, legislation, etc. For updates on the Harry Potter case, the PRO-IP bill and more, see CURRENT tab.
