What if they won? 

Company says it owns hyperlinks patent

A British company claimed in federal court Monday that it owns the patent on hyperlinks -- the single-click conveniences that take a Web surfer from one Internet page to another -- and should get paid for their daily use by millions of people.

But a federal judge with a laptop on her desk warned that it may be difficult to prove that a patent filed in 1976, more than a decade before the World Wide Web was created, applies to modern computers. [read more]

What might be taken for granted here, is good news 

For Women in Kabul, This Test Is Welcome by John F. Burns

Afghanistan since the collapse of the Taliban has made many an ordinary event seem extraordinary, and few more so than the task that had Dr. Aziz Ahmad Rahmand, a professor of contemporary Afghan history, bursting with pride, joy and not a little gloating as he hurried about Kabul University on Wednesday.

Dr. Rahmand, 45, was supervising entry examinations, the kind of duty senior professors in most other countries might shun. But not in Afghanistan, where the source of the professor's bliss lay in the fact that row upon row of women were taking the exam beside men in the library and in many another unheated hall across the bitingly cold campus. ...

... Books, too, are in short supply. Years of no acquisitions, along with theft and book burning -- and that novelty of Taliban literary criticism, book shooting -- have left many shelves in the library empty.

The chief librarian, Muhammad Sadiq Wadid, 40, came running after the visitors to make a special request. "We say hello to the educated people in the Western countries," he said, "and we ask them, kindly, if you have any books about the technical and scientific world, engineering, literature -- anything! -- please send them to us.

"The Afghan people are in darkness, and we ask the Western countries to help us shine some light," he said. [read more]

For many US libraries, the disposition of duplicates is a major problem. Maybe some of them could be sent to Kabul?

Digital Copyright 

DMCA Revision to Get New Push

In a sign that the library community's pleas on at least one issue are not falling on deaf ears, Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) has editorialized for rewriting the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Writing for the popular computer web site C-NET, he said that initial warnings by the library and university communities that the DMCA would threaten access to information are proving true...

New Digital Copyright Discussion List Surges

As digital copyright issues grow in prominence, librarians at the University of Maryland's Center for Intellectual Property and Copyright in the Digital Age (CIP) have established a new electronic discussion list. In three days, the list gained over 1500 subscribers...

Digital Publishing 

(Mostly) Good E-Publishing News by Calvin Reid

Despite the recent spate of high-profile e-publishing bankruptcies and failures, a number of e-book publishers and distributors contacted by PW were mostly optimistic and, with one exception, quick to report rising sales and even profits. E-book publishers Palm Digital Media, Gemstar eBooks and Fictionwise.com not only report growing customer bases, but told PW that they are scrambling to offer a wider variety of electronic reading material. [read more]

Harvard launches new digital publishing system

Harvard Business School Publishing (HBSP) has partnered with Dimension Data Holdings to develop a digital publishing system. Dimension Data is a technology company providing infrastructure and multi-channel solutions to global corporations...

HBSP believes that the new system will enable it to open an expanded channel for sales and distribution that provides new products to a broader customer base. It also foresees opportunities to bring additional value to its current customer base. [read more]

When was the last time you used one of these? 

The Virtual Typewriter Museum

The typewriter is one of the great inventions of 19th Century communications technology. Between the 1860s and 1920s engineers, inventors and even carpenters invested all their creativity in the development of the ultimate writing machine. This virtual museum, that is based on private collections from around the world, is a tribute to their ingenuity.

Digital cameras 

Digital Sensor Is Said to Match Quality of Film by John Markoff

If Carver Mead is right, photographic film is an endangered species.

Dr. Mead, who is 67, was a pioneer of the modern computer chip industry in the 1970's. But he has never stopped inventing. And on Monday his Silicon Valley start-up, Foveon, plans to begin shipping a new type of digital image sensor that outside experts agree is the first to match or surpass the photographic capabilities of 35-millimeter film.

The company's sensor chip is being used in a single-lens reflex camera that Sigma, a Japanese camera and lens maker, plans to begin selling for about $3,000 later this month. A second generation of Foveon's sensors is scheduled for shipping this fall and, if other camera makers embrace it, could become available early next year in more popular brands of digital cameras selling for less than $1,000. [read more]

Gary Frost on... 

Strategic Library Plan & Preservation

Library administration is charged to produce strategic plans. They produce one and then another to replace the last. The lists of "directions", "goals" and "initiatives" swirl. Many of the labels; "remote learning", "continuing education", "support technology" mean something else. At the end of the process, the new plan is as strategic as the old one.

One strategic shift that needs attention is that from collection management to instructional services. This shift is imposed by the diversification of reading modes. Libraries are the best positioned and most discipline neutral base for instruction in reading mode skills, particularly in the skillful integration of print and on-line reading. Library instruction can also explain taxonomies of source reading modes conveyed to other delivery reading modes.

Meanwhile, collection management, as a second strategic focus, has experienced its own shifts. A basic shift is from a focus on new title course work support to a concern for maintenance and elaboration of delivery services of resources already afforded and acquired. Development of collections is now involved with the negotiations over preferred reading mode and adjustment to available modes. This dynamic alone requires management attention. [read more]

Creative Commons 

All Hail Creative Commons: Stanford professor and author Lawrence Lessig plans a legal insurrection by Hal Plotkin

In an interview last week, Lessig confirmed the basic details about his latest venture, Creative Commons, which is slated to be formally unveiled in a few months.

In a boon to the arts and the software industry, Creative Commons will make available flexible, customizable intellectual-property licenses that artists, writers, programmers and others can obtain free of charge to legally define what constitutes acceptable uses of their work. The new forms of licenses will provide an alternative to traditional copyrights by establishing a useful middle ground between full copyright control and the unprotected public domain.

...Within a few months, artists, writers and others will soon be able to go online, select the options that suit them best and receive a custom-made license they can append to their works without having to pay a dime to a lawyer, let alone the thousands of dollars it typically costs to purchase similar legal services.

...In one masterstroke, Lessig and colleagues will empower creators of intellectual property by giving them more control over their work while also increasing the communal technical resources that contribute to innovation and growth. The result will be a new spark of life for the Internet, and for the tech sector in general. [read more]