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FOS Newsletter, 4/15/02
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Peter Suber
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Apr 15, 2002 13:05 PDT
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Welcome to the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter
April 15, 2002
More on the problem of excessive accessibility
The problem of excessive accessibility arises when somebody thinks certain
information should be hard to find, even if by law or policy it has to be
made public or available to those who need it. In past issues I've covered
the problem as it arises for criminal records (FOSN for 10/12/01), court
records (FOSN for 11/26/01), phone numbers (FOSN for 1/8/02), and
information that might be useful to terrorists (esp. FOSN for
11/26/01). It doesn't arise often for literature and scholarship, but this
week it arose twice.
* The Authors Guild is complaining that Amazon sells used books on the same
page as new books. The problem is that used books generate no royalties
for their authors, and because they cost less shoppers occasionally buy
them. However, authors love used book stores, and I've never heard of an
author vowing not to buy used copies of books that might still be in
print. What the Authors Guild is really protesting, then, is that Amazon
is making used book buying too easy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/10/technology/10BOOK.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51676,00.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-880022.html
This is the second time around between the Authors Guild and
Amazon. Here's the first (December 2000).
http://www.authorsguild.org/pramazon1200.html
For the purposes of this controversy, it doesn't matter whether we consider
links to be information, protected as free speech, or transactions, subject
to regulation, even though this distinction is important e.g. for the DeCSS
case. The Authors Guild shouldn't be protesting Amazon's used-book links
whether they are construed as ads for used books or as miniature used book
stores. Does it protest when used book stores move next door to new book
stores? What if a new book store adds a wing of used books? If the
Authors Guild doesn't object to the first-sale doctrine (which creates a
legal market for used books), and doesn't object to selling used books in
proximity to new books until the convenience for buyers becomes
"excessive", then it is clearly protesting competition and nothing else.
* This week a discussion thread started in the American Scientist
("September98") forum on the question whether the Open Archives Initiative
(OAI) is harmful to society publishers. Sally Morris for the Association
of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) argues that society
journals are not threatened when authors put their articles on their own
home pages, but that posting articles to OAI-compliant archives is
"considerably more alarming". The reason is that making the articles
"organized and cross-searchable" makes them excessively
accessible. Readers will bypass journals, which will make the journals
disappear along with all the "added value" they provide.
Sally Morris against the OAI
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1998.html
Stevan Harnad's reply to Morris
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1999.html
* Postscript. From the standpoint of the Authors Guild, Amazon does make
used books excessively accessible, and from the standpoint of priced
journals, open-access archives do make articles excessively accessible. If
"excess" is judged by the revenues of existing businesses, then the charge
is warranted. But in both cases, someone is offering easier accessibility
in order to serve readers --and in the case of scholarly journals, also
authors. If "excess" is judged from their standpoint, then accessibility
can never be wide enough or easy enough; excess is impossible. So the
question isn't whether someone is losing money, but whether the interests
of sellers must trump the interest of buyers. Should existing technologies
carry a veto over new technologies, existing business models over future
business models, existing beneficiaries over future
beneficiaries? Obviously the same questions come up in the P2P swapping of
music and video files, though in both the Amazon and OAI cases the
questions do not carry the complication of copyright troubles.
When we're talking about a lawful and even valuable form of information
flow, then when is easy access too easy? There seem to be two very
different cases in which someone might object that a certain degree of
access to information is excessive. The first is when easy accessibility
helps criminals, invades privacy, or deters citizens from socially
beneficial practices like testifying in court. (We omit the case of
infringing copyright because that isn't a lawful form of information
flow.) The second is when easy accessibility harms someone's bottom
line. In the first case, we can at least acknowledge that there might be
rights on both sides. In response, we can at least investigate whether
reasonable compromises exist. But the second case is very different. When
the strong right to exchange lawful information conflicts only with
existing revenue models, there is no reason to compromise.
Society journals would make two additional arguments at this point: that
the survival of journals is necessary for the survival of peer review, and
that society journals are not just commercial concerns, but that their
revenues subsidize the important activities of the professional societies
that stand behind them.
The answers to these additional arguments can be very brief. FOS doesn't
jeopardize peer review at all, but only peer review performed by priced
journals. If the objection shifts to the claim that journals must be
priced in order to have the means to support peer review, then the reply is
simply that the claim is false, as shown every day by a growing number of
journals in every discipline.
It's true that non-profit society publishers deserve more deference from
academics than for-profit publishers. Society publishers use any revenues
beyond expenses for valuable academic projects. But both kinds of
publisher erect price-barriers that limit access to research literature,
and therefore both impede the growth and circulation of knowledge. Both
compromise what is primary for academics in order to promote something
else, and it really doesn't matter much whether their alternative good is
secondary or tertiary.
As Edwin Shelock (past chair of the ALPSP) put it in the October 2001
_Learned Publishing_, learned societies should act less like commercial
publishers and more like their own members. "Are learned society
publishers so much part of commercial publishing now that they take the
same attitude to the potential disturbance of the business of publishing as
do the commercial publishers who are in it primarily to provide distributed
profit for their shareholders? Are the learned society publishers divorced
from their societies to the extent that they have a different agenda from
the society members?"
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z552240B
As the BOAI FAQ puts it, "We believe that the opportunity created by the
internet for open access to peer-reviewed research literature should be
seized even if the revenue from priced editions of this literature supports
good causes. If a significant public good can be made available free of
charge, then it shouldn't be priced simply to subsidize another good. If
the second good is worthy, there must be some other way to support it."
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#harm
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Housekeeping
* As of April 21, my email host, Topica, is making ads mandatory for all
its newsletters. So I'm looking even harder for a new host that meets my
criteria. If I don't succeed, please forgive the ads while I continue to look.
Here are my criteria. I'd appreciate any recommendations other than Yahoo
(already ruled out for its privacy policy), and H-Net, JISC Mail, and the
University of Lund (already under investigation).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/host.htm
* Starting with this issue, I'll mark conferences that I've added since the
previous issue with two asterisks. (Thanks to Roger Fenton for the
suggestion.)
* Mini-FAQ: Doesn't Suber know how to use quotation marks? Answer: I
follow the practice of exact quotation, like most writers in my field
(philosophy). Exact quotation means we don't put commas or periods at the
ends of quoted fragments, inside the quotation marks, unless they are part
of the quoted source. We know that grammar books require punctuation
within the quotation marks in many cases where we omit it, but we regard
these rules as irrational. Quotation marks should mean that one is quoting!
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Developments
* The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has launched a
three-year scholarly communication initiative. "Broad goals of the
initiative include creating increased access to scholarly information;
fostering cost-effective alternative means of publishing, especially those
that take advantage of electronic information technologies; and encouraging
scholars to assert greater control over scholarly communications." More
details will be published in the May issue of _College and Research
Libraries News_.
http://www.ala.org/news/v8n5/acrl_initiative.html
(Thanks to the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog.)
* The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) has issued a call to
for-profit and non-profit publishers to launch new open-access scholarly
journals. To make this easier for publishers, the Open Society Institute
(OSI) is providing funds to authors from 65 developing nations to publish
in open-access journals. OSI will announce more details soon.
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/publisher.shtml
* Elsevier Science has launched Mathematics Web, a portal of free online
mathematics articles, including a preprint archive and a database for
mathematical citation tracking.
http://www.mathematicsweb.org/mathematicsweb/show/
* The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Dartmouth
University will create a Scholarly Communication Institute, thanks to a new
grant from the Mellon Foundation.
http://www.clir.org/pubs/press/2002_mellsci.html
* The RDN family of academic subject portals or "hubs" has reached the
milestone of indexing 50,000 free online resources, all searchable from the
RDN front page.
http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
* Project Gutenberg has released its 5,000th free online full-text book, an
English translation of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. Only six month ago
it announced its 4,000th text (FOSN for 11/16/02).
http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=326&nl
* The University of Michigan will shut down its academic portal,
my.umich.edu, on June 30. The reason is simply cost. After June 30, UM
will beef up its web site and participate in uPortal (an emerging standard
for academic portals) and MIT's Open Knowledege Initiative.
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/04/2002041101t.htm
* Version 2.0 of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata
Harvesting is scheduled to be released on June 1.
http://www.openarchives.org/news/OAI-2.0A-PR.html
* Ingenta has named the U.S. contingent to its advisory board. The new
members are Mary Case (Association of Research Libraries), Clifford Lynch
(Coalition for Networked Information), Andrew Odlyzko (University of
Minnesota), Carol Tenopir (University of Tennessee), and Mary Waltham
(Nature). A clear majority of the new advisory board is FOS-friendly.
http://www.biblio-tech.com/UKSG/SI_PD.cfm?PID=10&Alert=180
http://www.managinginformation.com/news/content_show_full.php?id=457
Ingenta is a for-profit purveyor of scholarly journals, and this year
reports increased profits and profit margins.
http://www.biblio-tech.com/UKSG/SI_PD.cfm?PID=10&ArticleID=179&XSection=Business&issueno=12
* The Open Technology Consortium (OTC) is a new PAC to lobby in favor of
open source software, freedom of speech, technological innovation, and
free-market competition, and against all legislation that would constrain
any of these or give existing technologies artificial protection against
superior, emerging technologies. The OTC welcomes individual ($25) and
group ($50) members, as well as donations beyond the membership dues.
http://www.thelinuxshow.com/otc.htm
(Thanks to C-FIT.)
* Open Source Content Management software is on the rise. It is already
competing successfully against proprietary packages. This is FOS-related
because Content Management packages can be used to support electronic
journals, even if that is not their direct focus.
News story from _ContentWire_
http://www.content-wire.com/FreshPicks/Index.cfm?ccs=86&cs=1667
OSCOM (Open Source Content Management), a new non-profit developer association
http://www.oscom.org
* The Online Information Exchange (ONIX) is the international metadata
standard for electronic books, serials, and videos. The Digital Object
Identifier (DOI) is the international standard for uniquely identifying
electronic content. At the London Book Fair last month, the organizations
representing the two standards agreed to work toward easy interoperability
wherever they overlap.
http://www.doi.org/news/020319-Editeur.html
(Thanks to El.pub Weekly.)
* The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) will develop a
standard for exchanging serials subscription information. As the _Serials
eNews_ put it, this is "an important move that signals the maturing
approach to the use of the web beyond the search and retrieve function and
into the essential yet badly neglected field of administration of
subscriptions."
http://www.topica.com/lists/fos-forum/read/message.html?mid=904039257&sort=d&start=131
http://www.biblio-tech.com/UKSG/SI_PD.cfm?PID=10&Alert=182
NISO is hosting a workshop next month to look at the needs to be met by the
new standard (Chicago, May 10).
http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/NISO-DLF-wkshp.html
_Serials eNews_ reports that contributions to its discussion list show the
need for the NISO standard. "It's as if we have all been given a Ferrari
[electronic access to journals] but the tax and insurance systems are
delivered via quill pen and the pony express." However, the actual
postings show a preference for FOS, not streamlined subscriptions. It's as
if we asked that readers should receive for free what writers choose to
give away, and instead readers get a simplified bill.
http://www.biblio-tech.com/UKSG/SI_PD.cfm?PID=10&Alert=191
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New on the net
* The European Commission has launched Europe and Culture, a portal to free
online collections, activities, funding opportunities, news, and related
links on European culture.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/culture/index_en.htm
(Thanks to El.pub Weekly.)
* The papers to be presented at the conference, Museums and the Web 2002
(Boston, April 17-20), are now online. The discussion covers open
standards, open technologies, and open culture.
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2002/speakers/index.html
* RealPlayer video is now available of the March 21 panel discussion at the
Guggenheim Museum, "Who Controls New Media? Open Art in Closed Systems".
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/whocontrols/who_controls.html
(Thanks to The Filter.)
* The University of Oregon Directory of Organizations was formerly
available only as a priced, printed book. Now it is free online. It's an
exhaustive catalog of non-profit organizations devoted to any aspect of
education management, including the dissemination of information.
http://ericdb.uoregon.edu/directory/
(Thanks to the Scout Report.)
* The Open eBook Forum has released its study on ebook usability.
Survey summary (10 most desirable ebook features)
http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=326&nl
The full report is only available to those who take a short survey on how
they heard about it. The full report covers the first-sale doctrine,
sharing rights, and fair-use copying, but it only says that users want
these features.
http://www.openebook.org/eBookSurvey/results.asp
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Share your thoughts
* Educause and the Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force are
conducting a survey of academics on cyberspace security. The results will
inform the Bush administration's Cyberspace Security Strategy. Educause
and I2CNSTF will accept responses until April 19.
http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/groups/security/security-survey.html
* The _Journal of Digital Information_ (JoDI) is conducting an online
survey. JoDi has been a free online journal since its launch. But a
couple of the survey questions (12-14) ask about the possibility of
instituting subscriptions. If you are a JoDI reader interested in keeping
it free, take the survey. It will accept responses until April 26.
http://www.bcs.org/jodisurvey/
* The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) are jointly funding projects in international
digital libraries research, and invite proposals. Letters of intent are
due by July 1, and full proposals are due by August 1.
http://www.dfg.de/foerder/biblio/neues/dfg_nsf.pdf
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In other publications
* In the April 11 _ZDNet Tech Update_, David Berlind reports that IBM and
Microsoft are moving to position their patented proprietary protocols
(SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI) as official or unofficial internet standards. If
they succeed, they will have "the right to place a tax on the internet
traffic that depends on those protocols." How likely is it that IBM and
Microsoft will break with the tradition of making patented protocols for
the internet available on a royalty-free basis? Likely enough that
Hewlett-Packard cited this likelihood as its only reason for resigning as a
co-submitter of the WSDL protocol.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?R56B00CA
* In the April 10 _SearchDay_, Chris Sherman reviews five services to find
books that meet the user's criteria.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd0410-bookse.html
* In the April 10 _Chronicle of Higher Education_, Vincent Kiernan reports
on how link rot (the death of web links over time) undermines online
education. Two researchers at the University of Nebraska have studied this
problem and conclude that links on course sites have a half-life of 55
months. That means that about half will die in the first 55 months, half
of the survivors in the next 55 months, and so on. One remedy the authors
propose is for scholarly societies to host permanent archives of commonly
used course materials.
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/04/2002041001u.htm
PS: The _Chronicle_ story suggests that the Nebraska study is the first of
its kind. But OCLC has had similar data on its web site since at least
January (when I covered it in FOSN for 1/23/01). What's especially
interesting is that the OCLC data support the 55 month half-life figure.
http://www.oclc.org/news/research/webstatistics.shtm
(Scroll to bottom table.)
* In the April 9 _Guardian_, Simon Midgley asks whether ebooks will replace
print books, especially in the peculiar submarket of school textbooks. He
concludes that ebooks have this potential, because they can be more closely
tailored to the needs of individual courses. Moreover, they can be less
expensive. But will they be less expensive in fact? Publishers want to
price textbooks low enough to be affordable by students and libraries, but
high enough to preserve their profits. They have yet to figure out where
to strike balance. (PS: Why not price them at 10% above the true costs of
producing and disseminating them? If this caused a revolution of falling
prices, would that be a calamity? There would still be a 10% profit
margin. Or why shouldn't schools and libraries compete with commercial
publishers, produce their own books, either on a break-even basis or
subsidized by the money saved from textbook purchases? Clearly the same
questions arise, and the same answers suggest themselves, for priced journals.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4389510,00.html
(Thanks to LIS News.)
* The April 6 _News.com_ has an anonymous review of Lawrence Lessig's _The
Future of Ideas_. The review is mixed. On the one hand, the reviewer
recommends that the book "should be read by all --from lawyers,
policy-makers and corporate leaders to software developers, educators and
everyday end users." On the other hand, the reviewer criticizes the book
for going beyond analysis to a manifesto and jeremiad. Half the review is
spent on the history and dangers of jeremiads. No space at all is given to
showing that the book is guilty of the charge.
http://news.com.com/2009-1023-877317.html?tag=nc.ne.dht.nl-sty.0
* In an April white paper for Factiva (a joint venture between Dow Jones
and Reuters), Mary Ellen Bates collects and analyzes data on free,
fee-based, and value-added information services on the internet, focusing
on business information. 62% of knowledge workers in business believe that
all the information they need is online free of charge. 74% believe that
it's hard to ascertain just what is freely available online. 79% seek free
information before priced information. More than 82% of archives of
business information are are accessible only to paying
subscribers. (PS: Overall the paper argues that free information is not
as comprehensive or reliable as priced information. While the underlying
data may be good, the reader should note that the paper ends up supporting
its own sponsor, Factiva.)
http://www.factiva.com/collateral/files/whitepaper_feevsfree_032002.pdf
* The March/April issue of _Ariadne_ is now online. It contains several
FOS-related articles:
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/
Stephen Pinfield, Mike Gardner, and John MacColl, "Setting Up An
Institutional E-print Archive"
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/eprint-archives/
(The experience of the Universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham.)
Ronald Milne, "The 'Distributed National Collection' Access, and
Cross-sectoral Collaboration: the Research Support Libraries Programme"
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/rslp/
Suzanne Dobratz, Friederike Schimmelpfennif, and Peter Schirmbacher, "The
Open Archives Forum"
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/open-archives-forum/
Andy Powell and Liz Lyon, "The JISC Information Environment and Web Services"
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/information-environments/
Robert Baxter, Frances Blomely, and Rachel Kemsley, "The AIM25 Project"
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/aim25/
Simon Jennings and Philip Pothen, "News from the Resource Discovery Network"
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/rdn/
Roddy MacLeod, "EEVL-ution To A Portal"
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/eevl/
(On the EEVL mathematics and CS portal.)
* In the Spring issue of _Progressive Librarian_, Dorothy Warner asks why
we should keep works in print once they are archived on the web. The
answer is the uncertainty of long-term digital preservation. Warner
reviews recent writings, standards, and initiatives addressing the problem.
http://libr.org/PL/19-20_Warner.html
(Thanks to New Breed Librarian.)
* In the latest (undated) _New Library World_, Jenny Walker reviews the
CrossRef and SFX reference linking services. Only an abstract is freely
accessible online.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?A21E21AA
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Following up
To see past coverage of these stories in FOSN, use the search engine at the
FOSN archive.
http://www.topica.com/lists/suber-fos/read
* More on the CBDTPA
More general coverage
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,50092,00.html
http://makeashorterlink.com/?U4CB51CA
In the last issue I cited John Borland's interview with Jack
Valenti. Ernest Miller annotates Valenti's answers in _LawMeme_.
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=168
(Thanks to Mark Pilgrim.)
* Disney CEO Michael Eisner has an editorial defending the CBDTPA in the
London _Financial Times_. Here's the quality of the argument: We should
adopt the CBDTPA because property is good, because intellectual property is
good, because Abraham Lincoln defended intellectual property rights in an
1859 speech (which is why Eisner calls him "my internet guru"), and because
Eisner's great-grandfater taught his son not to steal, who taught his son,
etc. (PS: I assume that running Disney requires some analytic
intelligence and the ability to see two sides of a controversy, compose
arguments, and answer objections. Why not show it?)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2282679
(Thanks to The Filter.)
In the _San Francisco Chronicle_, Benny Evangelista reports at length on
the pro-entertainment and pro-tech (or pro-consumer) sides of the
issue. His story is notable for its coverage of the relevant history of
copying technology and how courts and legislatures have responded to it.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?A270329A
(Thanks to LIS News.)
Marc Andreesen is the latest in a long series of informed people trying to
explain to Congress and the entertainment industry that whatever can be
viewed on a computer screen can be copied. (PS: On the one hand, this is
a critical point and I wish Congress would hear it. On the other hand,
Congress has heard and misunderstood. When Leslie Vadasz of Intel made
this point at a Senate hearing in February, Disney's Michael Eisner and
Senator Ernest Hollings regarded it as a concession to the entertainment
industry, as proof of the problem, and as a good reason to legislate. See
FOSN for 3/4/02.)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3031836.htm
(Thanks to GigaLaw.)
Andy Sullivan reports for _Yahoo News_ that Congress has been flooded with
faxes and emails opposing the CBDTPA. Quoting Mimi Devlin, spokesperson
for the Senate Judiciary Committee: "We haven't received one e-mail in
support of the Hollings bill."
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X172359A
Gateway has launched an ad campaign against the CBDTPA. Not
coincidentally, Gateway has also launched a pre-loaded, CD-burning Digital
Music PC which operates as a full stereo system for downloaded
music. There is already a (healthy) debate about whether Gateway is
playing into the hands of Hollings/Disney/RIAA by confirming its charge
that the PC industry profits from piracy.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?K62B53AA
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-879811.html
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,51719,00.html
Gateway's downloadable music web site includes a "Protect your rights" page.
http://gateway.com/home/deals/offers/music/dmz.shtml
_LawMeme_ summarizes recent CBDTPA news, with links.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y26F52FA
* More on the CIPA trial
Ben Edelman's expert testimony on innocent sites blocked by filtering
programs is now online.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/mul-v-us/
(Thanks to The Filter.)
The ACLU (co-plaintiff in the case) has posted a day-by-day account of the
trial.
http://www.aclu.org/court/Courtroom_report.html
(Thanks to The Filter.)
In FOSN for 4/1/02 I wrote about a movement in Germany to stop legislation
that would require ISPs to filter internet content for all users. The
European Parliament has since voted overwhelmingly (460 for, 0 against, 3
abstaining) that ISPs should not filter the internet. Louisa Gosling, a
spokesperson for European ISPs, made a statement that applies just as well
to library filters and CIPA: web filtering is "technically difficult,
democratically questionable and undoubtedly inefficient".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/24808.html
(Thanks to GigaLaw.)
Michael Romano defended CIPA in an op-ed piece in the _New York
Times_. Romano is a law student at Stanford.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/opinion/04ROMA.html
Ernest Miller rebuts Romano's argument point by point on _LawMeme_.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?C30F20FA
The current poll at _InfoToday_ is on the mandatory web filters at public
libraries. The voting is heavily opposed to filters (73% to 27%).
http://www.infotoday.com/
(Poll will soon change.)
* More on the Eldred case
Lawrence Lessig gave a 90 minute multi-media presentation at this year's
South by South West (SXSW) festival, focusing primarily on the Eldred case
and copyright extension. Here's a summary from the _Philadelphia Inquirer_.
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/business/technology/3034892.htm
(Thanks to LIS News.)
Damien Cave interviews IP lawyer Morton David Goldberg in the April 15
_Salon_. Goldberg leads the faction within the ABA to write an amicus
brief in favor of the Bono Act. His argument is not that shrinking the
public domain through copyright extension is a good thing, but that
overturning it would tilt the balance of federal power from the legislature
to the courts.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/04/15/copyright_defense/index.html
(The ABA was supposed to vote yesterday on whether to submit Goldberg's
amicus brief. The outcome of the vote should eventually be recorded
somewhere on the web site of the ABA's Section on Intellectual Property,
though it's not there yet. Has anyone seen a news story on the ABA vote?)
http://www.abanet.org/intelprop/home.html
* More on the DeCSS case
Jon Johansen and the other DeCSS programmers won one of this year's three
Pioneer Awards from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer.html
* More on Kelly v. Arriba
In the _Financial Times_, Patti Waldmeir argues that the ruling "robs the
public domain" and outlaws fair-use linking.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q1AB237A
Les Kelly, plaintiff in the case, replies to Waldmeir in an open letter to
_Financial Times_, reprinted in _LawMeme_.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?G13F36FA
* More on the DMCA
The copyright form used by the Institute for Electrical and Electronic
Engineers (IEEE) asks authors to promise that their articles do not violate
the DMCA. The IEEE publishes 30% of the world's electronical engineering
and computing literature. Quoting an anonymous reader of
_NewsFoge_: [T]he IEEE's decision to require authors to adhere to the DMCA
has the potential to restrict research and discussion of security matters
worldwide".
http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/04/14/0039211
(Thanks to Politech.)
* More on the Google-scientology dispute
Google has created a page describing what it will do to comply with the
DMCA, what copyright holders can do to notify Google of an alleged
infringement, and what content providers can do to restore content deleted
from the index for copyright infringement.
http://www.google.com/dmca.html
Google has also released the original scientology complaint of Xenu
infringement not only to the public, but to _ChillingEffects_, an
anti-censorship clearinghouse of lawyer-letters threatening lawsuits if the
receipients do not remove content from the net (FOSN for 1/30/02). Google
will release all future infringement complaints to _ChillingEffects_ as well.
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=232
* More on the suppression of information in the name of counter-terrorism
The Association for Research Libraries (ARL) asked lawyer Thomas Susman to
prepare a memo on the destruction of federal depository library documents,
and the ARL has put it online at its website. Librarians with questions
about the legality of government orders to destroy information, and what
libraries may and may not do in response to such orders, should read the memo.
http://www.arl.org/info/frn/gov/Susman.html
(Thanks to Red Rock Eater.)
* More on police seizures of library and bookstore records
The Tattered Cover Bookstore went to court to resist an order to turn over
its sales records so that police could learn who had bought two books on
drug manufacturing found at a raided drug lab. On April 8, the Colorado
Supreme Court decided in favor of the bookstore. The court ruled that the
First Amendment recognizes a "fundamental right to purchase books
anonymously, free from governmental interference."
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53%257E515154,00.html
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53~514319~36~474,00.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/04/09/MN153177.DTL
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/099/nation/Bookstore_records_shielded+.shtml
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020411/4018207s.htm
The decision of the Colorado Supreme Court
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z189529A
The ALA has collected the laws governing the privacy of library records
from all 50 states.
http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/stateprivacylaws.html
(Thanks to Red Rock Eater.)
* More on President Bush's November order limiting access to Presidential
papers
Three presidential historians have recently spoken out against it. Steve
Horn (R-CA) has introduced a bill in the House that would overturn it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/13/arts/13ARCH.html
----------
Conferences
If you plan to attend one of the following conferences, please share your
observations with us through our discussion forum. (Conferences marked by
two asterisks are new since the last issue.)
* Copyright in the Private Sector: An Engine of Free Expression or a Tool
of Private Censorship?
http://www.cardozo.yu.edu/aelj/new_page_3.htm
New York, April 15
* Licensing Electronic Resources to Libraries
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/pworkshop.html
Philadelphia, April 15
** Biomedical Information on the Internet
http://www.cilip.org.uk/employ/c0979.html
London, April 15
* Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Task Force Meeting
http://www.cni.org/tfms/2002a.spring/index.html
Washington, D.C., April 15-16
* United Kingdom Serials Group Annual Conference and Exhibition
http://www.uksg.org/conference.htm
University of Warwick, April 15- 17
* Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
http://www.cfp2002.org/
San Francisco, April 16-19
* EDUCAUSE Networking 2002
http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/events/net2002/
Washington, D.C., April 17-18
* Museums and the Web 2002
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2002/
Boston, April 17-20
* Legal Guidelines for Use of Intellectual Property in Higher Education
http://www.oneonta.edu/conference/copyright/
Oneonta, NY, April 19
* OCLC Institute. Steering by Standards. (A series of satellite
videoconferences.)
http://www.oclc.org/institute/events/sbs.htm
OAIS, April 19. Metadata standards in the future, May 29.
** Digital Landscapes: A forum to discuss the concepts of fair use, free
speech, copyright control, and government enforcement in the digital age
http://www.law.stanford.edu/slata/digital_landscapes/
Stanford, April 20
* Information, Knowledges and Society: Challenges of A New Era
http://www.congreso-info.cu/venglish.htm
Havana, April 22-26
* Current Awareness Services on the Net
http://ce.fis.utoronto.ca/courses/cason.asp
Toronto, April 22 - June 3
** Workshop on the 6th Framework Programme
http://www.elpub.org/agenda22.htm
Barcelona, April 23
* DAI Institute on The State of Digital Preservation: An International
Perspective
http://www.clir.org/agenda-digpres.html
Washington, D.C., April 24-25
* CLIR Sponsors' Symposium: New Challenges, New Solutions: Libraries for
the Future
http://www.clir.org/agenda_sponsorsymp.html
Washington, D.C., April 26
* The European Library: The Gate to Europe's Knowledge: Milestone Conference
http://www.europeanlibrary.org/
Frankfurt am Main, April 29-30
* WebSearch University
http://www.websearchu.com/
Stamford CT, April 30 - May 1; Washington DC, September 23-24; Chicago,
Octeober 22-23; Dallas, November 19-20.
* Council of Science Editors Annual Meeting
http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/events_01annualMtg.shtml
San Diego, May 4-7
* Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
http://arbor.ee.ntu.edu.tw/pakdd02/
Taipei, May 6-8
* DLM-Forum 2002. Access and Preservation of Electronic Information. Best
Practices and Solutions.
http://europa.eu.int/historical_archives/dlm_forum/doc/forum2002announcementrev2.pdf
http://www.dlmforum2002.org/angles/inscripcions.htm
Barcelona, May 7-8
** NISO/DLF Workshop on Standards for Electronic Resource Management
http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/NISO-DLF-wkshp.html
Chicago, May 10
* ContentWorld 2002 [mostly for commercial content]
http://www.contentworld.com/conference/2002conference/index.html
San Jose, California, May 13-16
** Copyright for Beginners [among librarians and information professionals]
http://www.cilip.org.uk/employ/c0937.html
London, May 15
* National Conference for Digital Government Research
http://www.dgrc.org/dgrc/dgo2002/
Los Angeles, May 19-22
* Libraries in the Digital Age 2002
http://www.ffzg.hr/infoz/lida/
Dubrovnik, May 21-26
* CAiSE '02. Advanced Information Systems Engineering
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/caise02/
Toronto, May 27-31
* Workshop on Personalization Techniques in Electronic Publishing on the
Web: Trends and Perspectives
http://www.dimi.uniud.it/~mizzaro/AH2002/
Malaga, Spain, May 28
* Society for Scholarly Publishing (AAP)
http://www.sspnet.org/public/articles/index.cfm?Cat=5
Boston, May 29-31
* Off and Wall and Online: Providing Web Access to Cultural Collections
http://www.nedcc.org/owol/owol1.htm
Lexington, Massachusetts, May 30-31
** Multimedia Content and Tools: Towards Information and Knowledge Systems
http://www.elpub.org/agenda23.htm
London, May 30-31
* Advancing Knowledge: Expanding Horizons for Information Science
http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/cais-acsi2002/
Toronto, May 30 - June 1
* Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2002
http://ce.byu.edu/cw/etd2002/
Provo, Utah, May 30 - June 1
----------
The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter is supported by a grant from the
Open Society Institute.
http://www.osi.hu/infoprogram/
==========
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Copyright (c) 2002, Peter Suber
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