How Do You Know The Public Domain Is In Trouble? It Requires A 52-Page Handbook To Determine If Something Is Public Domain

From Techdirt:

from the not-how-it's-supposed-to-work dept
We..., frankly, believe that many more works should be in the public domain. In fact, we treat our own articles, written by staffers here, to be public domain, even though there's no official legal mechanism to officially put them in the public domain. We can only proactively state that we will treat them as such. And, of course, thanks to the switch from "opt-in" copyright to "everything eligible is automatically covered by copyright" in 1976, combined with ever-farther-reaching copyright term extension, nothing has officially entered the public domain in the US in ages.

So it's great to see that the folks over at the Samuelson Clinic at Berkeley have developed a detailed handbook to determine what is in the public domain, which comes complete with this handy-dandy (if not altogether simple) graphic.

Neil Gaiman on Copyright Piracy and the Web

Neil Gaiman talks to the Open Rights Group about how the internet affects the books and publishing industry.

Now Anyone Can Write and Publish a Sherlock Holmes Story

At last, the great detective Sherlock Holmes has broken free of the clutches of his captors.

Last month, a Chicago judge ruled that Holmes, a fictional character created in the late 19th century by the British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is in fact out of copyright—meaning that the exclusive copyrights once held by the publishers of the original Sherlock Holmes stories no longer apply. Unless the decision is overturned on appeal, new Holmes adaptations should be just about as legally unregulated as adaptations of Shakespeare or folk tales. Given the success of adaptations like Elementary and BBC’s Sherlock, that means we're likely to see a whole lot more Holmes content in the not-too-distant future. And since a strong public domain benefits art, that's a boon both for Holmes-lovers and for everyone else.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Sherlock Holmes was out of copyright already. The original novel, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887—more than 125 years ago.

More from The Atlantic.

The Good Wife episode about music copyright infringement, Glee and Jonathan Coulton

The copyright dispute between Jonathan Coulton and the television show Glee about the "Baby Got Back" cover was the blueprint for this week's episode of "The Good Wife", [probably my favorite show] named "Goliath and David". The plot followed the real case in close detail, up to the point where they discovered a section in the audio that sounded like it was lifted from the independent musician's track (a duck's quack in Coulton's case).

Watch it here from CBS.

(Description edited from Christoph Drösser's Facebook page.)

What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014?

Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years – an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1957 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2014, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2053.1 And no published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in Canada and the EU are different – thousands of works are entering their public domains on January 1.

See the list from Duke Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

Finding Lieutenant Columbo

In 1974, a man named Fred L. Worth published "The Trivia Encyclopedia," a 300-plus page tome of minutiae One of the questions asked what [TV detective] Columbo's first name is, and Worth's book claimed that "Phillip" was the correct answer. This is incorrect... but it isn't an error per se. Worth made up the answer entirely and intentionally. He figured that if anyone other books subsequently claimed that Columbo's first name was Phillip, that publisher would have ultimately "learned" the fact from his book -- they had to have, because no one else could be the source for a fact that Worth had made up.

The trap worked. A while later, Trivial Pursuit published a board game which included a question about Columbo's first name, using "Phillip," not "Frank," as the correct answer. Worth sued, claiming that Trivial Pursuit has stolen his intellectual property by re-using his made-up fact (and likely, had plagiarized many other facts from his book) without credit or compensation. He demanded $300 million for the violation of his copyright.

HOW WAS THIS RESOLVED? SEE HERE at Now I Know.

Copyright law columns for librarians

Do libraries have different copyright laws than other institutions or organizations? And are nonprofit and for profit libraries treated differently in the eyes of the copyright law? Where are some resources to read more about copyright law and librarians?

For several years now, Lesley Ellen Harris has been writing a column for Information Outlook, the publication of the Special Libraries Association (SLA). Some recent columns are now posted in the Resources section at www.Copyrightlaws.com. Future columns will be posted as they are published in Information Outlook. In case you are not a SLA member, this is an opportunity to read these columns.

Select Info Rights Columns Published in Information Outlook

July/August 2013: Congress Begins Review of U.S. Copyright Act

May/June 2013: Complying with Copyright When Using Social Media

July/August 2012: Volunteers are Copyright Owners, Too!

May/June 2012: US Copyright Law Refresher

March/April 2012: Using Primary and Secondary Resources to Understand Copyright Legislation

December 2011: The U.S. Copyright Office: The Next Two Years

Copyright actually makes books disappear

From HERE:

A random sample of new books for sale on Amazon.com shows three times more books initially published in the 1850’s are for sale than new books from the 1950’s. Why? This paper presents new data on how copyright seems to make works disappear,” runs the abstract of the study, How Copyright Makes Books and Music Disappear (and How Secondary Liability Rules Help Resurrect Old Songs), by Professor Paul J. Heald (pictured at left), of the University of Illinois College of Law, and visiting professor at the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management (CIPPM) at Britain’s Bournemouth University.

Copywrongist of All: Fair Use and Intimidation

Sanity is Razor Thin.

It seems we need to go over this copyright thing again. The movie studios seem to think that copyright only applies to them and they get to make the rules (when it favors them). This is wrong. Very wrong. How many of you are familiar with the term "Fair Use"? Fair Use means that we, all of us, have the right to use a copyrighted work without compensating the copyright holder in a specific and limited scope. You can use parts of a movie, a book, a song, a video game, a painting... anything for the purposes of satire, criticism or reporting.

Libraries and ebooks: YOU DON'T OWN IT

From Rapp on This by intellectual property lawyer Paul Rapp.

This issue [of ebooks] is getting especially dicey with libraries that want to do what libraries should do with ebooks, lend them out Publishers, which have always hated libraries, have no idea what to do. Remember, ebooks are tethered, so a library can’t just go online and buy an ebook, because it can only be read on one device, or one owner’s devices. So, for ebook lending to work, publishers need to provide libraries ebooks with looser controls, that can be moved across platforms, and shared with the public. Several publishers have simply refused to allow this, and have kept their ebooks off of libraries' digital shelves. Several publishers provide ebooks capable of being lent out, but gouge the libraries for as much as 300% of normal retail prices. One publisher doesn’t allow its ebooks to work on certain devices it doesn’t like, and another electronically limits its library ebooks to 26 loans. 26. One more than 25.

What a stupid mess.

Best practices for fair use in libraries

A Code of Best Practices in Fair Use will help librarians decide what's appropriate, in terms of copyright and copying. Librarians developed this code under the aegis of the Association of Research Libraries and with funding from the Mellon Foundation in sessions over the course of two years, in locations around the country.

More HERE.

Copyright Challenges For Librarians and Information Professionals

Here's info about the new podcast from Copyright Clearance Center’s Beyond the Book series. In this new issue, Victoriano Colodron, Executive Director of RightsDirect, speaks with Geraldine Clement-Stoneham, board member of SLA Europe, to talk about the copyright related challenges facing librarians and information professionals.

Here are the link and the transcript [PDF].

Copyright quiz

From Lesley Ellen Harris at copyrightlaws.com

When it comes to copyright law, there is much misinformation. Take the test below to determine what you think is a copyright truth or myth (false).

Truth or Myth (False)?

T F 1. Only registered works are protected by copyright.

T F 2. Online content is in the public domain unless it has a copyright notice.

T F 3. In at least 164 countries that belong to the Berne [Copyright] Convention, copyright protection is automatic upon creation of the work.

T F 4. In all countries, the duration of copyright is seventy years after the death of the author.

T F 5. Fair use is intentionally ambiguous.

T F 6. You can copy 3 percent of a work without obtaining copyright permission.

T F 7. If a work does not have a copyright notice, ©, then you may freely use the work without obtaining permission.

T F 8. All U.S. government works are in the public domain.

T F 9. Fair use never applies in a for profit situation.

T F 10. There is no such thing as an international copyright law.

Answers HERE or below.

QUIZ 1 - general copyright knowledge

QUIZ 2 - international copyright knowledge

Answers to above quiz: 1F, 2F, 3T, 4F, 5T, 6F, 7F, 8F, 9F, 10T

Study Finds Internet Content Filtering Ineffective, Harmful

Public Knowledge released a landmark analysis (PDF) showing that filtering of Internet content as advocated by big media companies will not work and will be harmful to the Internet.

Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, said: “Our study, ‘Forcing the Net Through a Sieve: Why Copyright Filtering is Not a Viable Solution for U.S. ISPs,’ examines for the first time the complex topic of content filtering from the technical, economic and legal perspectives. Content filtering fails in all of these tests. Filtering will not be the ‘magic bullet’ that the media moguls want, but it could degrade and alter the Internet for everyone while invading the privacy of every Internet user. There is no reason that any Internet Service Provider or media company should even think about engaging in such activity.”

The report was submitted with Public Knowledge’s reply comments to the Federal Communications Commission (PDF) (FCC) in the proceeding asking for information on how to structure a national broadband plan. Several content-related parties suggested content filtering should be part of such a plan.

Amazon Faces a Fight Over Its E-Books

Last week, Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, offered an apparently heartfelt and anguished mea culpa to customers whose digital editions of George Orwell's 1984 were remotely deleted from their Kindle reading devices.

Though copies of the books were sold by a bookseller that did not have legal rights to the novel, Mr. Bezos wrote on a company forum that Amazon's solution to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles.

An apology was not enough for many people.

A growing number of civil libertarians and customer advocates wants Amazon to fundamentally alter its method for selling Kindle books, lest it be forced to one day change or recall books, perhaps by a judge ruling in a defamation case or by a government deciding a particular work is politically damaging or embarrassing.

Reprint agreement will make some rare books widely available

The University of Michigan will make thousands of books that are no longer in copyright — including rare and one-of-a-kind titles — available as reprints on demand under a new agreement with BookSurge, part of the Amazon.com group of companies.

The agreement gives the public a unique opportunity to buy reprints of a wide range of titles in the UM Library for as little as a few dollars. As individual copies are sold on Amazon.com, BookSurge will print and bind the books in soft-cover form...

Maria Bonn, director of the UM Library’s scholarly publishing office, said the reprint program includes both books digitized by the UM and those digitized through the UM’s partnership with Google. The initial offering on Amazon will include more than 400,000 titles in more than 200 languages ranging from Acoli to Zulu.

A Copyright Policy is an Excellent Educational Tool

Developing a Copyright Compliance Policy

A copyright policy can serve a variety of functions, from determining who owns works created during employment, to explaining your licenses, to establishing a procedure for clearing permissions in copyright-protected works. Generally speaking, a copyright policy is a summary of copyright management procedures for your organization. Depending on the contents of the policy, it can also be an educational tool and serve as reference material on copyright issues relevant to your organization. Another purpose of a copyright policy is to provide a single, consistent approach to copyright issues.

Statement of Principles on Copyright Exceptions & Limitations for Libraries & Archives

In many countries, copyright law, through exceptions and limitations, has long supported the essential functions of libraries through statutes that permit functions such as preservation. But these laws have not adequately kept pace for uses of digital information.

Copyright and the Digital Library

The legal and technical issues which bedevil the creation of online libraries, particularly in relation to copyright. It discusses the Google Books settlement of October 2008 and a number of divergent views on its value or problems for libraries.

Copyright Orphans

Paul Rapp "is an intellectual-property lawyer with offices in Albany and Housatonic, Mass. He teaches art-and-entertainment law at Albany Law School, and regularly appears as part of the Copyright Forum on WAMC’s Vox Pop." He writes a regular column on intellectual property rights.

His most recent column addresses the "Orphan Works” copyright and potential legislation regarding it. What is an orphan work? Paul cites Meredith L. Patterson's Radio Free Meredith where she uses this example about "your parent’s wedding pictures from 1955. You want to publish them? Guess what? The copyrights are probably owned by the photographer! Who was who? And is now where? You don’t know? Uh-oh." The proposed bill, H.R.5889, Orphan Works Act of 2008, seeks to provide "limitation[s] on remedies in cases involving orphan works."

Rapp writes just before the actual legislation was introduced, but still got it right. "The legislation will...seek to rectify the problem of lingering, abandoned copyrights, to loosen this stranglehold of ghosts on our culture, by allowing the reuse of pre-existing materials in situations where after a reasonably diligent effort, no copyright owner has been located. If, after the work is re-published, a copyright owner shows up and says 'that’s mine', the copyright owner will be entitled to a reasonable licensing fee for the use, but won’t be able to stop the use."

Rapp, BTW, is a/k/a Lee Harvety Blotto, drummer for the legendary Albany band, Blotto.