Copyright Law

The Coming Copyright Clash in Higher Education

Posted on November 01, 2012
Colleges and universities, however, have a major trump card to play to reduce the costs of higher education: they can reverse their longstanding custom against claiming work made for hire status. Instead, they could claim copyright ownership in scholarship as a way to avoid the scholarly publications crisis, and at once, justify this policy change as a way to cut the costs of education.

HathiTrust Decision Summary

Posted on October 11, 2012
In September 2011, the Authors Guild, various international authors' rights organizations and one dozen individual authors sued HathiTrust, Cornell, and the presidents of the universities of Michigan, California, Wisconsin and Indiana, claiming that HathiTrust's online storage, searchability and public availability of a digital corpus developed as part of the Google Books scanning project constituted copyright infringement...

Information Policy and The Red Herring of a Copyright-Technology War

Posted on July 01, 2012
In an article published earlier this year, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Sandra Braman defined ?information policy? as positions and practices that concern the creation, processing, flows, access and use of information. The term certainly includes content, much of which is subject to protection under this nation?s Copyright Act, and the telecommunication pipes through which that [...

Occupy Copyright

Posted on June 01, 2012
“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!” — Howard Beale, Network (1976) 2011 will be known as the year of the occupation, with Occupy Wall Street being the most recognizable of the protest movements...

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Decision Summary: Publishers v. Georgia State University

Posted on May 14, 2012
This article discusses the impact of a the recent federal district court decision [pdf] that, for the first time, provides colleges and university with some guidance on the use of copyrighted works for instructional purposes. Case Summary In April 2008, Cambridge University Press, Sage Publications and Oxford University Press sued officials at Georgia State University [...

HathiTrust: Section 108 & Fair Use Are Not Mutually Exclusive

Posted on March 05, 2012
Librarians who pay attention to copyright long have believed (and have been taught) that the the law?s fair use and library preservation provisions work cooperatively (if not simultaneously) to allow libraries and archives the opportunity to use limited portions of protected works without requiring the owner?s permission, and without having to pay a license fee [...

Copycense Weekly Review (through Dec. 24, 2011)

Posted on December 24, 2011
Copycense social media posts on copyright, communications, intellectual property and the media industries from December 18 through December 24, 2011.

Clipping Limit Exceeded

Posted on December 21, 2011
Just as K. Matthew considers moving further into the e-book world, W. W. Norton mucks up.

Copycense Weekly Review (through Dec. 17, 2011)

Posted on December 17, 2011
Copycense social media posts on copyright, communications, intellectual property and the media industries from December 11 through December 17, 2011.

Hachette Memo & Indie Publishing, Pt. 2

Posted on December 16, 2011
Why should authors who write and publish their own works be denigrated by the term self-publishing, instead of applauded for their entrepreneurial spirit through the term indie publishing?

Hachette Memo & Indie Publishing, Pt. 1

Posted on December 16, 2011
The Hachette memo is weak. If that was supposed to really the troops ... Well, maybe not so much.

Libraries & E-Book Lending

Posted on December 15, 2011
Library Wars: Amazon, publishers vie for control of e-Book rentals is.gd/erGE0b /HT @DrRimmer #books #copyright— K Matthew Dames (@Copycense) December 14, 2011 Pull Quote #1 As the digital era unfolds, the role of libraries in the distribution of e-books has emerged as a significant issue of contention...

Louis C.K. Comedy Tour

Posted on December 14, 2011
Louis C.K.'s success isn't that he has profited on this single show. It's that he survived in the business long enough to put himself in a position to profit from this single show.

Copycense Weekly Review (through Dec. 10, 2011)

Posted on December 10, 2011
Copycense social media posts on copyright, communications, intellectual property and the media industries from December 4 through December 10, 2011.

Copycense Weekly Review (through Dec. 3, 2011)

Posted on December 03, 2011
Copycense social media posts on copyright, communications, intellectual property and the media industries from November 27 through December 3, 2011.

Science vs. Advocacy: Thoughts on the Felten BitTorrent Study

Posted on February 01, 2010
Princeton computer science professor Edward Felten has posted on his Web site a summary of a study he and Princeton student Sauhard Sahi conducted involving BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer network protocol. Felten and Sahi summarize their study as an investigation into what types of files are available on the system: BitTorrent is popular because it lets anyone [...

Science vs. Advocacy: Thoughts on the Felten BitTorrent Study

Posted on February 01, 2010
Princeton computer science professor Edward Felten has posted on his Web site a summary of a study he and Princeton student Sauhard Sahi conducted involving BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer network protocol. Felten and Sahi summarize their study as an investigation into what types of files are available on the system: BitTorrent is popular because it lets [...

The (Second) William Patry Interview

Posted on September 02, 2009
Editor?s Note: Copycense executive editor K. Matthew Dames interviews William Patry a second time. (The first interview occurred in late 2006, and was published in 2007, the same year West Publishing released the multi-volume treatise Patry on Copyright...

The (Second) William Patry Interview

Posted on September 02, 2009
Editor?s Note: Copycense executive editor K. Matthew Dames interviews William Patry a second time. (The first interview occurred in late 2006, and was published in 2007, the same year West Publishing released the multi-volume treatise Patry on Copyright...

Is Creative Commons Good for Copyright?

Posted on August 31, 2009
One of the beauties and frustrations of dealing with issues online is the immediate feedback loop and the possibility that such a loop amounts to little more than people talking at each other, rather than with each other. We experienced this last week, when we posted the following thoughts to our Twitter account (@copycense): Empirical question: [...

Copycense: The WIlliam Patry Interview

Posted on August 11, 2009
Editor’s Note: William F. Patry has a new book out entitled Moral Panics & The Copyright Wars (2009, Oxford University Press) [Amazon.com; Barnes & Noble; author’s book blog]. Patry, one of this nation’s foremost authorities on copyright, also is the author of the eight-volume treatise Patry on Copyright and serves as the senior copyright counsel [...

Your Copyright Responsibility As a Citizen

Posted on August 07, 2009
We have been extraordinarily busy lately, and therefore have yet to write on important issues like the Amazon Kindle situation. Yet, we felt compelled to write this entry after two occurrences over the past four days. In the first situation, several of the participants thanked us for leading a recent copyright training session...

Two Years Later, We Still Cannot ?Free Jammie?

Posted on July 02, 2009
In October 2007, we wrote in these digital pages an article entitled “Should We Still ‘Free Jammie’?” The article’s title referred to a then-existing campaign to elevate Jammie Thomas-Rasset (then Jammie Thomas) to political prisoner status because she lost at trial after being sued by several record companies for copyright infringement...

Copyright for the Boulevard & the Bourgeoisie

Posted on June 22, 2009
Here at Copycense, we have been investigating our editorial and business models in light of several changes in the way we provide information about copyright, content, media, and information policy to our audience, as well as several changes in the way copyright information is made available online...

Why the Frame of ?Piracy? Matters

Posted on June 17, 2009
“Since the U.S. Navy rescued Capt. Richard Phillips in April, many news outlets have been writing about piracy. Interestingly, some news outlets have raised an important question about ?piracy? as a term: In light of the ongoing (and newly newsworthy) threat of violence on the high seas, should ?piracy? continue to be used to mean [...

Foreign Affairs As The New Copyright Law, Part 3 of 3

Posted on June 09, 2009
[Editor’s Note: This is final part of a three-part series on the intersection of trade agreements, foreign affairs, and U.S. copyright law. Part 1 was published in Copycense on May 27; Part 2 was published on June 2.] In this article, I focus on proposed legislation in Congress that would make copyright (and other intellectual property [...

Foreign Affairs As The New Copyright Law, Part 2 of 3

Posted on June 02, 2009
[Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three-part series on the intersection of trade agreements, foreign affairs, and U.S. copyright law. Part 1 was published on May 28; Part 3 will be published on Tuesday, June 9. Portions of this work are included in a continuing study about the framing of “piracy” and its [...

Foreign Affairs As The New Copyright Law, Part 1 of 3

Posted on May 28, 2009
[Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series on the intersection of trade agreements, foreign affairs, and U.S. copyright law. Portions of this part were published previously as Dames, K. Matthew (2007). Trade Agreements as the New Copyright Law, Online, 31(2), 16-21...

Refuting Mark Helprin?s Views on Copyright

Posted on May 12, 2009
Normally, this post would be something best left to someone like William Patry, whose credentials on copyright are above reproach. Lawrence Lessig has responded to Helprin in a contemporary and ingenious way, but Lessig’s main focus now has moved from intellectual property matters to what he has called “corruption” (and what Harvard Law School, his [...

When All See The Same Picture

Posted on April 28, 2009
Earlier this week, The New York Times has published an extensive feature article on Secretary of the Treasury Timothy F. Geithner. The crux of the article essentially questions Geithner’s judgment and decisions in light of his cozy relationship with the financial industry during his tenure as president of the Federal Bank of New York...

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