Dan Cohen gave an interesting talk at the American Historical Association meeting recently, where he discussed the benefits Google brings to historical research, as well as some pointed criticisms.
Jan 092010
I’ve found that pictures shared under a Creative Commons (CC) license (of all flavors) are a great resource for bloggers who want artwork to accompany their posts. I’ve also realized that not everyone, myself included, has always done an adequate job of meeting the attribution requirements of CC licenses. To help remedy this, here are my recommendations for doing this properly in a blog.
Techdirt discusses why you shouldn’t be concerned if someone “steals” your work and sells it, noting that “it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad
Oct 242009
This is an excellent write-up about how fair use works, along with its complexities (and areas where it is more straightforward, generally where courts have already ruled on a very similar use previously).
Cory Doctorow points out that the first 80% of creating a media center is easy: a decent computer (I used an old Pentium III and an old PowerBook, but you can use newer tech if you’re not a poor student), video out (S-Video to an old-school TV, VGA or HDMI to a new HDTV), big hard drives, maybe network sharing (I used an Airport Extreme I inherited) so you can access media from multiple rooms. But what about content — “the other 20 percent”?
Aug 292009
Should a court reporter own the copyright on his or her work product, and be able to force everyone to pay for it into the future. “No,” says an appeals court, overruling a lower court decision to the contrary.
Aug 272009
For anyone using any kind of electronic reader — including a regular computer — this addition to Google Books may well prove quite useful: EPUB as a download format.
Aug 262009
Sometimes I feel that I spend an inordinate amount of time attacking copyright, as if I wished to eliminate it. I do not. But I do feel the balance is off. But how should we find the proper balance?
If the real purpose of copyright law is to “promote the progress,” then why not make sure [...]
What does it mean to our culture that we have imposed the most draconian restrictions on the reuse of intellectual creations than at any other time?
The AP has begin trying to license content through a payment scheme. Some of the content — as recently demonstrated by James Grimmelmann “purchasing” a Thomas Jefferson quote — is in the public domain. Does the AP have the right to sell/license this public-domain content? What does it mean to be in the public domain?
Follow me on Twitter 