COPYCENSE

“Two leading research institutions haven issued library cards to Microsoft so the software giant and search up-and-comer can scan their collections.

“The University of California and the University of Toronto libraries have agreed to lend their collections of out-of-copyright material held in trust. In concert with the Open Content Alliance, Microsoft will scan and index the materials for use in its Windows Live Book Search, according to a Microsoft statement issued last week.

“Like Google Book Search and Amazon.com’s Look Inside feature, Windows Live Book Search is being designed to enable full-text searches of books. The Microsoft project, however, will be built slightly differently than Google Book Search.”

Candace Lombardi. U.C. System Signs On To Microsoft Book-Scan Project. News.com. June 9, 2006.

Related Stories & Documents:

• Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft to Collaborate With University of California and University of Toronto Libraries for Windows Live Book Search. (Press Release) June 8, 2006.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“The Bush administration’s plans to force Internet providers to comply with extensive wiretapping rules received a boost on Friday, when a federal appeals court upheld the controversial regulations.

“A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., refused to overturn the Internet surveillance regulations, saying the Federal Communications Commission made a ‘reasonable policy choice’ when approving them last fall. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, applauded the ruling.

“Judge Harry Edwards, who had called the FCC’s arguments ‘gobbledygook’ and ‘nonsense’ during oral arguments before the appeals court last month, dissented. He said the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, does not give the FCC ‘unlimited authority to regulate every telecommunications service that might conceivably be used to assist law enforcement.'”

Declan McCullagh. Appeals Court Upholds Net-Wiretapping Rules. News.com. June 9, 2006.

Related Stories & Documents:

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. American Council on Education v. Federal Communications Commission & U.S. (No. 05-1404). (.pdf) June 9, 2006.
• U.S. Code. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, 47 U.S. sec. 1001, et. seq. (Courtesy of Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute.)

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Google’s mantra is “Don’t be evil,” which as corporate mottoes go is the equivalent of “Build an eternal bonfire in the parking lot and fuel it with thousand-dollar bills and the occasional Gutenberg Bible.”

“The worldwide market for evil is stratospheric, and Google is uniquely positioned to take advantage of it. They’ve made some halting inroads in China, but economists — many of whom are themselves evil — estimate that if Google abandoned its inefficient policy completely, it could capture 38 percent of the evil market. That’s more than Microsoft and Lindsey Lohan combined. Here are just a few of the many ways Google could provide cutting-edge, convenient and extremely evil services.”

Lore Sjöberg. Google: Don’t Not Be Evil. Wired News. June 7, 2006.

Related Stories & Documents:

• Mail & Guardian Online. Google Signals U-Turn Over Chinese Site. June 8, 2006.
• Ars Technica. Google: We Compromised Our Principles. June 7, 2006.
• Search Engine Watch Blog. Brin Suggests Google Might Reverse Chinese Censorship In The Short Term; Meanwhile, China Ramps Up Google.com Blocks. June 7, 2006.
• Sean Michael Kerner. Is Google Evil? Internetnews.com. May 10, 2006.
• Preston Gralla. Is Google Evil? O’Reilly WindowsDevCenter. Aug. 24, 2005.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“An impressive array of tech titans has joined the It’s Our Net coalition. Among them: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, and IAC/Interactive. They’re banding together to fight for rules aimed at preventing what they say would be discrimination by telephone and cable companies in directing Web traffic. The group has enlisted a diverse cadre of supporters, from the conservative Christian Coalition, to the liberal MoveOn.org, to consumer-minded groups like the Consumer Union.

“But for all that seemingly formidable firepower, the coalition has had a tough time finding support in Washington. In particular, it’s struggled to enlist the aid of the many lobbyists who can make all the difference in getting a message to the right legislator at the right time.

“Why? Established telecom and cable companies, well-versed in the ways of Washington, are sitting on the opposite side of the policy issue.”

Burt Helm. Web Titans’ D.C. Blues. BusinessWeek Online. June 8, 2006.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Between The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, Francis Ford Coppola made a movie called The Conversation. It stars Gene Hackman as a paranoid wiretapper in Watergate-era San Francisco, and the cast includes Robert Duvall, and a young Harrison Ford. The movie was nominated for best picture in 1975, and Mr. Coppola has actually called it the finest film he has ever made.

“Yet The Conversation was on its way to the movie graveyard just a few years ago. Since video stores have room for only a few thousands titles, some didn’t carry it.

“Then came Netflix. The Internet company stocks just about all of the 60,000 movies, television shows and how-to videos that are available on DVD (and that aren’t pornography). Just as important, Netflix lets users rate movies and make online recommendations to their friends. The result is a vast movie meritocracy that gives a film a second or third life simply because — get this — it’s good.”

David Leonhardt. What Netflix Could Teach Hollywood. The New York Times. June 7, 2006.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

The debate over the mass digitization and global availability of information has raged anew ever since late 2004 when Google publicly launched its ambitious plans to digitize and index the massive library collections of Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford, and the New York Public Library. Even as the Google Print Library Project has garnered the attention and applause of millions of consumers and educators, it has drawn the ire—and litigation—of the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

Yahoo has likewise entered the fray with its own project to digitize and make available for online searching millions of books from the University of California, the University of Toronto, the National Archives of England, and the European Archive. A joint effort with these and several other archives and technology companies, the Open Content Alliance hopes to avoid much of the controversy in which Google has been embroiled by digitizing only works in the public domain unless copyright holders give explicit permission otherwise.

From the sidewalk to the library, from the cubicle to the boardroom, and the classroom to the courtroom, everyone has an interest and a stake in how we as a society will answer the complex questions of intellectual property rights, copyright, piracy, fair use, ownership, access, distribution, compensation, and control that confront us every time we click our way along the information superhighway.

• How will higher education morph in coming years—and how has it already changed—as digital archives are built and expanded upon our campuses?
• What will be the parameters and responsibilities of scholarship as the academy becomes ever more digital and digitized?
• How might our relationships to our disciplines, repositories of knowledge, diverse media providers, and even each other alter as the waves of digital content multiply, swell, and flow through the academy?

Copyright at a Crossroads: The Impact of Mass Digitization on Copyright and Higher Education

Hosted by The Center for Intellectual Property, University of Maryland University College

3501 University Blvd. East

Adelphi, Maryland 20783

June 14-16, 2006

Fees: $225 per individual or just $575 for an institution.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.