Library News, Reviews, and Views
Libraries and Friends groups interested in reselling or giving away used ebooks or other digital content files (or purchasing them) may be a little more cautious after the March 30 court decision, Capitol Records v. ReDigi Inc. ReDigi, a virtual marketplace for “pre-owned” digital music, was sued by Capitol Records in what the court characterized as “a fundamental clash over culture, policy, and copyright law.”
This country’s fascinating and invaluable patrimony of recorded sound and culture is at risk. Libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies have approximately 46 million recordings in their collections and more than six million are “in need” or “in urgent need” of preservation, according to the National Recording Preservation Plan released by the Library of Congress (LC) in December. The condition of another 20 million of the recordings is unknown, and these numbers do not include important material in private hands.
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) last week appointed Dan Cohen as its founding Executive Director. LJ caught up with him to discuss his work as Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, and his plans for DPLA.
In this article, the fourth installment in a series on the initiative to build a Digital Public Library of America, I examine the underlying role of law in the ebook lending debate, explore potential solutions to the problems, and consider how the DPLA can contribute to solutions for those we serve. At the core of this issue is the way the copyright law works–or doesn’t–when it comes to books, libraries, and readers in the United States today and into the future.
Seth Finkelstein’s blog alerted me to the fact that the case against Aaron Swartz for stealing JTSOR files had expanded from four felony counts to thirteen. The overview of the revised charges: “Between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011, Swartz contrived to: a. break into a restricted-access computer wiring closet at MIT; b. access [...]
In June, nicely timed just before the American Library Association’s Annual Conference, Gluejar announced their first “unglued” title: “Oral Literature in Africa”. Well, now it is available for downloading in several different formats: PDF EPUB Kindle Kindle Daisy Full Text DjVu You can also read it online using the Internet Archive’s book reader. It should [...]
The post First Book Comes Unglued appeared first on The Digital Shift.
Unglue.it, the new crowdfunding site that encourages authors and publishers to make their ebooks available under a Creative Commons license, today was forced to suspend all active campaigns, after Amazon informed the organization that it would no longer process its pledge payments. Eric Hellman, founder of Unglue.it developer Gluejar Inc., told LJ that an Amazon representative had informed them that crowdfunding, in general, presents regulatory and contractual issues that Amazon is having difficulty keeping pace with. According to their conversation, with the exception of Kickstarter, Amazon Payments will be rejecting business with all new crowdfunding operations.
INFOdocket by Gary Price
