Confessions of a Mad Librarian

This rocks:

Objective: The undersigned believe that it will benefit legal education and improve the dissemination of legal scholarly information if law schools commit to making the legal scholarship they publish available in stable, open, digital formats in place of print. To accomplish this end, law schools should commit to making agreed-upon stable, open, digital formats, rather than print, the preferable formats for legal scholarship. If stable, open, digital formats are available, law schools should stop publishing law journals in print and law libraries should stop acquiring print law journals. We believe that, in addition to their other benefits, these changes are particularly timely in light of the financial challenges currently facing many law schools.

See the Call to Action. See the online petition. See the FAQ.

Next question -- where do we go from here?

Posted by Eli at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just found out:

U.S. Copyright Office § 1201 Rulemaking Hearing

Friday, May 1, 2009

The Palo Alto hearing will be held in Room 80 (moot court room) of Stanford Law School, 559 Nathan Abbott Way. The optimal location to park is Parking Structure 6 (PS6). Additional directions and parking information are available here: http://www.law.stanford.edu/directions/

The hearing agenda covers several classes of proposed exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act:

4A. Commercially produced and distributed DVDs used in face-to-face classroom teaching by college and university faculty, regardless of discipline or subject taught, including teachers in K-12 classrooms.

11A. Audiovisual works released on DVD, where circumvention is undertaken solely for the purpose of extracting clips for inclusion in noncommercial videos that do not infringe copyright.

5A. Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the telephone handset.

5B. Computer programs that operate wireless telecommunications handsets when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling wireless telephones to connect to a wireless telephone communication network.

5C. Computer programs in the form of firmware or software that enable mobile communication handsets to connect to a wireless communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless communication network.

5D. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network, regardless of commercial motive.

I know, spending all day listening to lawyers and gov bureaucrats talk about the minutiae of software and content containers and devices is not everyone's cup of tea. But DMCA exemptions are a great way for consumer and public interest advocates to fight for copyright balance, in a limited sense. And win! In a limited sense ...

Posted by Eli at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was deep, deep, deep in the bowels of law school studying and managed to miss the Google Book Settlement. I've been slowly catching for the past couple of months, but still have not wrapped my brain around it all. But perhaps I'm not the only one who isn't grokking it fully?

From the New York Times:

The Justice Department has begun an inquiry into the antitrust implications of Google’s settlement with authors and publishers over its Google Book Search service, two people briefed on the matter said Tuesday.

Lawyers for the Justice Department have been in conversations in recent weeks with various groups opposed to the settlement, including the Internet Archive and Consumer Watchdog. More recently, Justice Department lawyers notified the parties to the settlement, including Google, and representatives for the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, that they were looking into various antitrust issues related to the far-reaching agreement.

The inquiry does not necessarily mean that the department will oppose the settlement, which is subject to a court review. But it suggests that some of the concerns raised by critics, who say the settlement would unfairly give Google an exclusive license to profit from millions of books, have resonated with the Justice Department.

Thank you to ReadWriteWeb per the head's up ...

Posted by Eli at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After a long absence from blogging, I hadn't imagined this as my first return post:

Judith Fingeret Krug, 69, the long-time director of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) and executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation, who fought censorship on behalf of the nation’s libraries, died April 11 after a lengthy illness.

Krug, who often said, “Censorship dies in the light of day,” was the director of OIF and executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation for more than 40 years. She was admired and respected for her efforts to guarantee the rights of individuals to express ideas and read the ideas of others without governmental interference.

There are, no doubt, many condolences being made on her behalf, and I should hope there will be something special in her memory at Annual in Chicago this summer. I didn't know her well, but I was an admirer of her work and her spirit. Thank you very much, for everything, Ms. Krug.

Posted by Eli at 02:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)