In the News

["Amy Mata" <AMata@xxxxxxxx>]

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EDUCAUSE Live! The Google Book Scanning Project: Issues and Updates.
http://net.educause.edu/live0916

"Your host, Steve Worona, will be joined by Jonathan Band and Dan
Clancy, and the topic will be "The Google Book Scanning Project: Issues
and Updates" to be held September 2, 2009, 1:00 p.m. ET (12:00 p.m. CT,
11:00 a.m. MT, and 10:00 a.m. PT).
For about five years, Google has been scanning and indexing millions of
volumes drawn from academic libraries and other sources worldwide. The
project has been greeted with high praise but also with lawsuits. In the
latter category, a judge will shortly decide whether to approve a
settlement reached last year by Google and several organizations
representing authors and publishers. The issues swirling around the
settlement include the treatment of absent rightsholders, user privacy,
and competition. This session will offer a status report on the project
and explore both sides of these questions."
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Swedish Court Orders Shutdown of The Pirate Bay.
By Greg Sandoval, CNET News, August 25, 2009.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10316037-93.html

"A Swedish district court has ordered an Internet service provider there
to stop servicing The Pirate Bay. The most popular BitTorrent tracker in
the world appeared to be inaccessible to many in the U.S. on Monday
morning but the blog TorrentFreak reported that the site had found a new
connection to the Web and there were reports from readers that they were
able to log on to the site."
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Creative Commons: South African Open Copyright Review.
Announced by Andrew Rens, Shuttleworth Foundation, August 26, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/ksyyqv

"The final Report of the South African Open Copyright Review is online.
The Review closed last year, but its taken us a bit of time to produced
a properly formatted downloadable version of the final Report. Now we
have and its available for download, under a Creative Commons
Attribution Share Alike South Africa 2.5 licence."
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Isohunt Judge Says MPAA Has Yet to Prove Direct Infringement.
By Greg Sandoval, CNET News, August 26, 2009.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10318942-93.html

"File-sharing sites haven't had a great year, especially in court, but
on Wednesday they received a smidgen of good news."
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New Fast Track P2P Clampdown Proposals Announced Today.
By Jim Killock, The Open Rights Group, August 26, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/kqgbr7

"Government officials today have announced that they intend to put in
place a strong clamp down on illicit file sharing to 'support' record
and film industries they wrongly believe are threatened."
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Europe Seeks to Ease Rules for Putting Books Online.
By James Kanter, The New York Times, August 27, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/mrd3rf

"The European Commission on Friday will propose drafting rules that
would make it easier to put many books and manuscripts online. The move
is a part of the commission's effort to bolster access to information
and to encourage online businesses."
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American Copyright Lobby Attacks Canadian Politicians for Supporting
Balanced Copyright.
By Cory Doctorow, Boing-Boing, August 29, 2009.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/29/american-copyright-l.html

"I saw your comments on the Toronto town hall copyright forum [ed: in
which the NDP was threatened with expulsion for handing out fliers
calling for a moderate new copyright law that balanced public rights
with the rights of copyright holders]. The fallout has been very
bizarre. A copyright lobbyist with the American federation of Musicians
is circulating an online e-mail demanding the NDP apologize for our
"disgusting" position on balanced copyright."
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Google's Plan for the World's Biggest Online Library: Philanthropy or
act of piracy?
By William Skidelsky, The Observer, August 30, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/l43zja

"Google has already scanned 10 million books in its bid to digitise the
contents of the world's major libraries, but a copyright battle now
threatens the project, with Amazon and Microsoft joining authors and
publishers opposed to the scheme."
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Business Software Alliance Wants in on the Three-Strikes Action.
By Nate Anderson, Ars Technica, August 30, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/nlvxpn

"The Business Software Alliance exists to fight software piracy, and the
group has thrown its weight behind the "graduated response" method of
dealing with online copyright infringement."
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Amy Mata
Graduate Assistant
Center for Intellectual Property
University of Maryland University College

amata@xxxxxxxx
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