Peter Suber: Open Access (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · copyright, open access, publishing
The Internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work “open access”: digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the Internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent. But for 350 years, scholars have written peer-reviewed journal articles for impact, not for money, and are free to consent to open access without losing revenue.
In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber’s influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers.
Publisher MIT Press, 2012
MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
ISBN 0262300982, 9780262300988
Creative Commons Attribution License
242 pages
Michael Geist (ed.): The Copyright Pentalogy: How the Supreme Court of Canada Shook the Foundations of Canadian Copyright Law (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · canada, copyright, fair use, internet, law, net neutrality, technology
In the summer of 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada issued rulings on five copyright cases in a single day. The cases represent a seismic shift in Canadian copyright law, with the Court providing an unequivocal affirmation that copyright exceptions such as fair dealing should be treated as users’ rights, while emphasizing the need for a technology neutral approach to copyright law.
The Court’s decisions, which were quickly dubbed the “copyright pentalogy,” included no fees for song previews on services such as iTunes, no additional payment for music included in downloaded video games, and that copying materials for instructional purposes may qualify as fair dealing. The Canadian copyright community soon looked beyond the cases and their litigants and began to debate the larger implications of the decisions. Several issues quickly emerged.
This book represents an effort by some of Canada’s leading copyright scholars to begin the process of examining the long-term implications of the copyright pentalogy. The diversity of contributors ensures an equally diverse view on these five cases, contributions are grouped into five parts. Part 1 features three chapters on the standard of review in the courts. Part 2 examines the fair dealing implications of the copyright pentalogy, with five chapters on the evolution of fair dealing and its likely interpretation in the years ahead. Part 3 contains two chapters on technological neutrality, which the Court established as a foundational principle of copyright law. The scope of copyright is assessed in Part 4 with two chapters that canvas the exclusive rights under the copyright and the establishment of new “right” associated with user-generated content. Part 5 features two chapters on copyright collective management and its future in the aftermath of the Court’s decisions.
This volume represents the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the five rulings. Edited by Professor Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, the volume includes contributions from experts across Canada. This indispensable volume identifies the key aspects of the Court’s decisions and considers the implications for the future of copyright law in Canada.
Publisher University of Ottawa Press, April 2013
Creative Commons License Attribution-Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0
ISBN 9780776608013
480 pages
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Peter Jakobsson: Öppenhetsindustrin / Openness Industry (2012) [Swedish]
Filed under thesis | Tags: · business, copyright, creative industries, crowdsourcing, governmentality, ideology, internet, media industry, openness, openness industry
“Over recent decades several competing descriptions of the media and cultural industries have been put forward. The media and cultural industries have been described as creative industries, copyright industries, and as constitutive of an experience economy. One key element in these descriptions has been the importance of copyright law in a postindustrial economy.
The present study is an analysis of an emerging idea of an industry that functions, in part, outside of the market created by copyright law, and by exploiting, or by building markets on top of, digital, cultural and informational commons. The study is about how this idea is expressed in various forms by business organisations, companies, consultants and policymakers. I have invented the concept of the openness industry to denote the businesses that these organisations and policy makers claim are forerunners and promoters of the idea of ‘openness’ as a business model for the media industry. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the governmentality and ideology of the openness industry.
A key element in the idea of the openness industry is that internet users can be persuaded to produce symbolic products for it by other means than the economic incentives provided by copyright. Another key element is the high value placed on single individuals in the creation of economic value; but in contrast to how the copyright industries are thought to be dependent on ‘authors’, the openness industry relies on the ‘entrepreneur’. Previous notions of the media and cultural industries have given publishers and producers of film, music and games a central role.The companies that are seminal to the idea of the openness industry are internet and technology companies.” (Abstract)
Doctoral thesis
Media and Communication, Örebro University, Sweden, 2012
Supervisors: Göran Bolin, Mats Ekström
ISBN 9789176688533
209 pages
commentary (Jonas Andersson, in Swedish)
Comment (0)Sandra Braman: Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power (2006)
Filed under book | Tags: · copyright, data, governance, information policy, internet governance, law, politics, power, tactical media, technology
As the informational state replaces the bureaucratic welfare state, control over information creation, processing, flows, and use has become the most effective form of power. In Change of State Sandra Braman examines the theoretical and practical ramifications of this “change of state.” She looks at the ways in which governments are deliberate, explicit, and consistent in their use of information policy to exercise power, exploring not only such familiar topics as intellectual property rights and privacy but also areas in which policy is highly effective but little understood. Such lesser-known issues include hybrid citizenship, the use of “functionally equivalent borders” internally to allow exceptions to U.S. law, research funding, census methods, and network interconnection. Trends in information policy, argues Braman, both manifest and trigger change in the nature of governance itself.
After laying the theoretical, conceptual, and historical foundations for understanding the informational state, Braman examines 20 information policy principles found in the U.S Constitution. She then explores the effects of U.S. information policy on the identity, structure, borders, and change processes of the state itself and on the individuals, communities, and organizations that make up the state. Looking across the breadth of the legal system, she presents current law as well as trends in and consequences of several information policy issues in each category affected.
Change of State introduces information policy on two levels, coupling discussions of specific contemporary problems with more abstract analysis drawing on social theory and empirical research as well as law. Most important, the book provides a way of understanding how information policy brings about the fundamental social changes that come with the transformation to the informational state.
Publisher MIT Press, 2006
ISBN 0262025973, 9780262025973
545 pages
Alex Sayf Cummings: Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · copyright, counterculture, intellectual property, law, music, new media, phonograph, piracy
It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself.
In Democracy of Sound, Alex Sayf Cummings uncovers the little-known history of music piracy and its sweeping effects on the definition of copyright in the United States. When copyright emerged, only visual material such as books and maps were thought to deserve protection; even musical compositions were not included until 1831. Once a performance could be captured on a wax cylinder or vinyl disc, profound questions arose over the meaning of intellectual property. Is only a written composition defined as a piece of art? If a singer performs a different interpretation of a song, is it a new and distinct work? Such questions have only grown more pressing with the rise of sampling and other forms of musical pastiche. Indeed, music has become the prime battleground between piracy and copyright. It is compact, making it easy to copy. And it is highly social, shared or traded through social networks–often networks that arise around music itself. But such networks also pose a counter-argument: as channels for copying and sharing sounds, they were instrumental in nourishing hip-hop and other new forms of music central to American culture today. Piracy is not always a bad thing.
An insightful and often entertaining look at the history of music piracy, Democracy of Sound offers invaluable background to one of the hot-button issues involving creativity and the law.
- Provides a political and historical perspective on the rise of the “information economy.”
- Discusses rare and little-known unreleased songs by the Beatles, which are potentially controversial because of their racial content.
- Shows how piracy has been integral to the music industry through much of its history and how pirates have influenced copyright law.
Publisher Oxford University Press, 2013
ISBN 0199858225, 9780199858224
336 pages
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Adriano Belisário, Bruno Tarin (eds.): Pirataria & Cultura Livre (2012) [Portuguese]
Filed under book | Tags: · copyleft, copyright, free culture, intellectual property, piracy
Copyfight is a collection of Brazilian Portuguese texts that aim to address some of the disputes around the topic of intellectual property, throwing new light on the subject and showing how such conflicts have impacts not only in the field of media culture, but also on our everyday lives, as well as on the production of machines, objects or food.
As stated in its introduction, “the goal of the book is not to broadcast a single view or a final proposal for the current issues about free culture and piracy, but rather unveil a multitude of reflections and practices. Copyfight does not refer to a world of perfect fittings, but a world of friction.” In this sense, the book develops a experimental to its reading, allowing the access of texts through thematic nodes or through the notes of the editors.
The project is the result of two meetings, held in 2010 and 2011 in Rio de Janeiro and gathers contributions from Giuseppe Cocco, Jorge Machado, f? erre!, Silke Helfrich, Matteo Pasquinelli, Richard Stallman, Beatriz Cintra Martins, Bruno Tarin, Pedro Mendes, Antonio Negri, Chapolin, Yann Moulier Boutang, Felipe Fonseca, Washington Luis Lima Drummond, Marcus Vinicius, Antoine Moreau, Dmytri Kleiner, Florian Cramer, Guilherme Pimentel, Aymeric Mansoux, Tadzia Maya, Tomás Vega, Thiago Skárnio, and Miguel Afonso Caetano.
Publisher Azougue Editorial, Rio de Janeiro, December 2012
Free Art License
274 pages
via Aymeric Mansoux
Markus Beckedahl, Andre Meister (eds.): Jahrbuch Netzpolitik 2012: Von A wie ACTA bis Z wie Zensur (2012) [German]
Filed under book | Tags: · 2012, acta, anonymous, censorship, copyright, internet, net culture, politics, privacy, surveillance, web
Netzpolitik betrifft alle, jede und jeden. Was im Jahr 2012 wichtig war, was vielleicht auch zu kurz kam, darauf blickt dieses Jahrbuch zurück. Die Autorinnen und Autoren waren Beobachter und Akteur zugleich.
Ihre Berichte in diesem Buch fassen die wichtigsten Themen des Jahres zusammen, ordnen ein und reflektieren.
Von A wie ACTA und Anonymous über Open-Data und Überwachung bis zu Urheberrecht und Z wie Zensur: komprimiert, informiert und frei lizenziert.
Mit Beiträgen von: Jan-Phillip Albrecht, Markus Beckedahl, Annegret Bendiek, Mirko Boehm, Jörg Braun, Ulf Buermeyer, Gabriella Coleman, Leonhard Dobusch, Kirsten Fiedler, Karina Fissguss, Kilian Froitzhuber, Volker Grassmuck, Johnny Haeusler, Christian Heise, Jeanette Hofmann, Jōichi ‘Joi’ Itō, Andrea Jonjic, Matthias Kirschner, Julia Kloiber, Constanze Kurz, Lawrence Lessig, Falk Lüke, Lorenz Matzat, Tim Maurer, Joe McNamee, Andre Meister, Matthias Monroy, John F. Nebel, Frank Rieger, Alexander Sander, Ben Scott, Felix Stalder, Moritz Tremmel, Ben Wagner, Stefan Wehrmeyer und Jillian C. York.
Publisher Netzpolitik.org, December 2012
Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 Germany License
ISBN 9783844242348
270 pages
via @BiellaColeman
