LISNews: Librarian News

Here\'s a press release from BioMed Central with information on the first free, peer-review scientific journals to emerge in the wake of the Public Library of Science boycott:

Today BioMed Central announces the first group of research journals to be launched in a new publishing initiative. This initiative is designed to allow groups of researchers to publish online journals representing their community and to offer free access to the research articles within these new journals. The journals will use BioMed Central\'s established publishing infrastructure, comprising an online submission system, electronic tools for peer-review, and the ability to publish accepted articles in both PDF and HTML formats. The peer-reviewed research articles in these journals will be indexed in the National Library of Medicine\'s bibliographic database, PubMed (widely used by researchers, clinicians and the general public) and deposited without delay in PubMed Central, the electronic repository of complete publications. . .

More. Thanks to the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog.

Jim writes \"I found this one on here you don\'t seem to have it yet. The author, Lydia Pallas Loren, says relatively few people, including lawyers, have sufficient knowledge or understanding of what copyright is and tries to explain it. \"
She goes on to say \"These misconceptions are causing a dangerous shift in copyright protection, a shift that threatens the advancement of knowledge and learning in this country.\", she does a great job explaining copyright law and The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

L. M. Wadin passed along This Sad Story from over at Salon. If you need yet another reason to hate the DMCA read it.

For BBC News, David Schepp writes...

\"Sharing music recorded on compact discs among friends over the internet has proven itself to be as American as apple pie and baseball. But music-swapping is a pastime that may be soon halted if recording companies have their way. Some major record labels have have signed on with encryption firms that have developed technologies to halt the
so-called pirating of copyrighted music. For the encryption companies it may mean millions of dollars in profits as record label after record label signs on to take advantage of the new, seemingly perfected technology. For the record companies, however, it could be a public relations disaster.\" more...

Junk e-mail goddess strikes again. See what you miss when you\'re on vacation? It took me like 2 days to find the link to this from an e-mail message. God knows I\'d hate to be accused of lifting something verbatim. Anyway, every now and again, library stuff makes it into major news publications. Anyone seen Time lately? Someone is suggesting that we may be the next Napster. How so? Weren\'t we here first? Like over a hundred years first? more... if you really want it.