LISNews: Librarian News

Idaho Libraries to adjust to new Internet filtering law
But the Coeur d’Alene library, like every other library in the state, will have to change its system between now and October, under a new law enacted by the Idaho Legislature this year.

Although the new law is a scaled-back version of the original proposal — which would have required libraries to filter Internet access for everyone — it’s still a concern to some library officials. Currently, every library in Idaho handles the issue its own way, with some choosing to install filters on all their Internet-accessible computers, others choosing to filter just some, and some leaving the choice to parents and adult library patrons. That local control works well, Ammons and others say, noting that Idaho libraries don’t get any state funding. Libraries are supported by local property taxes and governed by local boards.

Under the new law, Internet use by children must be filtered.

The Digital Death of Copyright's First Sale Doctrine
As the transition from physical to streaming or cloud-based digital distribution continues, further divorcing copyrighted works from their traditional tangible embodiments, it will increasingly be the case that consumers do not own the information goods they buy (or, rather, think they've bought). Under the court's decision in Vernor, all a copyright owner has to do to effectively repeal the statutory first sale doctrine is draft a EULA that (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user's ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions. Sad to say, it's about as easy as falling off a log.

Copyright confusion dogs European digitisation push

The cultural life of Europe will suffer unless more effort is made to clarify what libraries can do with so-called orphan works, says a study.

The British Library looked into ways to speed up the digitisation of books, journals and other printed materials held by Europe's libraries.

It considered 10 works from every decade between 1870 and 2010.

About 43% of the sample were orphan works suggesting a large part of Europe's media may never go online.

Google, lawyers get more time for digital library
Lawyers for authors, publishers and Google on Thursday bought themselves more time to reach a deal to create the world's largest digital library, telling a judge they were making progress in settlement talks but had agreed to proceed toward a trial of the 6-year-old copyright case on a slow track.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan approved a pretrial schedule that calls for written submissions and depositions that extend into next summer, but he made it clear that he would prefer a settlement and offered to help the parties in their talks if it might help. He called the amount of time in the schedule "generous but acceptable." No trial date was set.