COPYCENSE

“Libraries have warned that the rise of digital publishing may make it harder or even impossible to access items in their collections in the future. Many publishers put restrictions on how digital books and journals can be used.

“Such digital rights management (DRM) controls may block some legitimate uses, the British Library has said.”

Ian Youngs. Libraries Fear Digital Lockdown. BBC News. Feb. 3, 2006.

See also:

Chartered Institute of Libraries and Information Professionals. APIG Inquiry into Digital Rights Management Systems. Feb. 3, 2006.

Blogma. Bloggers Rally Around Librarians Over DRM. Feb. 3, 2006.

Graeme Wearden. Legislation Needed to ‘Prevent DRM and Patent Abuses.’ ZDNet UK. Feb. 3, 2006.

ArsTechnica. Librarians Air Concerns About DRM. Feb. 3, 2006.

Updates:

if:book. DRM and the Damage Done to Libraries. Feb. 6, 2006.

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

“CBS Corp. has spoken: When it comes to making its reality hit “Survivor” available for downloading, iTunes has been voted off the island.

“The company announced Wednesday that it was experimenting with cutting out the Internet middlemen by offering downloads of its popular show for $1.99 an episode on its own website, CBS.com. The service is to be launched tonight, immediately after the show airs on the West Coast.

“CBS would be the first broadcast network to sell its shows via its own Internet storefront.”

Meg James. CBS Cuts Out Download Middleman. LATimes.com. Feb. 2, 2006.

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

“Falling out of print is a book’s natural fate. We can belatedly train ourselves to believe that this will happen to other people’s books. What’s hard is for writers to believe it will happen to their own.

“Consider, then, the duration of copyrights. Given the range of human lifespans and the extreme rarity of prepubescent authors, you can pretty much figure that by the time a 95-year copyright runs out, the author will be dead and gone, and any offspring will have reached their majority. Somewhere in there, copyright stops being about directly rewarding an author for his work. What’s left is an intangible time-travelling value: the hope of being read.

“This is why it pains me to hear respectable minor authors going on about how the extension of copyright to life of the author plus 70 years is a victory for the little guy. It isn’t, unless by “little guy” you mean the heirs of the author’s ex-spouse’s step-grandchildren by her third marriage.”

Making Light. The Life Expectancies of Books. Jan. 27, 2006.

See also:

John Goodridge. Poor Clare. Guardian. July 22, 2000. (“John Clare enthusiasts are up in arms over an American academic’s claim to own copyright of the poet’s works unpublished in his lifetime. John Goodridge reports on the battle over a great literary legacy.”)

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

“Falling out of print is a book’s natural fate. We can belatedly train ourselves to believe that this will happen to other people’s books. What’s hard is for writers to believe it will happen to their own.

“Consider, then, the duration of copyrights. Given the range of human lifespans and the extreme rarity of prepubescent authors, you can pretty much figure that by the time a 95-year copyright runs out, the author will be dead and gone, and any offspring will have reached their majority. Somewhere in there, copyright stops being about directly rewarding an author for his work. What’s left is an intangible time-travelling value: the hope of being read.

“This is why it pains me to hear respectable minor authors going on about how the extension of copyright to life of the author plus 70 years is a victory for the little guy. It isn’t, unless by “little guy” you mean the heirs of the author’s ex-spouse’s step-grandchildren by her third marriage.”

Making Light. The Life Expectancies of Books. Jan. 27, 2006.

See also:

John Goodridge. Poor Clare. Guardian. July 22, 2000. (“John Clare enthusiasts are up in arms over an American academic’s claim to own copyright of the poet’s works unpublished in his lifetime. John Goodridge reports on the battle over a great literary legacy.”)

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

“While current radio hits still dominate the digital music charts, classics like Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and the Eagles’ “Hotel California” are regularly ranking among the 200 best-selling tracks on the Internet, a sign of their staying power even in the accelerated culture of modern pop music.

“Their popularity indicates that fans are flocking to online services like iTunes at least in part to pluck out celebrated oldies.

“But the popularity of such songs raises a troubling issue for the music business, which relies in part on the huge profits generated by greatest-hits collections. What if fans who might have paid for a full album of “the very best” of an established act instead choose to pay substantially less and simply buy the very, very best song?

Jeff Leeds. When All the ‘Greatest Hits’ Are Too Many to Download. The New York Times. Feb. 2, 2006.

(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.)

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