Google Bad, Library Good?
Siva has this teaser of a post on Google and Google Print: Please remember that this company is unaccountable to… Read More »Google Bad, Library Good?
Google Print bibliography
A bibliography of selected electronic works about Google Print that are freely available on the Internet.
More on CCC and Blackboard
When the Copyright Clearance Center/Blackboard deal was announced recently, I posted a glib, cynical observation about what it means for fair use. Tarleton Gillespie has gone me one better, with a succinct explanation in Inside Higher Ed of why this is a bad deal for copyright.
First, it’s a bad deal because it reduces copyright to a brutal transactions costs essence. If a professor posts material on Blackboard, the CCC permissions process automatically kicks in. No more wasting valuable time wondering about “educational” or “teaching” or “critical” uses of copyrighted works. Just pay the man.
Second, it’s a bad deal because the technological combination hides that point. The posting and clearance process is supposed to be seamlessly integrated, not only making the transaction itself effortless but completely eliminating the thought process that goes into the fair use equation. Is it permitted or is it not? The machine will literally do the teacher’s thinking, and no one — not the institution, nor the teacher, nor the student — will be the wiser. Copyright history teaches that copyright is about more than transactions costs. Sometimes, copyright means never having to say you’re sorry. But you do need to have the choice.
More below the fold.
P2P Health Care
Last Friday, I was the designated “legal implications” speaker at a University of Pittsburgh conference on Technology and Aging. The conference kicked off with a keynote by Eric Dishman of Intel, who gave a rousing talk about the coming move from the “mainframe model” of health care delivery (for all your health care needs, go to the huge, expensive medical center) to the “personal computer” model of health care delivery (technology-supported, individually-controlled information monitoring and management). Eric took special care to distinguish technology development in this space from the (obviously less important) problem of the “blinking VCR.” And all of the presentations that followed were excellent demonstrations of the idea that personal empowerment is the endgame for independent living as we age.
I was on the last panel of the day. I began my remarks with the observation that while Eric Dishman was a great researcher, Eric Dishman’s framing was wrong. The rest of my remarks went something like this:
The Meaning of the Adelphi Charter
Under the sponsorship of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, known as RSA, a group of high-profile academicians and activists recently released something called the “Adelphi Charter on creativity, innovation and intellectual property.”
From the Charter’s homepage:
The Charter sets out new principles for copyrights and patents, and calls on governments to apply a new public interest test.
It promotes a new, fair, user-friendly and efficient way of handing out intellectual property rights in the 21st century.
The Charter has been written by an international group of artists, scientists, lawyers, politicians, economists, academics and business experts.
Full text, with comments, below the fold. Also below the fold: What does this mean, and why should anyone pay attention?