“This a page, usually printed with only the book’s title, that precedes the title page in the book. When dinosaurs roamed the earth, the function of the bastard title was to identify and physically protect the paper text block until it was bound. Sort of like the tissue paper they still put in fancy wedding invitations. I daresay that ebooks do not require any such protection. It is utterly without use in an ebook. Begone!”

phoxbox:

Copyfighter, journalist, sci-fi writer and Boing-Boing editor Cory Doctorow has fallen victim to the almighty content empire of Rupert Murdoch. In an attempt to remove access to infringing copies of the TV-show Homeland, Fox has ordered Google to take down links to Doctorow’s latest novel of the same title. Adding to the controversy, Doctorow’s own publisher has also sent DMCA notices for the Creative Commons licensed book.

Doctorow’s latest novel Homeland tells the story of an infowar, the suppression of information and the fight against censorship.

The setting of the fictional book is a realistic scenario according to activists, and on a small scale the book itself has now become the center of a censorship row.

Published by Tor Books, Homeland is available for sale in most book stores, but because of its Creative Commons license people are also free to share the book online. After all, obscurity is a much bigger problem than piracy for most authors.

As a result copies of the novel are shared for free on hundreds of sites, and this attracted the attention of a Hollywood studio. For a few weeks none other than 20th Century Fox has been sending DMCA takedown requests to Google for Doctorow’s novel.

A multi-year legal drama over the proper scope of certain sections of the U.S. Copyright Act, as applied to goods made and first sold outside the United States, has finally come to an end.  In a 6-3 decision issued yesterday, with dissents from Justices Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Scalia (strange bedfellows in many regards, judicially speaking), the Supreme Court, in the case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., has embraced the concept of international exhaustion in relation to the copyright first-sale doctrine.  This decision has far-reaching implications for copyright and trademark owners alike. FULL ARTICLE

A report published by the European Commission Joint Research Committee claims that music web piracy does not harm legitimate sales.

“It seems that the majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in our sample would not have been purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available to them,” wrote the researchers in their report,

Attorney Dana Newman on the implications of the Supreme Court ruling in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

eP’s two cents:

From the perspective of publishers this is indeed a blow to the status quo. What I believe it does however is force an evolution of the copyright laws to factor in digital content and resolve “right of first sale” ambiguity over electronic formats. Digital content cannot be contained in a copyright landscape designed for physical consumer goods. We need to once and for all deal with ownership vs. access - rent or license vs. purchase. The World’s economy is on an inevitable tilt toward sharing rather than owning. Libraries, storytelling, community, universal access, are all terms that will only grow in influence and importance as we all become connected. 

Yes large retail based content creators have to begin to think about their business differently but that bus already left the station when we began the shift from broadcast TV and Radio to streaming. This ruling just forces print to take it’s head out of the sand. There is now motivation to not only push lawmakers to act, but for the smart and savvy content creators, motive to adapt their business models to the inevitable. Viva progress! 

~ eP

The anti-circumvention section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act threatens to make archivists criminals if they try to preserve our society’s artifacts for future generations.

Supreme Court to hear arguments in case of student who resold books

Could have implications for ebooks and other digital content as well.

“The legal issue is whether copyrighted works made and purchased abroad can then be bought and sold within the United States without the copyright owner’s permission.

Yet the stakes could prove enormous for those who buy and sell books, movies, music, artwork, perhaps even furniture, electronics, automobiles, and clothing — anything that may be considered “intellectual property.”

infoneer-pulse:

Several libraries today pledged to follow the University of Michigan’s lead in making available on their campuses digital copies of books whose copyright holders cannot be found to ask for permission. The libraries jumping in today are the University of California Libraries, and libraries at Cornell, Duke, Emory, and the Johns Hopkins Universities. The Universities of Florida and Wisconsin recently did the same.

» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)