COPYCENSE

“Transit officials in New York and San Francisco have launched a copyright crackdown on a website offering free downloadable subway maps designed to be viewed on the iPod.

“IPodSubwayMaps.com is the home of iPod-sized maps of nearly two dozen different transit systems around the world, from the Paris Metro to the London Underground.”

Matt Reed. IPod Maps Draw Legal Threats. Wired News. Sept. 26, 2005.

Updates:

The Patry Copyright Blog. Subway Maps and Copyright. Sept. 27, 3005.

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

“First it was Google; now its Amazon.com that literary authors are kvetching about. An article in Thursday’s (September 29) Wall Street Journal discusses complaints authors have about the fact that Amazon.com offers books for sale at different prices. Authors are quoted as saying they think they are being deprived of royalties and they want their share!

“It is really no fun to write about copyright owners acting like Luddite pigs, and being in private practice it has a definite commercial downside. But, things are as they are, and I have always opted for honesty over craven brown-nosing and over self-imposed censorship.”

The Patry Copyright Blog. Literary Authors and Amazon.com. Sept. 30, 2005.

See also:

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg. The Growing Market For Slightly Used Books. WSJ Online. Sept. 30, 2005.

Hal R. Varian. Reading Between the Lines of Used Book Sales. The New York Times. July 28, 2005.

“Copyright may be the 800-pound gorilla of the Internet, but there’s a brand-new pseudo copyright in the works capable of swallowing massive chunks of the public domain, bones and all.

“The new right — or rather, set of rights — would give companies fresh exclusive rights on top of any existing rights for anything they ‘webcast.’ In other words, a company could take a movie that’s fallen into the public domain, webcast it, and keep the general public, to whom it belongs, from recording it.”

Copyfight. One IP Right to Rule Them All. Sept. 19, 2005.

See also:

James Love. Webcasting — What Rights Do the Webcasters Want? Random Bits (listserv). Sept. 20, 2005.

EFF Deep Links. RIAA Trying to Copy-Protect Radio. Sept. 9, 2005.

Ernest Miller. The Broadcast Flag Treaty – Draft Available. The Importance Of … April 7, 2004.

Updates:

James Boyle. More Rights Are Wrong for Webcasters. FT.com. Sept. 26, 2005.

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

“The Authors Guild on Tuesday filed a class action lawsuit against search engine Google, alleging that its scanning and digitizing of library books constitutes a ‘massive’ copyright infringement.

“As part of its Google Print Library Project, the company is working to scan all or parts of the book collections of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, the New York Public Library and Oxford University and make those texts searchable on Google.”

Ellinor Mills. Authors Guild Sues Google Over Library Project. News.com. Sept. 20, 2005.

See also:

United States District Court (Southern District of New York). Author’s Guild, et al. v. Google Inc. (.pdf) Sept. 20, 2005.

Author’s Guild. Authors Guild Sues Google, Citing “Massive Copyright Infringement” (Press Release) Sept. 20, 2005.

Google Blog. Google Print and the Authors Guild. Sept. 20, 2005.

Associated Press. Google Takes On Copyright Laws. Wired News. Sept. 18, 2005.

Updates:

Tim O’Reilly. Search and Rescue. The New York Times. Sept. 28, 2005.

The Patry Copyright Blog. Google Revisited. Sept. 23, 2005.

Lessig Blog. Google Sued. Sept. 22, 2005.

Burt Helm. For Google, Another Stormy Chapter. BusinessWeek Online. Sept. 22, 2005.

O’Reilly Radar. Author’s Guild Suit, and Google’s Response: My Thoughts. Sept. 21, 2005.

Tim Beyers. Another Google Gaffe? The Motley Fool. Sept. 21, 2005. (“As a member of the Guild and a writer, I’m completely in favor of defending the intellectual property rights of my fellow members. Yet I also depend on the richness of Google so much that I hate to see anything impede the process of digitizing useful texts.”)

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

"The BBC wants to be a major player in the digital media world and is
considering partnerships with private businesses to sell music
downloads, Director-General Mark Thompson said on Saturday.

"The
publicly-funded broadcaster is testing software called MyBBCPlayer to
let users download its TV and radio programing, and plans to use its
powerful presence to take its place among Internet media giants like
Google and Yahoo."

Adam Pasick. BBC Targets Music Downloads in Internet Strategy. Reuters. Aug. 29, 2005.

See also:
Jane Martinson. ‘Big Beast BBC Won’t Swamp Commercial Rivals in New Media’. Guardian Unlimited. Aug. 29, 2005.

Related:
BBC News. BBC TV Channels to be Put on Net. Aug. 27, 2005.

"When Ohio-based rock band the Sun releases its first full-length album
next month, it will be available on DVD, online and on vinyl record.
But not on the medium that’s still the biggest seller in the music
industry today: the compact disc.

"Warner Bros. Records Inc.expects the Sun to be the first of many artists to embrace a no-CD, video-only strategy."

Yuki Noguchi. Web, DVDs Could Mark CDs’ Slow Death. WashingtonPost.com. Aug. 26, 2005.

See also:
No author. Fans Can Burn Own CDs from The Sun’s DVD. USA Today. Aug. 25, 2005.

(Editor’s Note: The Post allows free access to their stories on the Web for 14 days before sending the stories to the paper’s fee-based Archives.)

"Warner Music Group is creating a new music-distribution mechanism that will rely on digital downloads instead of compact discs.

"Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music’s chairman and CEO, said Monday that
the new mechanism will be called an ‘e-label,’ in which artists will
release music in clusters of three songs every few months rather than a
CD every few years.

Declan McCullagh. Warner Music Readies CD-Free ‘E-Label’. News.com. Aug. 22, 2005.

See also:
Grant Gross. Life After Grokster: Music CEO Asks for Tech Help. InfoWorld. Aug. 22, 2005.
Edgar Bronfman, Jr. Remarks to the Progress & Freedom Foundation. (.pdf) Aug. 22, 2005.