Category: Copyright Collectives

By Posted on Posted in Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Stationers No Comments

Locke and I: Part 1   “By this act England loses in general, scholars in particular are grounded, and nobody gets, but a lazy, ignorant Company of Stationers, to say no worse of them.” John Locke (1693) A few days ago my phone rang. John Locke was on the line. Yes, the John Locke. The philosopher. John and I call each other once in a while. We usually talk about our current work, we discuss some politics (he likes to talk about the Queen, I talk about the Middle East), and we almost always end up talking about copyright issues, culminating in him …

A Lazy, Ignorant Company of Stationers, To Say No Worse of Them Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, My Research, Stationers No Comments

Volume 27(3) of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal is now published. This issue is based on last year’s Orphan Works & Mass Digitization: Obstacles & Opportunities Symposium. It contains eight papers, by Register of Copyright Maria Pallante, Randal Picker, Stef van Gompel, Jennifer Urban, Lydia Pallas Loren, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, Matthew Sag, and myself. Here’s the symposium issue webpage. The title of my paper is The Orphans, the Market, and the Copyright Dogma: A Modest Solution for a Grand Problem, and it can be downloaded from here. Here’s the abstract:

By Posted on Posted in Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Stationers No Comments

“For centuries, scholars and educators have excerpted the works of their colleagues, transforming them from individual, static monographs into dynamic pedagogical and intellectual tools for classroom learning. Such transformations reside at the heart of fair use, a core copyright law doctrine established to protect socially beneficial uses of works that increase public access and promote the progress of human understanding.” This is the opening statement of an Amicus Brief on behalf of academic authors and legal scholars in support of the defendants in the copyright case against Georgia State University. I am proud to be one of the signatories and also proud …

Academic Authors and Legal Scholars’ Amicus Brief in the GSU Copyright Case Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers No Comments

Earlier the previous week the US Department of Justice announced that it reached a settlement with McMillan in the antitrust e-books case, following previous settlements with the other four book publishers (Hachette,  HarperCollins, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster)that it sued less than a year ago. According to the DOJ, the agreements between those publishers and Apple “provided a perfect opportunity to coordinate the Publisher Defendants’ collective action to raise e-book prices.” The DOJ took swift action to prevent anticompetitive practices at a crucial moment in the development of digital publishing to ensure the competitiveness of this rapidly emerging industry.

By Posted on Posted in Antitrust / Competition Law, Blog, Copyright, Copyright Collectives, Featured, Stationers No Comments

The Australian Copyright Advisory Group Schools (CAG Schools), an organization representing over 9000 schools and Australia’s 3.5 million schools students urges the repeal of the Education Statutory License and relying on a flexible fair use/fair dealing regime in its stead. This position is part of the CAG School’s submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission who is currently reviewing Australia’s copyright laws. In its submission, the CAG Schools highlights several shortcomings of current Australian copyright laws as applied to education. UPDATE (Dec. 10, 2012, at 5:33 pm): Universities Australia make similar points in their ALRC submission. The CAG Schools argues that the …

Australian Educators: Repeal the Education Statutory License, Expand Fair Dealing Read more »