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In the public domain 

Lessig on the Future of the Public Domain interview by Richard Koman

Shall we have a public domain, or not? Will creative works remain forever in the possession of their creators (or the companies who pay the creators), or will cultural icons and works that have captured the public imagination eventually be allowed to be commented on, referred to, and satirized? Would such a policy represent lethal blows to a company's brand identity (think Mickey Mouse)? We may know the answer soon, as the Supreme Court has agreed to consider the case of Eric Eldred.

Eldred, a publisher of public domain works in HTML form, sued the federal government over Congress' passing of a law that extended existing copyrights for another 20 years (the 11th time in the past 40 years this has happened). The Constitution plainly allows Congress to grant authors an exclusive right "for limited times." If Congress is allowed to continually extend the time period, Eldred argued, the Framers' intent of "limited" protection is slowly being transformed to "unlimited." [read more]

More on Lawrence Lessig here.

Where do you buy your books? 

Fighting the Big Book Chains by Dennis Loy Johnson

To most people, it must seem like a no-brainer: Which is better, an independent bookstore or a chain bookstore? Whichever one has the book you want at the lowest price, natch. And let's face facts -- lately, the winner of that contest has been the chains.

However a surprising recent survey says that regardless of price, people actually feel they're more apt to be satisfied shopping at an independent. Meanwhile, the rabble-rousing plaintiff in an incendiary court case claims the chains' low prices are illusionary, achieved by illegal strong-arm tactics, and may actually be insuring higher prices down the line. [read more]

Preservation initiative 

An Open Letter to the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners and Hennepin County Library Board

March 28, 2002

We, the undersigned library workers and users, wish to express our anger, sorrow and dismay at the recent announcement that HCL intends to demolish its present bibliographic database and authority file. It plans on ultimately replacing them with completely "standard" OCLC catalog records and Library of Congress name and subject forms. The database and authority list, painstakingly and creatively constructed over nearly three decades under the leadership of former Technical Services Director Mitch Freedman and head Cataloger Sanford Berman, are national treasures. Rather than destroy them, HCL should be promoting them as OCLC promised to do in spring 1999. The reasons for undoing this globally applauded work seem specious, narrow-minded, and unconvincing.

If the decision cannot be overturned and the HCL catalog restored to its previous status of preeminence within librarianship, at least the two files should be preserved "as is" for current and future use by the library community. We expect details on how and when this will be done.

Steve Fesenmaier

Preservation Challenge 

The Wayback Machine: The Web's Archive

Now that the Internet is established in the public information space, it has become a new publishing medium. The Web in particular has proved an incredible repository of all kinds of information content. But it has also proven to be a very changeable medium, noticeably lacking in permanence. Particularly during the past couple of years, as the number of new dot com failures has risen, previously existing Web sites have ceased operations and their information content has vanished into the Web's past.

With print publications, the libraries and archives of the world have made a major effort to collect and preserve print items. But the advent of the Web was so sudden and created an entirely new set of problems for cataloging, storage, and retrieval, that few libraries actively collected copies of Web pages. While the library profession worked diligently on finding solutions to the access side of the problems, Web pages were created, changed, and died, with no record of those pages being retained.

Fortunately, Brewster Kahle's Alexa Internet and its sister company, the Internet Archive, have done a huge amount of the collection work. Starting in 1996, the Internet Archive has been storing Web pages, including graphics files, from publicly accessible Web sites that Alexa has crawled. With the October 2001 launch of the Wayback Machine, this huge archive is now freely available to the Web public. [read more]

Bestsellers 

Bestseller Lists 1900-1995

The gag reflex 

Most Far-Reaching Gag Order In 1st Amend. History? by Nat Hentoff

John Ashcroft's war on terrorism includes the most far-reaching gag order in First Amendment history -- preventing the press from reporting on the FBI's seizure of the lists of books bought or borrowed in bookstores and libraries by noncitizens and citizens suspected of terrorist activities. Under the omnibus USA Patriot Act, the FBI has the authority to get an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- a secret body composed of rotating federal judges -- to seek "any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the American Library Association (ALA) have particularly alerted their members to part of the law that prevents booksellers and librarians -- once the FBI has come calling -- to reveal that a search has been made. The law states: "No person shall disclose to any other person ... that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained" these records.

This means that the press and, therefore, the public cannot find out how often and where these searches have taken pace -- and what books, as well as readers, are under suspicion. Customarily, when a court imposes a gag rule on pretrial or trial participants, including the press, it is fought in open court by the press and often overturned.

Now, however, this chilling incursion on the First Amendment right to read remains as hidden as some of the security operations of the People's Republic of China. [read more]

Future Bibliography 

Libraries of the Future Bibliography by Carol R. Gurstelle

"Are we there yet?" Like restless children in the back seat of the car, librarians and information professionals keep searching for the "library of the future." There's no agreement what such an institution is. Is it an actual place or a virtual site? Is it just the latest technology? What's the human component? Each new building brings a newspaper headline announcing that the library of the future is now part of the community. A quick search for the phrase on popular search engines yields tens of thousands of hits, but the irony is that those headlines, books and articles become part of the past the instant they are printed.

These are the challenges in compiling a list of resources to help in learning about and planning for the library of the future. It's not that existing materials have no value. We need the foundations and the history, but we also need to create a dynamic resource that changes as new ideas and new technologies emerge. For that reason, we have included the Web sites of core publications and professional organizations, allowing you to connect to their most current information. We encourage you to add your contributions and make this resource as dynamic and evolutionary as institutions we seek to create. [read more]

Copy Protection 

Another Punch for Copy Protection

A political brawl over mandatory copy protection is about to spread to the U.S. House of Representatives.

A Democratic legislator from the home of the Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios is drafting a bill to reduce online piracy by implanting strict copy controls in digital devices.

On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, California, circulated a letter on Capitol Hill seeking co-sponsors for his legislation, which he said would follow the same approach as the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) in the Senate.

"I plan to introduce legislation that would safeguard digital content by spurring the rapid development of copyright protection technology," Schiff's "Dear Colleague" letter said. "Similar legislation, S. 2048, has been introduced in the Senate.” I believe this is a necessary step and I encourage you to join me in this effort.

By introducing this measure in the House, Schiff hopes to accelerate the passage of digital rights management legislation: The House can move forward on it without waiting for the Senate to act first. [read more]

CIPA opinion 

Why the Feds CAN'T protect kids from Internet porn by David Coursey

The ongoing battle over the Children's Internet Protection Act isn't about right vs. wrong as much as it's about deciding which side is more right. It's one of those cases that makes you glad you're not a judge.

Signed into law two years ago, CIPA requires schools and libraries that receive federal funding to install technology (usually software) that would prevent children from accessing objectionable content--porn, bomb recipes, hate speech, and the like. Libraries that choose not to implement such filters would lose their federal dollars. [read more]

Online bookstore browser reading mode 

amazon.com has a introduced new feature called "look inside". It allows a potential buyer to view scanned pages of the book including:

• dust jacket covers and flaps;
• introductory pages of the book;
• the table of contents;
• multi-page excerpt from the book.

Roger Ebert say thumbs down 

Don't Confuse Fans With Pirates by Roger Ebert

This year, Universal's music division plans to use a new copy-protection scheme that excludes its discs from being played at all on "Macs, DVD players, and CD-compatible video game consoles." This according to Peter Cohen of MacCentral, who also reports that the plan will block discs from being copied to other CDs or being saved to the hard drives of most PCs in the MP3 format. The first disc to get this treatment is More Fast and Furious: Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture, a title that will live in infamy.

That the CD itself has been ripped off from other CDs (it is a compilation of tracks having little connection to the movie or one another) is a delightful irony. That Universal has copy-protected it, and blocked out Macs and DVD players altogether, has to be the worst marketing decision in consumer electronics since the original DivX format (which was Circuit City's widely hated, intrusive pay-per-view system). It confuses fans with pirates. My guess is that no musician or band still actively engaged in trying to build an audience will want to come anywhere near it. [read more]

It may not seem important or relevant--but it is 

Bleak future looms if you don't take a stand by Dan Gillmor

This is a quiz about your future. It's about how you view some basic elements of the emerging Digital Age.

1. Do you care if a few giant companies control virtually all entertainment and information?

2. Do you care if they decide what kinds of technological innovations will reach the marketplace?

3. Would you be concerned if they used their power to compile detailed dossiers on everything you read, listen to, view and buy?

4. Would you find it acceptable if they could decide whether what you write and say could be seen and heard by others?

Those are no longer theoretical questions. They are the direction in which America is hurtling.

Media conglomerates are in a merger frenzy. Telecommunications monopolies are creating a cozy cartel, dividing up access to the online world. The entertainment industry is pushing for Draconian controls on the use and dissemination of digital information.

If you're not infuriated by these related trends, you should at least be worried. If you're neither, stop reading this column. You're a sheep, content to be herded wherever these giants wish. [read more]

A cure, worse than the disease 

Guard Copyrights, Don't Jail Innovation by Alex Salkever

U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) has earned a reputation over the years as a fearless contrarian, speaking the truth as he sees it. So it was a bit of a surprise to hear his folksy doublespeak on Mar. 21, when the senator solemnly introduced the Consumer Broadband & Digital Television Promotion Act.

The legislation would mandate that copyright-protection mechanisms be embedded in PCs, handheld computers, CD players, and anything else that can play, record, or otherwise manipulate digital information. The law's stated goal is to stop rampant digital piracy. ...

... In this case, however, the proposed cure is far worse than the disease. Introducing copyright-protection mechanisms into almost all digital hardware clearly flouts the interests of consumers. And it's more evidence that, when it comes to delivering content in the 21st century, the entertainment industry is hell-bent on stifling technology, rather than using it in ways that eventually could become highly profitable. Hollings' proposal hands control over the innovative forces that drive tech development to some of the most change-resistant companies in the world. [read more]