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09. 6.2007

Asian IP News Roundup

On the changing strategies of Indian generics.

An oped on Thailand and TRIPS.

And Novartis in Thailand.

Continue reading Asian IP News Roundup . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:42 AM | Big Tent , Books , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation , Media: Video, Music... , Pharma

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07.30.2007

Fatal Conceits I

Hayek coined the term "fatal conceit" to refer to the errors of economic central planners, particularly socialists. The idea is that central planning suffers from a misplaced faith in rationally designed human institutions, as opposed to evolved, decentralized orders. (A similar point is made by leftist James C. Scott in his book, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed; and others have previously worked the same turf, though without the historic importance of Hayek's particular application, which of course considerable predates his last book).

After a while, one starts seeing fatal conceits everywhere. Occasionally, they even crop up in libertarian circles. One example: some libertarian critiques of intellectual property lean heavily on the importance of contract as a possible substitute for copyright. Where's the problem here? Considerable faith in the institution of

Continue reading Fatal Conceits I . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:33 AM | Books , Liberty and IP

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06.26.2007

Digital Textbooks?

Aliya Sternstein's techdaily article "Moving the Campus Bookstore Online," covers proposals for the future of a digital marketplace and licensing clearinghouse for textbooks and a recent federal report on making textbooks more affordable, California state models, and publisher reactions.

The driving factor behind the study is of course the rising cost of education, of which textbooks are a part (a rather small part, but never mind). No one seems in a hurry to put the puzzle together; the two sectors of the economy in which prices notoriously rise with little accountability to consumers are education and medicine--two areas heavily subsidized by the federal government. Whither price sensitivity?

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:16 AM | Books , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Universities

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06.20.2007

The New York Times--changing times for books

A Times story on changing times for publishers of books.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 10:27 AM | Books , Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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06. 6.2007

Post reports on AP's Plans for Copyright Tracking

The Washington Post reports on AP's plans to more closely track their copyrights.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 10:30 AM | Books , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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03.17.2007

Tech Support (circa 1000 A,D.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek

posted by James DeLong @ 6:50 AM | Books

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03. 6.2007

Working Together

You decide you want to copy a book so you ask the copyright holder first. Seems pretty basic, but not to some. I have previously praised the publishing industry for its resistance to having libraries' worth of books copied without their consent, and I have praised Microsoft for seeking permission first before copying any copyrighted works. Of course, Microsoft produces copyrighted works of its own, and its associate general counsel for copyright, Thomas Rubin, pointed out in a speech to the Association of American Publishers that Microsoft's chief rival in book search, Google, "has not a single registration in the Copyright Office’s database."

I don't want to get in between the heated competition of these two tech titans, both of whom are bringing us new innovations. Rubin's speech, however, did echo many of my concerns with Google's Book Search service.

Continue reading Working Together . . .

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:14 PM | Books

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02.26.2007

The Growing Threat

Do you love free and unauthorized digital content but find you really want books and they're not available on YouTube? You're in luck. A visit to www.eSnips.com and you'll find all sorts of books, as well as other copyrighted content. None of it has been posted by the copyright owner; this is posted by fans, like YouTube. Yes, it's odd that a fan of a novelist would want to deny that novelist the payment that would come if a downloader were instead to buy the book, but this is an odd world we live in.

I spent exactly one minute on the site, and after that I had a pristine copy of Bill Clinton's My Life on my hard drive. The file is about 7.5 MB, and is the full 883 pages. The image quality is spectacular; there's no sign of page distortion like you might find when a book is pressed against a scanner and the photos are crystal clear, including a cute one of Socks the Cat briefing the press on page 565. I can only see one page missing; the copyright page that warns against unauthorized reproduction. I of course did not pay for this and neither Bill Clinton nor his publisher Alfred A. Knopf received a dime.

Continue reading The Growing Threat . . .

posted by Patrick Ross @ 6:20 PM | Books

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01.23.2007

Publishers Fight to Survive in Digital World

I came to be a believer in copyright as a result of a lifetime spent around the publishing industry, an industry that couldn't exist without copryight. So I was pleased to see this item by Rachel Deahl in Publisher's Weekly (subscription required):

The Association of American Publishers' fight to preserve copyright in the digital era as well as how the organization can battle illiteracy were the dominant themes of AAP president Pat Schroeder's speech yesterday before the Publishers Advertising and Marketing Association's January lunch. Noting that she didn't take over the AAP "to watch the demise of publishing," Schroeder spoke candidly about the AAP's lawsuit against Google—it has sued the search engine for adding copyrighted books to its Google Library project without the permission of authors or publishers—and the importance of making sure content creators are included in profit models as publishing moves more and more to the Web. "It's a very serious time as we look at the digital environment we're in," she noted.

Continue reading Publishers Fight to Survive in Digital World . . .

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:47 PM | Books

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12. 6.2006

Kudos to Opt-Ins

Microsoft is releasing Live Search Books in beta form today, to compete with Google Book Search. The service involves more than just switching the words "book" and "search" in the title; it is a completely different approach to copyrights. Here's a short passage from Candace Lombardi's CNet story:

Microsoft has restricted its book scanning project to noncopyright books, with publishers having the option to opt-in, if they want in-copyright publications to be scanned for the project.
"We feel very strongly about copyright. All the library scanning we do is (noncopyright) stuff, and then we work with publishers to produce (copyright) stuff. We don't do any mass scanning of in-copyright works," said Tiedt.

The policy contrasts with that of Google, which has been scanning all the books from participating libraries, but only making public domain books available for full text views. That has not stopped several authors and publishers, both in the U.S. and abroad, from filing suit.

Microsoft's approach should help them avoid litigation, but it's also the right thing to do. We hear about the promotional benefits of having books copied for inclusion in searches, just like we heard about the promotional benefits of having songs distributed on P2P networks. To anyone making those arguments I say: You may be right, you may be wrong, but it is the right of each copyright holder to choose whether they wish to participate, to decide if the upside of any potential publishing counterbalances any perceived downside they see from forfeiting some control over their work.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:15 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Books , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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08.14.2006

James Joyce and Google

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 9:19 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Books , Free Culture Movement

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05.19.2006

Free Culture

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:23 PM | Academia , Books , Free Culture Movement

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05.18.2006

Publishing