The advent of online file sharing made it easy for anyone to copy and distribute media for free, and many feel—and fear—that 3D printing will eventually do the same for physical products. So it’s surprisingly refreshing to hear that a corporation like Hasbro has decided to embrace 3D printing, and will work with Shapeways...
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Are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson still under a legal cloak (or cape, if you will) of copyright law? The Supreme Court may have to solve that mystery, to decide a new legal plea filed Tuesday by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Scottish creator of that fictional detective and his far less...
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For more than a decade copyright holders and the U.S. Government have been trying to find the silver bullet to beat piracy. This week the American Bar Association joined the discussion with a 113-page white paper. With their “call for action” the lawyers encourage Congress to draft new anti-piracy legislation and promote voluntary agreements...
Read more →Our professional ethics and values and the current copyright regime are in conflict. While the American Library Association lobbies for change while supporting the current intellectual property regime, how are we information professionals going to proceed? Because I’d rather not support this particular law, set of laws, at the expense of what I believe,...
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Copyright! Complicated, confusing, and not clear-cut. What does a librarian need to know? Michael Sauers and Laura Johnson, from the Nebraska Library Commission, will present scenarios to discuss, as we all shine a light on the subject and try to figure out what a librarian needs to do. (Early on in the show we...
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Regular readers of this blog know that I post a lot of small snippets from larger articles that I think you should read. To do this I highlight and copy that text from the original, paste it here, and then link to the original. Yeah, well, that’s usually easy. This weekend I ran into...
Read more →Copyright! Complicated, confusing, and not clear-cut. What does a librarian need to know? Michael Sauers and Laura Johnson, from the Nebraska Library Commission, will present scenarios to discuss, as we all shine a light on the subject and try to figure out what a librarian needs to do. This episode of NCompass Live will be broadcast live...
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I’ve participated in several online discussion recently over some copyright questions. Almost every time, the question involves something generally innocuous, but the person isn’t all the sure if it violates copyright or not. Generally I respond with something along the lines of “go for it. If you’re asked to stop, then decide whether to...
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Uh… NO!
The U.S. Copyright Office recently proposed a seemingly small addition to copyright law that bears some huge implications. It wants to enable copyright holders to protect unauthorized versions of their work from hyperlinks. You read that right: it could soon be illegal simply to link to certain content.
Think about that for a second. Let’s say you find a YouTube video that uses some random Miley Cyrus song as a soundtrack, but the maker of the video never got permission to use the song. You link to that video in a blog post. Boom—you just broke the law.
Read the full post @ Gizmodo.
To most consumers it is common sense that they can make a backup copy of media they own, but in the UK this is currently illegal.
After a public consultation and a thorough inspection of local copyright legislation, the UK Government decided to change current laws in favor of consumers. The changes have been in the planning stage for a few years, but this summer they will finally be implemented.
Starting in July people are free to make copies of DVDs, CDs and other types of media, as long as it’s for personal use. To inform the public about these upcoming changes the Government has just released a consumer guide, summing up citizens’ new rights.
“Copyright law is being changed to allow you to make personal copies of media you have bought, for private purposes such as format shifting or backup,” the UK’s Intellectual Property Office writes.
“The changes will mean that you will be able to copy a book or film you have purchased for one device onto another without infringing copyright.”
Read the full post @ Torrent Freak.