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There are no other words than “stupid” or “insane” to the recent PR stunt of the US Authors Guild calling Amazon Kinlde’s text to speech technology “illegal” (see http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/02/10/authors-guild-claims.html). It’s most likely the Germans will follow suit.

This alleged “audio right” isn’t.

It’s like reading abook using glasses. But I’m sure you’d find a way to call “reading with glasses” a derivative under copyright law … maybe even plain reading?

Get a life … !

Google will pay $125 million in a settlement with the Authors GUild and AAP (the american publishers’ association), which still must be approved by a federal judge before it takes effect. $34.5 million will be used to set up an independent Book Rights Registry. Authors whose books have been scanned in Google’s book project might get tiny a share of the money “at least $60, depending on how many rightsholders file claims”, as the Authors’ Guild tells on their website.

The settlement will also establish a mechanism of Google selling books to users (individuals and libraries) and sharing the revenues with rights holders.

Paulo Coelho got quite some press exposure after his speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week — which he startet with a reference to the heretic Giordano Bruno. Quite purposefully, I think, as he goes along picturing himself as the “pirate Coelho” who is giving his books away for free, on the Internet and (good forbid) via peer-to-peer networks.

But Coelho went even further — he invited his readers to shoot films based on his novel The Witch of Portobello. The results of this competition can be found on his blog. Also, Coelho staged a virtual exhibition for readers sending him their photos of reading Coelho which he used as a backdrop for the Frankfurt Book Fair. There is the author connecting with his readership using the Internet.

So is he the new bad kid on the block or the (re-)inventor of the book in a world 2.0?

This is ‘The Author’s Rights Awareness Campaign’, and our message to the public is: ‘Texts don’t grow on trees. – It is all about authors’ rights. Respect the authors’ position. Get to know their economical situation – also and particularly in the digital era. Become their partners.’ Equally, our message to authors could be: ‘Texts don’t grow on trees. – It is all about your rights: Use your rights for bargaining. Make people your partners in text.’ Eventually it is your, the authors’ choice how you want to use your rights.

A new organisation, the Featured Artists’ Coalition was launched yesterday (Sunday 5 October 2008) at the music industry’s In The City in Manchester to campaign for the protection of performers’ and musicians’ rights. Formed by some of the best-known names in music — Billy Bragg, Craig David, Iron Maiden, Radiohead, Robbie Williams, Wet Wet Wet to name a few — the Coalition will give artists the voice they need to argue for greater control over their music.

The campaign is all about artists remaining in control of their creative works, rather than giving it away for (almost) nothing to producers, labels and other middle men.

Details on the website of the Featured Artists Coalition, www.featuredartistscoalition.com

According to the Beeb, or more accurately: according to Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, as cited on BBC, writing for the Royals is “a hiding to nothing.”

So do we have to rewrite all these business models based on the idea powerful platforms of performance? Do we have to revert back to the old fashioned royalties idea? Or is writing for the Royals not even more old fashioned, given the post of Poet Laureate has been introduced in 1668, the statute of Ann dating from 1710?

On the official Google blog it is announced today that Google is starting a similar digitization campaign with newspapers. As an example they show the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of July 21, 1969 … Is that now violating the poor news sub-eds author’s rights or an incredibly valuable source for young novelists?

The recent ‘forward-looking’ Intellectual Property Package of the EU has at its core the term extension of copyright. Earlier, the respective policy unit commissioned a study into this very question, which deals with the topic of term extension in detail and, on the basis of a thorough
legal and economic analysis, rejects the main arguments made in favour of an extension (1). However, the EU has chosen not to mention this study in the Explanatory Memorandum. Quite rightly, the copyright experts who carried out the study, remind the EU in an Open Letter, that ‘the Commission’s obscuration of the IViR studies and its failure to confront the critical arguments made therein seem to reveal an intention to mislead the Council and the Parliament, as well as the citizens of the European Union.’

(1) Study carried out by the Institute for Information Law for the European Commission (DG Internal Market). Chapters 1 and 2 describe and examine the existing ‘acquis communautaire’ in the field of copyright and related (neighbouring) rights, with special focus on inconsistencies and unclarities. Chapters 3-6 deal with distinct issues that were identified a priori by the European Commission as meriting special attention: possible extension of the term of protection of phonograms (Chapter 3), possible alignment of the term of protection of co-written musical works (Chapter 4), the problems connected to multiple copyright ownership, including the issue of ‘orphan works’ (Chapter 5), and copyright awareness among consumers (Chapter 6). Chapter 7 provides an overall assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of the fifteen years of harmonisation of copyright and related rights in the EU and dwells on regulatory alternatives: The Recasting of Copyright & Related Rights for the Knowledge Economy

How on earth could one possibly give content away for free and still earn money?

Frances Pinter is a publisher who worked in Africa making educational material available under alternative licenses. Together with David Percy, a professional film maker, he produced a documentary on the use of Creative Commons licenses to actually earn money.

The movie is available here to view online — for free of course and under a CC license:

How on earth could one possibly give content away for free and still earn money?

Frances Pinter is a publisher who worked in Africa making educational material available under alternative licenses. Together with David Percy, a professional film maker, he produced a documentary on the use of Creative Commons licenses to actually earn money.

The movie is available here to view online — for free of course and under a CC license:

Hidden away in the official Live Search blog Microsoft announced last week that they are going to shut down Live Book Search as of today. The reasons are simple: there is no money to be made for Microsoft by digitizing content. It is now up to the partners in the project — publishers and libraries — to continue the work.

The post attracts of course the usual Microsoft bashing comments. More importantly, many of the mostly academic users of Microsoft’s service are disappointed and will have to look elsewhere to get acces to the millions of journal articles that MS scanned and hosted.

This is the end to a project that was hailed by some as the good digitizing project, just because MS did choose an opt-in model rather than the opt-out model its competitor Google is using. From MS’s post its not clear what role this part of the project played in closing it down. However, MS is convinced that it should be the publishers and libraries who should make content available. Adding (and paying) an extra intermediary obviously adds no extra value.