The Distant Librarian

ACTA - Quite possibly the biggest threat to your internet to date.

There's been a lot of traffic about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in the last week or so, but not nearly enough.  In a nutshell, instead of proposing legislation through transparent and traditional channels (Congress, Parliament, etc), member countries seem to be pushing to enact legislation via an international treaty which has so far been withheld from the public.  If the treaty is signed, wham-bam, thank-you ma'am, we've got a new law.  And know what?  It's not really about anti-counterfeiting as much as it is about copyright reform. 

Want some more background?  Take your pick on where to start reading. 

Want a number to make you sit up and take notice?  According to a statistic being passed around on twitter, the population of countries negotiating ACTA is 1,178,504,491 ... public with access to text: 42.

Want to listen instead of read? Michael Geist spoke for 20 minutes at the Washington College of Law:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a form you Americans can use to contact your CongressCritter about this issue.

One of the leaks around ACTA suggests that there's a provision which will require ISPs around the globe to monitor and adhere to takedown notices upon mere accusation of copyright infringement, as well as a three-strikes and you're off the internet forever.  You read that right.  The RIAA or whomever simply accuses you three times, and you're banned from the internet for life.  Sounds like a joke, doesn't it?  Apparently it's not.

Happy Friday the 13th :-(

Copyright Watch: Keeping a Global Eye on Copyright Law

New site launched by the Electronic Frontier Foundation today: Copyright Watch.

"Working with academics, libraries and copyright monitors from across the world, Copyright Watch brings together the most recent copies of laws from as many countries as we could find. And with that global team, we'll be tracking new proposals, consultations, and freshly passed regulations: finding the promising changes, and highlighting the spectacularly bad ideas hopefully before they can take hold."

Politician suggests Public Library should drop p-books in favour of e-books to save money

From TeleRead comes the story of a politician with an interesting idea, but who hasn't explored the economics of ebook publishing.  E-books for libraries pushed by economy-minded Los Angeles councilman.

Putting your money where your mouth is

Last week I wrote about indie publishing innovator MCM's challenge to TV viewers in the US to watch the US premiere of his cartoon, Rollbots.  Well the results are in, and it looks like he'll be donating nearly $10,000 to the EFF!!! In addition, and perhaps even more significant, he'll be relinquishing all copyright claims on his next book, Typhoon, by releasing it under a Creative Commons 0 license, which I hadn't heard of until this challenge.

CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright-protected content to waive copyright interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright.

In contrast to CC's licenses that allow copyright holders to choose from a range of permissions while retaining their copyright, CC0 empowers yet another choice altogether – the choice to opt out of copyright and the exclusive rights it automatically grants to creators – the "no rights reserved" alternative to our licenses.

This is from a small-time guy who makes almost all his income from his writing projects.  If that's not putting your money where your mouth is, I don't know what is.  I know I'll be buying Typhoon (The Vector was excellent!)

Tune In September 2: The Google Book Scanning Project--Issues and Updates

Educause Live presents:
Topic: The Google Book Scanning Project—Issues and Updates
Date: September 2, 2009
Time: 1:00 p.m. EDT (12:00 p.m. CDT, 11:00 a.m. MDT, 10:00 a.m. PDT). International participants: You may wish to visit this external time-conversion website to calculate the start time in your time zone.
Duration: 1 hour

For about five years, Google has been scanning and indexing millions of volumes drawn from academic libraries and other sources worldwide. The project has been greeted with high praise but also with lawsuits. In the latter category, a judge will shortly decide whether to approve a settlement reached last year by Google and several organizations representing authors and publishers. The issues swirling around the settlement include the treatment of absent rightsholders, user privacy, and competition. This session will offer a status report on the project and explore both sides of these questions.

The event is free, but registration is required and virtual seating is limited. REGISTER NOW.

Participants:
Jonathan Band, Counsel, Library Copyright Alliance
Dan Clancy, Engineering Director, Google Book Search

Post-holiday link dump

Some miscellaneous links you may find of interest:

• Co-Browsing Tools: Guide To The Best Online Services
• Five Best Video-Sharing Sites
• Newswire Opinion: Libraries Clash with Harvard Business Publishing on Deep-Linking
• The undiscussed danger to libraries in the Google Books Settlement: A warning from library law expert Peter Hirtle
• Sony to link Readers with libraries, allow e-book borrowing
• Facebook Privacy Update: Here’s What’s Changing

Privacy Commissioner Finds Facebook Violating Canadian Privacy Law

The headline says it all.  Michael Geist has a good summary of the issue.  For the most part the big issue seems to be how FB shares data with third-party applications, and with the way things work during an account deactivation.

Facebook has 30 days to address the outstanding issues.  If they continue to decline to do so, the Commissioner can go to Federal Court for enforcement.  The finding is one of the longest and most detailed in memory as it chronicles not only the complaint and findings but the negotiations with Facebook in addressing the concerns.  In doing so, it represents the most exhaustive official investigation of Facebook privacy practices anywhere in the world.

As mentioned in the comments, it's not entirely clear what Canada can DO to FB if they don't comply...

My favourite quote though comes from a writeup that appeared in my paper this AM: "Trying to take something off the Internet is like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool".  Love it.

No place for state in our hard drives?

U of Calgary affiliate Kris Kotarski has a thought-provoking op-ed in the Calgary Herald about the Copyright/DRM debate that's about to be reborn here in Canada. 

"Simply put, if society settles on laws enforcing copyright provisions such as a ban on breaking DRM locks on CDs and DVDs, or taking down SIM locks on cellular phones (both part of last year's Bill C-61), there will be no way to credibly enforce them without an intrusive government monitoring scheme."

Yet another followup post on Harvard and EBSCO linking

Peter Murray at Distruptive Library Technology Jester (aka DLTJ) has done a bunch of reading and thinking about the recently-hot issue of Harvard Business School Publishing charging extra to allow the use of persistent URLs in course reserves and content management systems. in his post, EBSCO in Cahoots With Harvard Business Press, he goes in to detail about how Harvard is likely determining whether links are coming from course reserves or a CMS, and looks at EBSCO's terms of use and privacy policy.   He concludes with he following unanswered questions:

And what is EBSCO's role in this? Isn't a library's contract with EBSCO, not Harvard Business Publishing? Is EBSCO earning more revenue from this HBP license requirement to enable deep linking to article content? If so, isn't that just an incentive for EBSCO to do the same with other high-profile publishers?

To me it sounds as though we can complain all we like, but both EBSCO and Harvard are legally covered.  I guess one more question is how much bad publicity do they want to receive over this policy?

I encourage you to read Peter's entire post.

A little more info on the Harvard linking BS

Following up on yesterday's post about Harvard Business School Publishing not allowing PURLs within EBSCO, I received an email from a librarian at a small school who pointed out that the following appears at the bottom of each HBS publication within Business Source Premier/Complete:

"Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009 Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses. Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. Business licensees may not host this content on learning management systems or use persistent linking or other means to incorporate the content into learning management systems. Harvard Business Publishing will be pleased to grant permission to make this content available through such means. For rates and permission, contact permissions@harvardbusiness.org."

He also mentioned that HBSP had leaned on his school and when they decided not to pay, EBSCO turned off the ability for them to create PURLs for that publisher.

So how does Harvard BSP know whether a given link is being used for "private individual use" or for within electronic reserves, electronic course packs, a syllabi, or within a learning management system?  I guess if the link is openly available on a website they might come across it, but there should be no way they'd even be aware that a link was being used from within a learning management system, right? 

I'll let you know when they contact us; has your school lost the ability to create persistent links to HBSP publications? 

Harvard Business School Publishing not allowing UK libraries to build PURLs in EBSCO - are we next?

Just read a couple of deeply troubling posts at Libreaction and the library staff blog at the University of Lincoln in which librarians are crying foul over what appear to be mafia tactics by Harvard Business School Publishing.  According to the Libreaction post:

For a few years now HBSP have been requesting payments of as much as £15k pa from several UK academic business libraries simply for the privilege of making persistent links to HBR articles on reading lists and VLEs.

The links in question are being made to EBSCO's Business Source products (which provide HBR in full-text), however, it is Harvard rather than EBSCO who have approached librarians directly for additional payment.  Thus far these demands for extra monies, which are being requested on top of the EBSCO subscription, are, as mentioned above, merely part of a 'pilot scheme', however, HBSP plan to roll it out to all EBSCO subscribers in due course.

Thus far, all UK librarians who have been offered the 'opportunity' to pay this additional sum have unsurprisingly turned it down, and as a result have recently had the ability to make persistent links to HBR turned off by EBSCO.

I have the vaguest of recollections of hearing something about this a year or more ago, but it's so vague as to have possibly been a bad dream.  But seriously, what's going on here?!?  I just checked, and I can still create persistent URLs to Harvard Business Review within Business Search Complete. 

Here's a scary PDF flyer in which Harvard Business School Publishing

...is excited to offer the opportunity to upgrade your existing annual subscription to EBSCOhost to a new level that allows for use of HBR articles for course use... If you choose not to upgrade your current EBSCOhost at this time, please reiterate to your faculty and students that your license with EBSCOhost allows them to access HBSP content only for research purposes. If you choose not to upgrade, please be advised that EBSCO may disable the ability to persistent link to HBSP content at your institution.

Give me a break!  This is ridiculous!  According to both blog posts this is coming from Harvard, not EBSCO. 

What do you think about this?  Surely we're not going to let our UK colleagues get rolled, only to find that we're next!

Many libraries are lending Kindles

While we wait to see if BYU will reinstate their Kindle lending program, take a look at the list of libraries that are still lending them put together by iReaderreview.  I's not just a list; there's a fair bit of supporting content in the post.

Kindle, Libraries

Download Your YouTube Videos Legally

Amit at Digital Inspiration points out that you can now download your YouTube videos legally.  But the emphasis is on YOUR videos.  The best tool I know for being able to download all YouTube videos, and in the format of your choice, is KickYouTube.

BYU suspends Kindle program over legal concerns

Sometimes it's a problem pushing the envelope - seems that the BYU Library initiative to use Kindles instead of getting books via ILL has been suspended after "some buzz on library-related blogs for breaking ground in the uncertain area of lending books on the Kindle." 

"We are playing it safe," Layton said. "Two people here said we have verbal permission. But if we don't have it in writing, that's a different thing. We don't want to do anything that Amazon doesn't completely agree with."

Everyone in the comments seems to be in favour of the initiative.  Hope this forces Amazon to acquiesce!

Brigham Young Library Tests Kindle as ILL Alternative

Gerrit van Dyk, Document Delivery Services Manager at Brigham Young University, blogs about their new initiative to loan Kindles to faculty members instead of trying to obtain new material via ILL.  You can also read a brief article about this at Library Journal.

Kindle, ILL, BYU