COPYCENSE

“When the Complete New Yorker hit bookstores in September, many loyal readers rushed to buy it. But Web-savvy users accustomed to navigating easily through online content find The Complete New Yorker a bit of an anachronism.

“Each page of content is literally a picture of a magazine page. Readers can’t copy text from a story and paste it elsewhere. They can’t search for keywords within the text of articles, only within titles and abstracts. Why does The Complete New Yorker feel so low-tech? The explanation lies in a years-long battle over a clause in U.S. copyright law concerning the ownership of rights to magazine articles written by free-lancers.”

Jessica Mintz. New Yorker on DVD Is Readers’ Delight, Surfers’ Frustration. The Wall Street Journal. Nov. 10, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.