In case SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, hasn’t given you enough heartburn, here’s another development on the legislative horizon to be concerned about–H.R. 3699, the Research Works Act. The Association of American Publishers has provided a summary of what they hope the bill will accomplish, which is a frightening read for those of us committed to the principles of Open Access. It appears that H.R. 3699 would seriously threaten public access to federally funded…
Posts By: Meredith Kahn
You saw Maurizio Cattelan: All at the Guggenheim. You loved it. Did you know you can get the exhibition catalogue as an e-book? And there’s an app, too! The Guggenheim recently announced the e-book version of the Cattelan catalogue, as well as an effort to make out-of-print catalogues available online. Exciting news for e-book reading art lovers! The Cattelan catalogue is available for iPad, Kindle, and Kobo at the moment, with releases for other platforms forthcoming….
Today the House Judiciary Committee is debating SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act (also known as H.R. 3261). The bill would allow rights holders and the US Department of Justice to take legal action against websites alleged to be facilitating copyright infringement. Here are a two recent opinion pieces on SOPA and its potential effect on content producers and consumers: Marvin Ammori, “Should Copyright Be Allowed to Override Speech Rights?,” The Atlantic …Congress is considering…
Tomorrow we’ll be kicking off HASTAC V, sponsored by the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory. The first event associated with the conference is a public lecture by artist Paul Kaiser, a pioneer in the use of 3D rendering, motion capture, and artificial intelligence in digital art. Friday and Saturday are packed with engaging speakers, tours, and demos. For the complete program, see here. Registration is still available on site, and attendance at sessions (does…
In celebration of Open Access Week, let’s take a moment to review how MPublishing is contributing to the Open Access movement at the University of Michigan and beyond. What is Open Access? Open Access (OA) is a way of publishing scholarly literature online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (see Peter Suber’s more detailed overview here). Its success obviously depends on the consent of authors and copyright-holders. But more broadly than…
Molly Van Houweling, U.C. Berkeley Professor of Law and former President of Creative Commons, will be speaking on Thursday, October 27 at 10:00AM in the Library Gallery, Room 100 Hatcher Graduate Library. Please join us for an engaging overview of the emerging landscape of “user-generated” copyright, as well as the role of institutions in striking a balance between authorial autonomy and creative re-use. For more information, see MLibrary Events. This event is in celebration of the…
In the Library with the Lead Pipe, a blog with consistently well written coverage of issues important to libraries and librarians, offers a thoughtful summary of the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust debacle in a recent post: As with any large membership organization, the Authors Guild operates under the guidance of a board, executive director, and legal counsel. Certainly within our own profession, our organizations have taken action or made statements with which we, as individuals,…
The University of Michigan’s fine and performing arts blog, Montage, features an overview of our collaborative translation project The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert in a recent post: “MPublishing’s Platform Creates Universal Language”. Over 250 years after Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert set out to create a compendium of all knowledge: …enabled by 21st century technology, a crowdsourced effort is underway to make English translations of Encyclopedia articles freely available to readers everywhere. The project was…