August 2009 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Google Books e patrimonio librario italiano

by Enrico Bertacchini

Cari tutti, ecco quella che sembra una svolta epocale nella digitalizzazione del patrimonio librario Italiano. http://www.lastampa.it/redazione/cmsSezioni/cultura/200908articoli/46690gir… Dopo la BNF in Francia anche l'Italia cerca l'accordo con Google per digitalizzare il patrimonio librario delle biblioteche e archivi del Ministero dei Beni e Attività Culturali. La giustificazione è sempre la stessa: l'accordo è a costo 0 per l'Italia e Google è l'unico al momento a poter investire risorse e ad avere tecnologie che permettono in breve tempo di digitalizzare e rendere disponibili al pubblico le opere. Da quanto capisco, molte delle opere che verranno digitalizzate saranno opere in pubblico dominio tra cui molti documenti e testi rari. Se da un lato i benefici di questo accordo sono evidenti, bisognerebbe approfondire i possibili costi. L'accordo darà l'esclusività a Google sulla digitalizzazione delle opere e sulla loro diffusione? A presto Enrico

Aug. 26, 2009

Facebook Sued Over Privacy Flap in California

by Maurizio Borghi (Staff)

Ultime notizie dal fronte privacy: http://www.internetnews.com/webcontent/article.php/3835086

Aug. 19, 2009

Google Books adds Creative Commons license options

by J.C. DE MARTIN

Google Books adds Creative Commons license options Eric Steuer, August 13th, 2009 http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/16823 Some very exciting news for authors, publishers, and readers: Today, Google launched a program to enable rightsholders to make their Creative Commons-licensed books available for the public to download, use, remix, and share via Google Books. The new initiative makes it easy for participants in Google Books’ Partner Program to mark their books with one of the six Creative Commons licenses (or the CC0 waiver). This gives authors and publishers a simple way to articulate the permissions they have granted to the public through a CC license, while giving people a clear indication of the legal rights they have to CC-licensed works found through Google Books. The Inside Google Books post announcing the initiative talks a bit about what this all means: We’ve marked books that rightsholders have made available under a CC license with a matching logo on the book’s left hand navigation bar. People can download these books in their entirety and pass them along: to friends, classmates, teachers, and so on. And if the rightsholder has chosen to allow people to modify their work, readers can even create a mashup–say, translating the book into Esperanto, donning a black beret, and performing the whole thing to music on YouTube. The project launched with a terrific starter collection of CC-licensed books that includes: 55 Ways to Have Fun with Google by Philipp Lenssen; Blown to Bits by Harold Abelson, Ken Ledeen, Harry R. Lewis; Bound by Law? by Keith Aoki, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins; Code: Version 2 by Lawrence Lessig; Democratizing Innovation by Eric von Hippel; Federal Budget Deficits: America’s great consumption binge by Paul Courant; The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain; Little Brother by Cory Doctorow; and A World’s Fair for the Global Village by Carl Malamud. Stay tuned for further announcements – as the project expands to include more authors and publishers, Google Books plans to add the ability for people to restrict searches to books they can share, use, and remix.

Aug. 14, 2009

NY Times: "Is a Perfect Storm Forming For Distributed Social Networking?"

by J.C. DE MARTIN

http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/08/11/11readwriteweb-is-a… August 11, 2009 Is a Perfect Storm Forming For Distributed Social Networking? By MARSHALL KIRKPATRICK of ReadWriteWeb Maybe it's better to host your own. That's the thinking coming from a growing number of early technology adopters as service after service goes down, sells out or otherwise frustrates the users who have published their content online only to see the tools they use become broken or less desirable. The prospect of a distributed, interoperable, self-hosted network of publishing, reading and discussion tools is nothing new - but the idea is gaining a lot more support as more people react to recent news like FriendFeed's sale to Facebook, Tr.im's up and down and Twitter's denial of service attacks. The tide may not be turning, but there's sure to be some new waves of innovation that come out of this period of frustration. [...]

Aug. 12, 2009

UK Music research highlights the complexity of consuming, copying and sharing of music between 14-24 year-olds

by J.C. DE MARTIN

http://www.ukmusic.org/research?readmore=1 *UK Music research highlights the complexity of consuming, copying and sharing of music between 14-24 year-olds *UK Music is pleased to present the results of its annual academic survey investigating the music consumption behaviour and experience of young people aged 14-24. Carried out in spring 2009 by the University Of Hertfordshire, the online survey was completed by more than 1,800 young people throughout the UK. *Key findings:* . Music remains the most valued form of entertainment . 87% said that copying between devices is important to them . 86% of respondents have copied a CD for a friend; 75% have sent music by email, Bluetooth, Skype or MSN; 57% have copied a friend's entire music collection; 39% have downloaded music from an online storage site; and 38% have ripped a TV, radio or internet stream. . The computer is the main entertainment hub -- 68% of respondents use it every day to listen to music . Ownership of music is hugely important -- both online and offline . Popularity of P2P remains unchanged since 2008 -- 61% said they download music using P2P networks or torrent trackers. Of this group, 83% are doing so on a weekly or daily basis . There is real interest for new licensed services. 85% of P2P downloaders said they would be interested in paying for an unlimited all-you-can-eat MP3 download service . Young people have an inherent sense of what copyright is, but choose to ignore it -- the vast majority of respondents knew that sharing copyrighted content is not legal, yet continue to do so

Aug. 11, 2009

Articolo: Rebecca Tushnet: "Copy This Essay: How Fair Use Doctrine Harms Free Speech and How Copying Serves It"

by J.C. DE MARTIN

http://www.yalelawjournal.org/114/3/535_rebecca_tushnet.html Copy This Essay: How Fair Use Doctrine Harms Free Speech and How Copying Serves It [View as PDF] 114 Yale L.J. 535 (2004) Recent cases and scholarship have debated whether copyright law is consistent with the First Amendment. Much of the discussion has centered on copyright law's ability to suppress transformative, creative reuses of copyrighted works and on copyright's fair use doctrine as a mechanism to protect such transformative uses. This Essay argues that the increasing centrality of transformativeness to fair use has made it easier for copyright owners to control all instances of ordinary copying. Yet pure copying also serves valuable First Amendment purposes, both for audiences and, less obviously, for speakers, for whom copying often serves interests in self-expression, persuasion, and participation.

Aug. 10, 2009

Articolo: Fred von Lohmann: "Fair Use as Innovation Policy"

by J.C. DE MARTIN

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273385&rec=1&srcabs=114… *Fair Use as Innovation Policy * Fred Von Lohmann <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=508235> /affiliation not provided to SSRN/ /Berkley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2008 <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273385&rec=1&srcabs=114…>/ * Abstract: * American consumers increasingly take iPods, TiVos and similar private copying technologies for granted. Yet copyright law lacks a coherent account for this private, nontransformative copying. This article contends that copyright law's historical tolerance for such copying as a fair use has served as an important element of both copyright and innovation policy. This is because, to the extent it permits private copying, fair use creates incentives for technology companies to build innovative new products that enable such copying. Far from being an unfair "subsidy" from copyright owners to technology innovators, this aspect of fair use has yielded complementary technologies that enhance the value of copyrighted works. This fair use incentive to technology companies, moreover, is justified in light of a persistent market failure that would otherwise result in underproduction of certain kinds of socially-beneficial innovations. Finally, there are reasons to believe that technology innovators may not in many cases be able to appropriate to themselves the value of the fair uses that their technologies enable, because those uses will not be part of their marginal costs of production. To the extent that the value of these fair uses ends up being captured by the public, rather than technology innovators, this also furthers the purposes of copyright law. *Keywords:* copyright, fair use, innovation, private copying, market failure Accepted Paper Series Date posted: September 26, 2008 ; Last revised: September 26, 2008 Suggested Citation Von Lohmann, Fred,Fair Use as Innovation Policy(September, 24 2008). Berkley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2008. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1273385

Aug. 10, 2009

[Fwd: [IRP] IRP meets chilling effects]

by J.C. DE MARTIN

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [IRP] IRP meets chilling effects Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 21:00:36 +0200 From: Max Senges <maxsenges(a)gmail.com> To: irp <Irp(a)lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org> CC: Wendy Seltzer <wendy(a)seltzer.com> hi everybody I just spoke to Wendy Seltzer (one of the key people behind Chilling Effects). As mentioned before http://www.chillingeffects.org/ is a very commendable effort to develop a clearing house for online rights cases (just like we/IRP envisioned in our mission). So far the vast majority of cases in the database are from the US and they are mostly cease and desist cases that's why Wendy and her colleagues would be interested to team up with IRP in order to broaden its contributors base to include non-US cases. Are IRPlers (besides me) interested in contributing cases to the Chilling Effects clearning house? Wendy is also interested in people (mostly lawyers i guess) who would help to make the content (e.g. the FAQs more international / relevant to non-US -- http://www.chillingeffects.org/faq.cgi) Ok I put the point on the agenda for our next monthly meeting (for which i'll send the invite in a sec) Yours Max _______________________________________________ IRP mailing list IRP(a)lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org http://lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org/listinfo.cgi/irp-internetright…

Aug. 8, 2009

n. 2 assegni di ricerca sul tema: "Internet, anonimato , privacy e innovazione"

by J.C. DE MARTIN

Il Centro NEXA su Internet & Società del Politecnico di Torino (DAUIN) (http://nexa.polito.it) nell'ambito delle proprie attività di ricerca istituzionale, cerca ricercatori/ricercatrici motivati e brillanti interessati alla selezione per n. 2 assegni di ricerca (AR243/2009) di durata annuale sul tema: "Identificabilità delle persone sulla rete Internet: analisi tecnica, giuridica ed economica delle conseguenze sulla privacy, sulle libertà fondamentali, sull'innovazione e sui modelli di business". Il bando ufficiale è disponibile qui: http://www.swas.polito.it/services/concorsi/assric.asp?id_documento_padre=5… Scadenza per la presentazione delle domande: 30 settembre 2009 I requisiti nonche' le modalità esatte di presentazione delle domande sono descritti nel bando. Si prevede che la ricerca abbia inizio il 1 novembre 2009. English summary available here: http://nexa.polito.it/job-openings/anonymity-privacy-access Restando a disposizione per eventuali chiarimenti o integrazioni, porgo i piu' cordiali saluti, juan carlos de martin prof. juan carlos de martin co-director / nexa center for internet & society politecnico di torino http://nexa.polito.it tel: +39 011 564 7215 fax: +39 011 564 7216

Aug. 8, 2009

Slashdot: "Examining Software Liability In the Open Source Community"

by J.C. DE MARTIN

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/06/197253 Examining Software Liability In the Open Source Community Posted by timothy on Thursday August 06, @03:21PM from the three-letters-starting-f-u-d dept. snydeq writes "Guidelines from the American Law Institute that seek to hold vendors liable for 'knowingly' shipping buggy software could have dramatic impact on the open source community, as vague language around a 'free software' exemption could put open source developers at litigation risk. Meant to protect open source developers, the 'free software' exemption does not take into account the myriad ways in which vendors receive revenue from software products, according to a joint letter drafted by Microsoft and the Linux Foundation. As such, the guidelines — which, although not binding, are likely to prove influential on future lawsuits, according to attorneys on both sides of the issue — call into question the notion of liability in the open source community, where any number of coders may be responsible for any given defect." (See original URL, http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/06/197253, for links and related stories) jc

Aug. 7, 2009