Blogs & Fair Use
“Sloth can be a deadly sin, or at least a potentially litigious one, and the rise of blogging on the Internet has peaked concern about this pitfall.
“The issue arises because bloggers, many or most of them amateurs, often overdose on cut-and-paste editing, which can result in copyright violations, explained a New York attorney.”
John P. Mello Jr. Bloggers Cautioned About Being Copy Cats. E-Commerce Times. Aug. 4, 2005.
Publishers Lose Little in Used Book Market
“The Internet is a bargain hunter’s paradise. Ebay is an easy example, but there are many places for deals on used goods, including Amazon.com.
“While Amazon is best known for selling new products, an estimated 23 percent of its sales are from used goods, many of them secondhand books. In 2002, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sent an open letter to Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com, which has a market for used books in addition to selling new copies. “If your aggressive promotion of used book sales becomes popular among Amazon’s customers,” the letter said, “this service will cut significantly into sales of new titles, directly harming authors and publishers.
“But does it?”
Hal R. Varian. Reading Between the Lines of Used Book Sales. The New York Times. July 28, 2005.
See also:
Anindya Ghose, et al. Internet Exchanges for Used Books: An Empirical Analysis of Product Cannibalization and Welfare Impact. SSRN. August 1, 2005.
File Sharers Move Beyond Grokster
“Briefly buoyed by their Supreme Court victory on file sharing, Hollywood and the recording industry are on the verge of confronting more technically sophisticated opponents.
“At a computer security conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, an Irish software designer described a new version of a peer-to-peer file-sharing system that he says will make it easier to share digital information anonymously and make detection by corporations and governments far more difficult.”
John Markoff. New File-Sharing Techniques Are Likely to Test Court Decision. The New York Times. Aug. 1, 2005.
See also:
Richard Stallman. The Right to Read. GNU.org. February 1997.
(Editor’s Note: The Times allows free access to their stories on the Web for seven days before sending the stories to the paper’s fee-based Archive.)
Satellite Radio Could Be Same Old Thing
“Until recently, XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and its rival Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. were engaged in a tit-for-tat, deal-for-deal face-off. Sirius landed the NFL; XM responded with baseball. XM signed an exclusive deal with General Motors Corp.; Sirius partnered with DaimlerChrysler AG.
“But for all the billions the two companies have committed to differentiating themselves from each other, they are increasingly following similar business strategies, analysts say. And that might not be a bad thing for the satellite radio business.”
Annys Shin. XM, Still One Step Ahead of Sirius. WashingtonPost.com. July 29, 2005.
Alaska Senator Threatens File-Sharing Industry
“The head of the Senate Commerce Committee warned online file-sharing companies this week that if they do not crack down on piracy and pornography available via their networks, Congress will force them to act.
“In an outburst at the close of a hearing Thursday, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said many senators are urging him to move against file-sharing firms, despite a recent Supreme Court decision that parties on all sides of the issue said eliminated the need for congressional action anytime soon.”
Jonathan Krim. Senator Threatens Crackdown on File-Sharing Industry. WashingtonPost.com. July 30, 2005.
File Sharers Buy More, Too
“Digital music research firm The Leading Question found that they spent four and a half times more on paid-for music downloads than average fans.
“Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.”
BBC News. Downloading ‘Myths’ Challenged. July 27, 2005.
More Publishers Object to Print
Attacks on Google’s Print for Libraries service keep on coming from the nonprofit publishing sector. Now the Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers, which represents non-profit publishers such as university presses in more than 30 countries, is taking aim.
Google Blog. More Backlash for Google Print. July 15, 2005.
See also:
Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers. ALPSP Response to Google Print for Libraries Digitisation Project. (.pdf) July 11, 2005.
COPYCENSE 