PLoS Biology: When Is Open Access Not Open Access?

Since 2003, when PLoS Biology was launched, there has been a spectacular growth in “open-access” journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/), hosted by Lund University Libraries, lists 2,816 open-access journals as this article goes to press (and probably more by the time you read this). Authors also have various “open-access” options within existing subscription journals offered by traditional publishers (e.g., Blackwell, Springer, Oxford University Press, and many others). In return for a fee to the publisher, an author's individual article is made freely available and (sometimes) deposited in PubMed Central (PMC). But, as open access grows in prominence, so too has confusion about what open access means, particularly with regard to unrestricted use of content—which true open access allows. This confusion is being promulgated by journal publishers at the expense of authors and funding agencies wanting to support open access.

Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor Pushes the Envelope Further on the Latest Saul Williams Album Release

Following in the footsteps of Radiohead's overwhelming successful release of "In Rainbows" through direct web distribution, Trent Reznor and Saul Williams are taking a similar approach with the release of "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!" Estimates range from $5-12 million in download revenue that Radiohead has earned so far from their on site distribution efforts. Despite those numbers there is still some skepticism as to how successful lesser known artists will be using similar self distribution methods. The success or failure of "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!" will be a major indicator of how the future of music distribution will play out.

Five Free Feature Films

A lot of people have asked us if BloodSpell is the first Creative Commons feature film, or the first Machinima feature film, or even the first feature film released for free on the Internet. Whilst we like being first as much as the next guy, actually quite a lot of lunatics actually not only make entire feature films for no money, but then release the bloody things on the Internet for free - and we're proud to be amongst them.

If it has DRM, you don't own it (part II):
If You Purchased MLB Game Downloads Before 2006, Your Discs/Files Are Now Useless; MLB Has Stolen Your $$$ And Claims "No Refunds"

Background: Beginning in 2003, MLB offered fans the chance to download full games to their computer at $3.95 each. When you attempted to open the media file -- either on your hard drive or after it was burned to a CD -- it connected with a MLB.com webpage to obtain a license. Once the license had been verified, the game would play.

At some point during 2006, MLB deleted that essential webpage. Since then, none of the videos that fans purchased will play.

(Warning, angry language appears in the blog posts.)

From Ars Technica: Prince to fan sites: No pictures, no artwork, no album covers 4 U

Prince's lawyers have requested that three fan sites remove the offending artwork, images, and even their "own photographs of their Prince-inspired tattoos," according a to a joint statement from the site operators. Houseofquake.com, princefans.com, and prince.org have banded together to fight the cease-and-desist notices and have launched princefansunited.com to make their case to the world.

Ars Technica: Overly-broad copyright law has made USA a "nation of infringers"

How many copyright violations does an average user commit in a single day? John Tehranian, a law professor at the University of Utah, calculates in a new paper that he rings up $12.45 million in liability over the course of an average day. The gap between what the law allows and what social norms permit is so great now that "we are, technically speaking, a nation of infringers."

Peer-to-peer filesharing continues to be in the news

From numerous sources:

• TechCrunch: Attributor Launches Service to Track Copyright Infringement Across the Web


• Ars Technica: AT&T takes another step towards filtered network with investment in Vobile


• Ars Technica: Comcast hit with class-action lawsuit over traffic blocking


• last100: Vuze petitions FCC to restrict Internet traffic throttling by ISPs


• TorrentFreak: The War Against BitTorrent: Attack of the ISPs


• TorrentFreak: MediaDefender Emails Disprove MPAA Claims


• p2pnet.net: Jammie Thomas: her story in her own words


• p2pnet.net: The Gnu and the RIAA’s worst nightmare

From Ars Technica: Infringus maximus! Rowling gets injunction against Harry Potter Lexicon

J.K. Rowling is suing the publisher of the Harry Potter Lexicon, which began life as a popular Potter blog, and wants a court to rule that she has the sole right to profit from the "descriptions, character details, and plot points" of the Potter tales. Now, a federal judge has issued an injunction against RDR Books to prevent them from completing the typesetting, selling the books, or even marketing it on Amazon.com.

Congress is about to vote on a bill mandating open access to research funded by the National institutes of Health.

Gigi Sohn speaks at the Boston University College of Communication about Six Steps to Digital Copyright Sanity: Reforming a Pre-VCR Law for a YouTube World.

My premise is simple: copyright law has become out of touch with our technological reality to the detriment of creators and the public. Pre-VCR copyright policies must be transformed to embrace our new user generated culture. Today, I will give you my perspective on the current creative marketplace, and prescribe six policy changes to allow it to flourish.

Back in February, Jonathan Lethem wrote a terrific article for Harper's Magazine The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism From the article, speaking about researching a quotation from John Dunne:

My Internet search was initially no more successful than my library search. I had thought that summoning books from the vasty deep was a matter of a few keystrokes, but when I visited the website of the Yale library, I found that most of its books don't yet exist as computer text. As a last-ditch effort I searched the seemingly more obscure phrase “every chapter must be so translated.” The passage I wanted finally came to me, as it turns out, not as part of a scholarly library collection but simply because someone who loves Donne had posted it on his homepage. The lines I sought were from Meditation 17 in "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions", which happens to be the most famous thing Donne ever wrote, containing as it does the line “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” My search had led me from a movie to a book to a play to a website and back to a book. Then again, those words may be as famous as they are only because Hemingway lifted them for his book title.

I cannot recommend this article highly enough.

VIACOM wants an industry wide Internet filter for copyrighted material:

PC World: Viacom CEO Dismisses Google Antipiracy Plan

Viacom Inc.'s president and CEO took a swipe at Google Inc.'s announcement earlier this week of plans to launch a video-blocking tool aimed at allowing content owners to intercept copyrighted clips as they are uploaded to Google's video site YouTube.

Viacom's Philippe Dauman said at the Web 2.0 Summit here that instead of a proprietary system to block content that may infringe on copyright, there needs to be an industry standard for that type of effort.

The Home Video Prince Doesn't Want You to See

A bouncing YouTube baby has be-bopped his way right into the legal cross-hairs of the pop star Prince, sparking a lawsuit that could test the boundaries of U.S. copyright law.

Holden Lenz, 18 months old, is the pajama-clad star of a 29-second home movie shot by his mother in the family's rural Pennsylvania kitchen and posted last February on the popular video site YouTube.

A three minute news report goes into depth about the issue. (Click on the player icon in the article.)

Ironically, Prince is also on the other side of this issue: Guardian Unlimited: Music industry attacks Sunday newspaper's free Prince CD

The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers.

This promotional move has yielded great benefit for Prince in his new tour: LONDON GOES CRAZY FOR PRINCE

London really has gone crazy for Prince as demand for the pop superstar's 21 dates in the capital has set new records.

Tickets to the first seven Prince shows at the O2 Arena sold out in minutes, leading the promoters to immediately add an additional eight nights, breaking the record 14-night residency put on at one arena by Pink Floyd.

The ticket price for the concert includes Prince's latest album on CD.

New York Times: Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

The Open Content Alliance offers an alternative: Building a digital archive of global content for universal access

Announcing the Open Content Alliance

From time to time we've invited guest bloggers to write on the Yahoo! Search blog. Today we welcome Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. We asked Brewster if he'd like to introduce the Open Content Alliance.

Boston Library Consortium Partners with Open Content Alliance to Provide Public Access to Digitized Books

Boston, MA - The Boston Library Consortium, Inc. (BLC) announced today that it will partner with the Open Content Alliance to build a freely accessible library of digital materials from all 19 member institutions. The BLC is the first large-scale consortium to embark on such a self-funded digitization project with the Open Content Alliance. The BLC's digitization efforts will be based in a new scanning center, the Northeast Regional Scanning Center, unveiled today at the Boston Public Library.

The issue of Network Neutrality has suffered from confusing arguments in part due to incompatible definitions of what neutrality is. Some people point to the original philosophy of the Internet as being purely a mechanism for connecting end points (for example, your computer as one endpoint of a connection and Google as the other). Others see neutrality as freedom from regulation.

Those in this second camp are accused by the others of wanting to control what you the end-user can see on the Internet, by giving preferential treatment to sites which pay them extra fees for access to their audience (that's you, their customers). They argue that Google for example should have to pay extra to get access to you, even though Google is already paying for their own access to the net. And also possibly by preventing access entirely to those who don't pay (because perhaps they can't afford to). When accused they want an example where this has happened and perhaps until now it hasn't.

Nicole sends in a link to Consumer groups want Comcast fined for thwarting the Bible

A number of consumer groups are petitioning the FCC to fine Comcast $195,000 for every customer affected by their BitTorrent-throttling practices.

Comcast has been denying accusations that they are systematically interfering with BitTorrent connections until recently, when the Associated Press uncovered evidence to the contrary, which was confirmed independently by the EFF):

TorrentFreak: Comcast Throttles BitTorrent Traffic, Seeding Impossible

C|NET: Comcast denies monkeying with BitTorrent traffic

C|NET: Is Comcast's BitTorrent filtering violating the law?

Ars Technica: Evidence mounts that Comcast is targeting BitTorrent traffic

AP Tests Comcast's File-Sharing Filter

EFF: Comcast is also Jamming Gnutella (and Lotus Notes?)

The next meeting of Cambridge/Boston CopyNight will be at 7:30 PM on Tuesday, November 27, 2007.

We meet at the Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard Square (see "Meeting Place" for details).