LISNews: Librarian News

The Salt Lake Tribune has this article on computers programmers picketing at the U.S. Copyright office. It includes a complete breakdown on the current issues surrounding copyright.
\"For 103 years, this niche of the Library of Congress has overseen the registration and cataloging of books, music, movies, architectural drawings and any other creative works that can be copyrighted. Its staff toiled in obscurity, with controversies rare and protests unheard of.
Then came the Internet... -- Read More

Wired.com has this interesting article on the how the Digital Mellennium Copyright Act of 1998 is holding up.
\"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 was supposed to clear up copyright issues in the Internet era.

That hasn\'t exactly happened. Instead, there have been a series of lawsuits between the recording and motion picture industries, private companies and individual users, seeking clarification on how intellectual property is protected as music and video moves to the digital world.\" -- Read More

Jon Katz has a really neat Story over on Slashdot that deals with the timely topic of copyright and intellectual property. I especially like this quote from Thomas Jefferson.

\"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.\" -- Read More

Maureen writes \"Probe of EBay Hinges On Rights to Data
Territorial Disputes On Web
From Washingtonpost.com
Washington Post
Saturday, February 5, 2000
One of the fundamental issues of the Internet--the property rights of those who compile vast data storehouses on the global network--is now under scrutiny by lawmakers, regulators and the courts. \"

...the company\'s \"senior intellectual property counsel,\" Jay Monahan, acknowledged yesterday that the company has had \"some discussions with staff at the Justice Department regarding eBay and the online trading business generally.\" The company suggested that Justice was doing the bidding of Bidder\'s Edge and other competitors. -- Read More