From nicheant at gmail.com Sat May 2 20:11:46 2009 From: nicheant at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?TmlzaGFudCB8IOCkqOCkv+CktuCkvuCkgeCkpA==?=) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 20:11:46 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] The Fight over the Google of All Libraries Message-ID: <4439ee330905020741q2824ae89n80dc487a8082fcd8@mail.gmail.com> The Fight over the Google of All Libraries: A Wired.com FAQ By Ryan Singel April 30, 2009 The Google Book Search Settlement has been much in the news recently, with the Internet Archive, Philip K. Dick’s heirs, consumer groups and Microsoft registering their objections to the search giant’s agreement with authors and publishers. And now Justice Department anti-trust lawyers are meeting with Google about the settlement, raising the possibility of a full-blown anti-trust court showdown between the government and the world’s biggest search and advertising company. It’s a complicated story combining copyright law, anti-trust issues and the odd problem of orphan books. It’s also the story of one company’s attempt to create the largest and most comprehensive library in the history of the world. Here’s Wired.com’s guide through the thicket of the Google Book Search Settlement. Google is a search engine, right? What do words printed on dead trees have to do with it? Google claims its mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” If that’s your goal, then a library full of books makes you salivate in hunger for the knowledge held inside. So in partnership with major university libraries, Google began scanning and digitizing millions of books in 2002, from ones like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that are no longer copyrighted to the Harry Potter series to books whose authors and publishers cannot be located. The idea is simple, and audacious. Make the library of all libraries by converting every book ever published into an e-book that can be indexed, searched, read — and sold — online. That’s cool! Where can I find this? Go to Google Book Search, for one. You might also see book snippets in Google’s Web search results. How many books are in there already? Google has scanned more than 7 million books as of April 2009. Can I download or buy old books through Google right now? Yes and no. Google lets you download any book it has scanned that is not in copyright in the U.S. anymore – books that have fallen into the public domain. For other books, it shows up to 20 percent of the text, and usually includes links to places to buy it online. What about new books? Are they included? Most are, but that’s through Google’s Partner project that lets publishers and authors decide how much or how little of their books go into Google’s index, as well as letting them get a portion of the money from ads shown next to their book pages. How did Google get away with scanning 7 million library books? Well, there’s no problem with scanning millions of public domain books so long as you have the cash, cool technology and cachet to convince some of the world’s best libraries to work with you. As for in-copyright books, Google says it has the right to scan and index them, and show snippets online, under the Fair Use doctrine, which carves out exceptions to copyright holders’ rights. Being a massive company, mostly loved by users, also helps. So could I go into the library and legally rip every music CD and video they have, and put snippets of them online, under the Fair Use doctrine? That’s an interesting question. How good is your lawyer and how high is your bank balance? Then why did the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sue Google in 2005? Well, once they saw Google using snippets of the books in search results and making money of it, they decided they deserved some of it. After all, they wrote the books. Why did Google settle in 2007 if it has the right to do this? Especially since they have to pay $125 million in lawyer fees and past royalties? Well, the settlement gives Google the legal cover to digitize all books written to date that are still in copyright. For books that are copyrighted but out-of-print, Google gets to show 20% of the book online and sell digital copies of it, keeping 37 percent. For books in-print and copyrighted, Google gets the right to scan the books and use them for research, and can do more with permission. What about anthologies or photos licensed for use in a book? How does that work? Well, that’s complicated. That’s partially why the agreement is 334 pages long. Why should I care about the settlement at all? Google. Monopoly. World’s Greatest Library. You do like books, don’t you? Who manages authors and publishers’ rights if Google is going to be advertising next to book pages and selling books? The newly-created Book Rights Registry is in charge of finding rights holders, collecting and disbursing payouts, setting prices and negotiating other deals. It’s not unlike the ASCAP system that collects royalties for song writers, musicians and publishers. What about libraries? Every library in the country will get one free subscription for one computer that will let users read and print any page from the full text of all the books in Google’s catalog, excluding books still in-print. Beyond that, libraries and institutions can order additional subscriptions. The demand is likely to be high. Very high. What is an author’s role in all this? Rights holders can go to Book Rights Registry’s database and choose whether to let Google include their works, sell them online, and show snippets and ads. They can also opt-out and reserve the right to negotiate their own terms or sue Google later if Google includes their works. How can Google get a monopoly? Can’t the Book Registry negotiate with other entities that want to do the same thing? Yes, but only for those authors it can speak for – in other words, the known authors of copyrighted books. Is the opposition to the settlement all about the so-called orphans? Yes. There are more orphans than in a Dickens novel. Google won’t say how many there are. But UC Berkeley Professor Pamela Samuelson estimates that 70 percent of books that are still in copyright have rights holders that can’t be found. What’s the problem with orphans? Copyright infringement can be expensive – up to $150,000 per violation. So if you scan an old book and start selling copies of it, or displaying chunks of it on the web, and the orphan’s father shows up one day waving a paternity test in your direction, you could face a mean copyright infringement suit. Unless you are Google: Since all U.S. book copyright holders are now plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Google gets liability protection from authors who abandoned their books by not registering in its books database. If they show up later, all they can do is collect a little cash, change their book price or ask Google to stop selling the book. Could Google end up with the most comprehensive online library in the world? Won’t libraries place thousands of subscriptions due to overwhelming demand? And since there’s only one vendor (Google) and the Book Registry will set the price, won’t the price be incredibly high? Or at least climb that way over time? Bingo. Why can’t Amazon or Yahoo or Microsoft go to the Book Registry and get an orphans waiver like Google is getting? The registry can set rates and negotiate contracts for all authors, unless they opt-out. But signing away unknown people’s rights to sue? Only a judge in a class-action lawsuit (or Congress) can do that. If another company wants to digitize, display and use orphan works without the Sword of Damocles hanging over its head, it has to start digitizing without permission, get sued by a reasonable plaintiff and the go through this settlement process again? Exactly. That’s ridiculous. Isn’t there a better solution to the orphan works problem? Yes. For one, Congress could step up and pass a law about orphan works. But the last time Congress passed a substantial law about the length of copyrights it extended them for 20 more years — keeping more and more books from reaching the public domain. Don’t expect much help here. Is a lot of money at stake? If you think all the value in digitizing the world’s knowledge will come from selling out-of-print books as e-books for an iPhone, you’re not thinking like Google is. Think of all the subscriptions that universities and colleges and high schools and corporations will need to buy. Think of how search could be improved if you can test your algorithms on a huge digitized swath of the world’s knowledge. Think of the data that could be mined from that index, or how a question-and-answer service resembling artificial intelligence could be created. Google “the Singularity.” Or better Google Book Search “The Singularity”. Why does the Justice Department getting involved? Why I am reading that it is investigating? Remember last fall when the Justice Department was hours from filing an anti-trust lawsuit against Google for its planned ad partnership with Yahoo? That made it very clear that Justice Department considers Google to either be a monopoly, or be very close to being one – at least as far as search advertising is concerned. So when outside groups wrote the Justice Department with concerns about Book Search, it’s not surprising that lawyers there started sniffing around the settlement. Given that Google admits it has met with DoJ lawyers about the settlement and has to do so again, it’s clear this is more than just a passing interest for DoJ lawyers, who could make big names for themselves in the legal world for taking on the search-and-advertising giant. When does all this end and I get to start browsing the library of the future and buying out-of-print books? Authors and publishers have until September 4 to opt-out or make their initial choice about what Google can or can’t do with their work. The federal court’s final hearing on the fairness of the settlement comes a month later, on October 7. Then the judge has to rule, which could take months. In the best case scenario for Google, it will have something resembling the library of the future online sometime in 2010, but given the number of lawyers eying this deal and the potential amount of money at issue, one can be pretty sure the legal battle will drag out far into the 2010s. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/the-fight-over-the-worlds-greatest-library-the-wiredcom-faq/ From shantanu at sarai.net Tue May 5 16:43:49 2009 From: shantanu at sarai.net (shantanu choudhary) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 16:43:49 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Workshop for NGO's on Free and Open Source Software and local language computing In-Reply-To: <2e07a27c0905050409t9720c5vb49d78d266b4e53f@mail.gmail.com> References: <2e07a27c0904290504r7fd1113aga6e2041f7eb1561d@mail.gmail.com> <2e07a27c0905050409t9720c5vb49d78d266b4e53f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2e07a27c0905050413k4b9dc0dahcda2203766334e6b@mail.gmail.com> Hello All, Sarai(www.sarai.net) and Mahiti(http://www.mahiti.org/), are organizing a free software workshop in Delhi on June 5th, and 6th. It is aimed at NGOs, and not-for-profit organizations, looking to migrate to FOSS solutions. Link for announcement and registration is http://ngoinabox.mahiti.org/niab-8-coming-soon. -- Regards Shantanu Choudhary -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090505/4ae4eafd/attachment.html From =?UTF-8?B?RnJlZGVyaWNrIE5vcm9uaGEgW+ClnuCksOClh+CkpuCksOCkv+CklSDgpKjgpYvgpLDgpYs=?= Sat May 9 00:55:32 2009 From: =?UTF-8?B?RnJlZGVyaWNrIE5vcm9uaGEgW+ClnuCksOClh+CkpuCksOCkv+CklSDgpKjgpYvgpLDgpYs=?= (=?UTF-8?B?RnJlZGVyaWNrIE5vcm9uaGEgW+ClnuCksOClh+CkpuCksOCkv+CklSDgpKjgpYvgpLDgpYs=?=) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 00:55:32 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Indian IP laws are the world's most consumer friendly In-Reply-To: <8ea78e010905071840v724ddec2yafad33e9d26aea06@mail.gmail.com> References: <8ea78e010905071836x3912d5b7ie09b7edd8a5f17ae@mail.gmail.com> <8ea78e010905071840v724ddec2yafad33e9d26aea06@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8ea78e010905081225s6c5965fej1d187c463e22a39d@mail.gmail.com> Indian IP laws are the world's most consumer friendly Wed, May 6 01:12 PM Bangalore, May 6 (IANS) India has been ranked as the country with the world's most consumer friendly intellectual property (IP) laws since its copyright regulations allow citizens great freedom to access and utilise information for educational and development purposes. This emerged in a study of 16 countries, including economically advanced ones, undertaken by the Malaysia-based Consumers International, which calls itself the 'world's only global consumer advocacy body'. Consumers International said its first IP Watch List focused on copyright - which has 'the most immediate impact on consumers' access to knowledge and thereby on their educational, cultural and developmental opportunities'. In the listing which saw India come out on top, the other countries with good ratings were South Korea, China, the US and Indonesia. At the bottom of the list were Britain, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. India was rated high (with a B average on a scale of A to F) in terms of its scope and duration of copyright as well as the freedom of access and use it gave to home users, content creators, the press and those in public affairs. However, despite topping the list, India didn't do so well and got a C scale in terms of the leeway it allows for disabled users to access copyrighted work. Likewise, it got only a D when it came to freedom to access and use copyrighted work by libraries. Consumers International called for a 'balanced copyright regime in which the importance of copyright flexibilities and of the maintenance of a vibrant public domain are upheld'. India's strengths and weaknesses of its copyright laws - from a consumer's perspective -were closely studied and the detailed analysis made available online at http://a2knetwork.org/reports2009/india. The study praises India's Copyright Act as being 'a relatively balanced instrument that recognises the interests of consumers through its broad private use exception, and by facilitating the compulsory licensing of works that would otherwise be unavailable'. It points out that 'neither has India rushed to accede to the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) Copyright Treaty, which would expose India's consumers to the same problems experienced in other jurisdictions that have prohibited the use of circumvention devices to gain access to legally acquired copyright material'. The study acknowledges that copyright infringement, particularly in the form of physical media, is widespread in India. It adds though that this must be taken in the context that India, although fast-growing, remains one of the poorest countries in the world. 'Although India's cultural productivity over the centuries and to the present day has been rich and prodigious, its citizens are economically disadvantaged as consumers of the culture to which they have contributed,' says the study, which goes counter to the dominant trend of pushing for tighter copyright rules and enforcement. It points to certain limitations - not all libraries can copy works that cannot reasonably be obtained commercially. Only public libraries can do so and they can make only three copies of such works. No explicit rule exists to allow libraries to copy works for users for the purpose of research or study. Only limited permission is given for the reproduction of unpublished works by libraries. No provisions allow for libraries to make preservation or archive copies of material in their collection. Of the significant findings, Consumers International said: 'The list of countries that best support the interests of consumers is dominated by large Asian economies but they are in odd company with the US, which has regularly criticised those same countries for failing to adequately protect and enforce intellectual property rights.' It suggested that this 'reflects the fact' that US policy makers 'apply double standards when comparing their own copyright system to systems from abroad'. It said countries with copyright regimes that 'most disregard the interests of consumers' was also an 'odd grouping'. This included the country in which the copyright law was first developed in the 16th century - Britain. Together with it were 'developing and transitional economies, whose outdated copyright laws fail to take advantage of all the flexibilities that international law allows them to benefit local consumers'. Frederick Noronha -- FN * http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com http://twitter.com/fn M +91-9822122436 P +91-832-2409490 http://fredericknoronha.multiply.com/ http://goa1556.goa-india.org From pranesh at cis-india.org Wed May 20 17:51:29 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 17:51:29 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] CIS Workshops | 2nd Workshop on Web Accessibility | Bangalore - June 5-7, 2009 Message-ID: <1242822089.7018.42.camel@spica> Dear All, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has been a forerunner in advocating for a national policy for electronic and web accessibility for persons with disabilities. In addition to seeking a policy reform in this matter, we are also bolstering our advocacy efforts by organising trainings and workshops at no cost for web developers across the country to spread awareness and build capacity in this area in both the public as well as the private sectors. Our first workshop, which was organised jointly with UN Solution Exchange and supported by the NIXI, took place in Ghaziabad earlier this year. We are organising our second workshop on web accessibility for developers at Bangalore from June 5th-7th, 2009. The workshop will take place at the CIS office on Cunningham Road. Registration is free of charge. If you or any of your colleagues are involved in developing websites and are interested in making your websites accessible to all groups in society, including persons with disabilities (approximately 71 million Indians and 6% of the total world population), please register for this workshop at the earliest. The trainers are experts in this field from Delhi and Bangalore and have been working in the field of accessibility for many years. For more information and registration, please mail Nirmita Narasimhan: nirmita at cis-india.org or call: 080 40926283. Regards, Pranesh -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090520/ee0df3a0/attachment.bin From pranesh at cis-india.org Thu May 21 18:07:23 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 18:07:23 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Vancouver proposes going 'open' Message-ID: <1242909443.4466.12.camel@spica> Dear All, Vancouver mulls becoming an 'open' city, raising interesting questions of what "openness" means with respect to cities. Is it just openness of the Mayoral office/municipal administration, or is it something more? Regards, Pranesh =----= Vancouver enters the age of the open city Posted By David Eaves On May 14, 2009 @ 3:32 pm In free culture, open source, public policy, technology, vancouver | Comments Disabled A few hours ago, Vancouver's city government posted the agenda to a council meeting next week in which this motion [1] will be read: MOTION ON NOTICE Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source MOVER: Councillor Andrea Reimer SECONDER: Councillor WHEREAS the City of Vancouver is committed to bringing the community into City Hall by engaging citizens, and soliciting their ideas, input and creative energy; WHEREAS municipalities across Canada have an opportunity to dramatically lower their costs by collectively sharing and supporting software they use and create; WHEREAS the total value of public data is maximized when provided for free or where necessary only a minimal cost of distribution; WHEREAS when data is shared freely, citizens are enabled to use and re-purpose it to help create a more economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable city; WHEREAS Vancouver needs to look for opportunities for creating economic activity and partnership with the creative tech sector; WHEREAS the adoption of open standards improves transparency, access to city information by citizens and businesses and improved coordination and efficiencies across municipal boundaries and with federal and provincial partners; WHEREAS the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) is a not-for-profit society created as a partnership between local government, provincial government and major utility companies in British Columbia to share and integrate spatial data to which 94% of BC local governments are members but Vancouver is not; WHEREAS digital innovation can enhance citizen communications, support the brand of the city as creative and innovative, improve service delivery, support citizens to self-organize and solve their own problems, and create a stronger sense of civic engagement, community, and pride; WHEREAS the City of Vancouver has incredible resources of data and information, and has recently been awarded the Best City Archive of the World. THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of Vancouver endorses the principles of: * Open and Accessible Data - the City of Vancouver will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns; * Open Standards - the City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media; * Open Source Software - the City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT in pursuit of open data the City of Vancouver will: * Identify immediate opportunities to distribute more of its data; * Index, publish and syndicate its data to the internet using prevailing open standards, interfaces and formats; * Develop appropriate agreements to share its data with the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) and encourage the ICIS to in turn share its data with the public at large * Develop a plan to digitize and freely distribute suitable archival data to the public; * Ensure that data supplied to the City by third parties (developers, contractors, consultants) are unlicensed, in a prevailing open standard format, and not copyrighted except if otherwise prevented by legal considerations; * License any software applications developed by the City of Vancouver such that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses, and the public without restriction. BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED THAT the City Manager be tasked with developing an action plan for implementation of the above. A number of us having been working hard getting this motion into place. While several cities, like Portland, Washington DC, and Toronto, have pursued some of the ideas outlined in this motion, none have codified or been as comprehensive and explicit in their intention. I certainly see this motion as the cornerstone to transforming Vancouver into a open city, or as my friend Surman [2] puts it, a city that thinks like the web [3]. At a high level, the goal behind this motion is to enable citizens to create, grow and control the virtual manifestation of their city so that they can in turn better influence the real physical city. In practice, I believe this motion will foster several outcomes, including: 1. New services and applications: That as data is opened up, shared and has APIs published for it, our citizen coders will create web based applications that will make their lives - and the lives of other citizens - easier, more efficient, and more pleasant. 2. Tapping into the long tail of public policy analysis: As more and more Vancouverites look over the city's data, maps and other pieces of information citizens will notice inefficiencies, problems and other issues that could save money, improve services and generally make for a stronger better city. 3. Create new businesses and attract talent: As the city shares more data and uses more open source software new businesses that create services out of this data and that support this software will spring up. More generally, I think this motion, over time could attract talent to Vancouver. Paul Graham once said that great programmers want great tools and interesting challenges [4]. We are giving them both. The challenge of improving the community in which they live and the tools and data to help make it better. For those interested in appearing before City Council to support this motion, details can be found here [5]. The council meeting is this Tuesday, May 19th at 2pm, PST. You can also watch the proceedings live [6]. For those interested in writing a letter in support of the motion, send your letter here [7]. Related posts * Open Cities: Popularity lessons for municipal politicians [19] * Wedding Open Source to Government Service Delivery [20] * From here to open - How the City of Toronto began Opening up [21] Article printed from eaves.ca: http://eaves.ca URL to article: http://eaves.ca/2009/05/14/vancouver-enters-the-age-of-the-open-city/ URLs in this post: [1] this motion: http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20090519/documents/motionb2.pdf [2] Surman: http://commonspace.wordpress.com/ [3] a city that thinks like the web: http://thinkliketheweb.org/ [4] once said that great programmers want great tools and interesting challenges: http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html [5] here: http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/mayorcouncil/speaktocouncil.htm [6] live: http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/mayorcouncil/councilmeetings/video.htm [7] here: mailto:mayorandcouncil at vancouver.ca [19] Open Cities: Popularity lessons for municipal politicians: http://eaves.ca/2009/05/19/open-cities-popularity-lessons-for-municipal-politicians/ [20] Wedding Open Source to Government Service Delivery: http://eaves.ca/2009/02/25/wedding-open-source-to-government-service-delivery/ [21] From here to open - How the City of Toronto began Opening up: http://eaves.ca/2009/02/09/from-here-to-open-how-the-city-of-toronto-begain-opening-up/ -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090521/1c81ebd8/attachment.bin From prabhur at sathguru.com Tue May 26 14:29:32 2009 From: prabhur at sathguru.com (Prabhu) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 14:29:32 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] STEM Annual Event in Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property, August 19-22, 2009, Hyderabad, India Message-ID: <20090526085941.05FD82C48034@mail.sarai.net> Dear all, Greetings from the Society for Technology Management (STEM), India! We are happy to inform you that the keenly awaited must attend technology transfer event in India, the STEM Annual Event in IP and Tech Transfer will be held at Hotel Taj Banjara in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India from August 19-22, 2009. The event comprises of two events, and interested delegates have the option of registering for one or both events by completing the registration form available online at http://www.stemglobal.org/events2009.html, and sending it back to us with the requisite fees. About the Event: STEM Professional Development Program for Technology Managers (PDP-TM), August 19-21, 2009 The STEM Professional Development Program for Technology Managers (PDP-TM) will be held from August 19-21, 2009, and is designed to equip the participants with the required knowledge and skills to: * Identify, Manage, and Capture value from intellectual property * Develop an understanding of protecting intellectual property. * Explore how marketing, finance and technology units can better integrate IP in their respective business strategies. * Examine how to extract maximum value from technology licensing. * Explore how strategic alliances can leverage competitive advantage. STEM Annual Summit, August 22, 2009 The STEM Annual Summit will be held on August 22, 2009 and is designed as a platform for senior technology transfer and IP personnel to meet, share insights, discuss and explore ways to maximize their revenue through IP and technology transfer, and network with one another to creatively and effectively improve their technology management culture. Please get in touch with us: Prabhu Ram at prabhur at sathguru.com, or Akshat Medakker at akshatm at sathguru.com, in case you have questions or wish to seek clarifications. We look forward to having you with us, Warm regards Prabhu ------------------------------------------------------------ Prabhu Ram Society for Technology Management (STEM) Plot No. 15, Hindi Nagar, Punjagutta, Hyderabad, A.P- 500 034 Ph: (040) 23356975, 23356507, 23350586, Ext: 240 Mobile: (0) 9966253908 Fax: (040) 23354042 Email: prabhur at sathguru.com Attend India's first and only must-attend event for technology transfer and intellectual property management: www.stemglobal.org/events2009.html ------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090526/55f3909e/attachment-0001.html