Intellectual Property

Librarians down under are cooking up a campaign to change the country's copyright laws according to this ABC story.

"However, those involved want people to bake biscuits and cakes rather than picket Parliament.

Social media users are being encouraged to cook a vintage recipe and share a photo of the result.

io9 looks at the copyright status of James Bond:

"On January 1st, 2015, the works of Ian Fleming entered the public domain in a number of countries. That means that the character of James Bond is no longer copyrighted in those countries, just like Sherlock Holmes has been for a while. But it doesn't mean that it's suddenly open season on that character.

But why now and what exactly does it mean?"

Information wants to be free. At least that's what Internet activists and many consumers say in support of free online content.

But when we stream a new film online or listen to music on Spotify, we don't always consider — or care about — the artists who are losing out.

The debates over intellectual property, copyright and traditional ideas of enforcement have been hot topics of late. The fall of Napster in the late '90s and the current battle between publisher Hachette and Amazon show that copyright law needs to be rewritten to fit digital standards.

The Copyright Wars: Three Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Battle

Today's copyright wars can seem unprecedented. Sparked by the digital revolution that has made copyright--and its violation--a part of everyday life, fights over intellectual property have pitted creators, Hollywood, and governments against consumers, pirates, Silicon Valley, and open-access advocates. But while the digital generation can be forgiven for thinking the dispute between, for example, the publishing industry and Google is completely new, the copyright wars in fact stretch back three centuries--and their history is essential to understanding today's battles. The Copyright Wars--the first major trans-Atlantic history of copyright from its origins to today--tells this important story.

In a follow up to an earlier story, the Conan Doyle estate may appeal the ruling against it's copyright claim according to this Publishers Weekly story.

"Is Sherlock Holmes truly a free man? Not so fast say attorneys for the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

This New York Times story has the details.

"A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works Arthur Conan Doyle published before January 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law, and can be freely used by new creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate."

This one has been a long time coming, but this morning, Judge Denny Chin (who actually has a long history of siding with copyright holders) found that Google's book scanning project is fair use. This is a huge victory in a variety of ways. TechDirt has the story.

A decade or so ago, ISI's EndNote bought out most of the competition, practically obtaining a monopoly on the reference manager business. In the early Library 2.0 boom, web-based products like Zotero and CSA's RefWorks became the norm. Thomson Reuters played catch up by introducing EndNote Web, and NoodleBib and other adware/freemium clones cropped up in what is now again a crowded marketplace.