LISNews: Librarian News

Tim Wu, writer over over at Slate takes on the aggressive worldwide legal campaign against the unauthorized Potter takeoffs in This Article.
It began last year when Rowling and Time-Warner threatened the publishers of Chinese Potter, who agreed to stop publication. On April 4 of this year, Rowling persuaded a Dutch court to block the import of Tanya Grotter to Holland. Harry Potter in Calcutta, in which Harry meets up with various characters from Bengali literature, was recently pulled by its Indian publisher under threat. Potter takeoffs have become international contraband.

Info-Commons.org has Why We Must Talk About The Information Commons, by David Bollier.
He says public libraries have a special role to play in the battles to preserve and extend the public domain in the digital age. But many other groups also require open access to information and creativity and the ability to share, quote and build upon the achievements of the past.

Lee Hadden writes "The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about international
copyright issues. See the June 16, 2003 issue for: "Author Fights Tactics
Of 'Bollywood' Studios" By JOANNA SLATER
BOMBAY -- When British author Barbara Taylor Bradford suddenly
started getting mail from fans in India this spring, she was perplexed. One
admirer was thrilled that Ms. Bradford's best-selling novel, "A Woman of
Substance," would soon be on the air in India -- as a 262-part television
series. That was news to the author, who hadn't given permission for any
such project.
Now, Ms. Bradford is determined to stop India's entertainment
industry, called Bollywood, from making money off her ideas. "I created
these things, someone else didn't," she says. "It's not fair."
Ms. Bradford's decision to fight copyright infringement in Indian
courts is sending chills through Bollywood, which has a habit of borrowing
ideas.

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Copyright holders like record labels have too much power over what people do with songs, argues technology analyst Bill Thompson, This BBC Story.After failing to persuade an appeals court of its case, US ISP Verizon is handing over the names of four of its customers to the lawyers at the Recording Industry Association of America.

The disclosure marks a significant shift in the way that customer privacy is dealt with in US law and will, as with many aspects of the regulation of the internet, have an impact on net users around the world.