Copyright: More on Kahle v. Ashcroft. Andrea Foster, Scholar Sues for Free Online Access to Out-of-Print Books, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: "A prominent legal scholar has filed a federal lawsuit in an attempt to allow old books and films to be placed in Internet archives where anyone can use them freely. The scholar, Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor and cyberspace theorist, is challenging copyright law on behalf of two Internet archives that scholars use and are helping to develop....[The Internet Archive and the Prelinger Archives] ask the court to declare as unconstitutional, when considered collectively, the Copyright Act of 1976, the Berne Convention Implementation Act, and the Copyright Renewal Act. The plaintiffs also want the court to declare as unconstitutional, when considered together, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the Copyright Renewal Act....At issue in the lawsuit, filed last month, is the accessibility of so-called 'orphan' works: out-of-print books and old films, videos, and scholarly articles that have no apparent commercial value but are inaccessible to the public because of copyright restrictions....The plaintiffs argue that scholars and others are being denied widespread access to creative works over the Internet because of burdensome and outdated copyright laws." (PS: To follow new developments, see the Stanford Center for Internet and Society web page on the case.) [Open Access News]  1:25:04 PM   [Feedback ]  

Open Access : Open Source : Federal preemption, open source, and open access. Michael Warnecke, NASA Will Become First Agency to Get OSI Certification of Open Source Agreement, BNA Electronic Commerce & Law Report , March 31, 2004. In the U.S., software and research produced by government employees is not copyrightable. That's good news for the free exchange of software and research. But open-source licenses typically require copyright-holder consent, not the public domain. So how can goverment-produced software use those licenses? After some legal analysis, NASA has decided that while its software cannot be copyrighted, it can be licensed, and it will take advantage of this fact to release its software under open-source licenses. This strategy depends on some court rulings that state contract law, which governs licenses, is not preempted by federal statutes, which govern copyright. My take: it's good news that NASA software will be released as open-source, but bad news that other agencies might use less generous licenses to control downstream use of their uncopyrightable content. And despite its effects on open-source software, I still believe that federal preemption would be better than the lack of federal preemption for open-access research. [Open Access News]  1:03:08 PM   [Feedback ]