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A Defense of the Public Domain: A Scholarly Essay
,----[ Quote ]
| Much has been written for librarians about
| copyright law. Despite the importance of
| the public domain, it has attracted much
| less scholarly attention than has copyright
| law generally, and yet a healthy and robust
| public domain is crucial to our society. It
| provides the building blocks for authors,
| composers, artists and movie makers who can
| borrow from public domain works without
| seeking permission of copyright owners.
| Unfortunately, the public domain is under
| attack from expanding the term of
| copyright, to making it more difficult for
| works to enter the public domain in the
| United States. Some librarians have asked
| if vigorous application of fair use cannot
| substitute for the shrinking public domain.
| It cannot. Fair use is a defense to
| copyright infringement and is very fact
| determinate. A court's finding of fair use
| applies only to the two parties to the
| litigation while the public domain is
| available to everyone from individual users
| of works, to artists and authors and to
| publishers and producers. It is crucial
| that the public domain be energetically
| defended. Today, it is not clear whether an
| author can even place his or her work in
| the public domain since copyright attaches
| automatically. A statutory method must be
| developed for authors to place their works
| in the public domain.
`----
http://works.bepress.com/aallcallforpapers/5/
U.S. House Science committee considering OA -- in secret
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| The Association of American Universities
| yesterday posted a series of documents
| relating to a previously-unpublicized
| effort by the U.S. House Committee on
| Science and Technology.
`----
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/10/us-house-science-committee-considering.html
The Open Knowledge Foundation is seeking an Editor
for Open Text Book!
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/10/31/the-open-knowledge-foundation-is-seeking-an-editor-for-open-text-book/
COAR establishes a global knowledge infrastructure
,----[ Quote ]
| The international Confederation of Open
| Access Repositories (COAR) was launched in
| Ghent on 21 October, during Open Access
| Week 2009. The aim of the organisation is
| the networking of over 1000 global
| scientific repositories comprising peer
| reviewed publications under the principle
| of Open Access. This will be achieved by
| means of common data standards and the co-
| ordination of scientific research policy
| development. Coinciding with the sixth
| anniversary of the Berlin Declaration to
| provide free and unrestricted access to
| sciences and human knowledge representation
| worldwide, COAR takes responsibility for
| the execution of this vision in bringing
| together scientific repositories in a wider
| organisational infrastructure to link
| confederations across continents and around
| the globe in support of new models of
| scholarly communication.
`----
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5230.html
100 Incredible Open Courses for the Ultimate Tech Geek
,----[ Quote ]
| While colleges can be a great place to
| build up your knowledge of technologies of
| all kinds, real world experience and free
| learning resources on the web can do a
| pretty good job of showing you the ropes as
| well. Here are 100 free resources to help
| you hone your techie skills and learn more
| about the ever-changing world of
| technology.
`----
http://www.onlinecourses.org/2009/10/28/100-incredible-open-courses-for-the-ultimate-tech-geek/
Digitization and the (Vanishing) Arts of the Book
,----[ Quote ]
| Some of the most beautiful artistic
| treasures created during the millennium we
| refer to in the Western world as the Dark
| Ages are books â usually of a religious
| nature, they were transcribed by hand in
| sumptuously precise calligraphy,
| illuminated with wonderfully colorful and
| imaginative borders, and graced with
| elegant inset illustrations that were
| themselves jewels of inspiration,
| meticulously set down with pen, brush and
| burnisher in inks, tempera and gold leaf on
| laboriously stretched and scraped sheets of
| parchment. When complete, these beautiful
| pages were bound in volumes large and
| small, from enormous folios that were
| easily read in the pulpits of candlelit
| cathedrals, to breviaries that nestled
| comfortably in the pocket of a monk's
| cassock. Lovingly preserved through many
| centuries, they are as wonderful to observe
| today as they were when they were fresh
| from the standing desks of the monks who
| gave them birth.
`----
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20091101161632832
Knowledge as a public good
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/11-02-09.htm#publicgood
Recent:
Open Access Week - October 19-23, 2009
http://www.openaccessweek.org/
Opencourseware Comes Under Attack
,----[ Quote ]
| The article suggests that the kinds of online
| courses that will be created are already on
| offer: well, no, because those produced by
| "major textbook publishers, and hundreds of
| smaller providers" are neither "free of charge"
| nor "free" in the other, more interesting sense
| that you can take them, rework them, reshape
| them, and then share them. And why might that
| be a good idea? Well, most importantly, because
| it means that you don't have to "reinvent
| courses that have already been invented."
|
| [...]
|
| So, someone coming from an organisation that
| has no qualms defending the tobacco industry is
| unlikely to have much problem denouncing
| initiatives that spread learning,
| participation, collaboration, creativity,
| generosity and general joy in favour of all
| their antitheses. And the fact that such a
| mighty machine of FUD should stoop to attack
| little old opencourseware shows that we are
| clearly winning.
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/10/opencourseware-comes-under-attack.html
Interview with Boston Book Festival Participant Nicholas Negroponte
,----[ Quote ]
| The Boston Book Festival is coming up on
| Saturday. We already talked to an organizer;
| now it's time for a participant. Nicholas
| Negroponte is perhaps most famous for founding
| the MIT Media Lab and One Laptop Per Child, but
| he's also written his share of content. We
| talked to him about the role of technology and
| the future of books. He will be on the Digital
| Inclusion panel Saturday at 3pm.
`----
http://mobile.bostonist.com/2009/10/20/boston_book_festival_technology_nicholas_negroponte.php
Back to the Future: 2020 Roadmap Updated
,----[ Quote ]
| I think the sooner it becomes generally recognised
| that free software is a digital knowledge commons â
| one of many that are being created through open
| collaboration â the more people's attitudes to it
| will change, and the more impact it will have. It is
| no coincidence that one of the people awarded this
| year's Nobel Prize for Economics, was Elinor Ostrom,
| âfor her analysis of economic governance, especially
| the commonsâ. I look forward to reading next year's
| 2020 roadmap, in the hope that it might explore more
| deeply this important concept.
`----
http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2588&blogid=14
OpenStreetMapS.org now owned by OSMF
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| Thanks to some great work by Grant Slater and Andy
| Robinson all those people who mistake openstreetmap
| for openstreetmaps will now get directed to the
| right place.
`----
http://www.opengeodata.org/2009/10/16/openstreetmaps-org-now-owned-by-osmf/
EU Bookshop Digital Library goes live - All the EU publications in one place
,----[ Quote ]
| Scanning 12 million pages makes more than 110 000 EU
| publications available free of charge for download
| in the EU Bookshop Digital Library. It offers all
| publications ever edited by the Publications Office
| on behalf of the EU institutions, agencies and other
| bodies since 1952.
`----
http://publications.europa.eu/eu_bookshop/eub3/index_en.htm
Is open-access journal publishing a vanity publishing industry?
,----[ Quote ]
| Vanity journal domination is not occurring, nor is
| it likely to occur, among OA journals. Vanity
| journal existence will and does happen among both OA
| and subscription-fee journals, but at least for OA
| journals is a benign phenomenon. As subscription-
| fee journals more and more charge author-side fees,
| including hybrid open-access fees, one can only hope
| that the baseless vanity press recrimination against
| open-access journals will fade away.
`----
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2009/10/16/is-open-access-publishing-a-vanity-publishing-industry/
The Commons Meme Becomes More Common
,----[ Quote ]
| One of the great knock-on benefits of Elinor Ostrom
| sharing the Nobel prize for Economics is that the
| concept of the commons is getting the best airing
| than it's ever had.
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/10/commons-meme-becomes-more-common.html
Harvard to digitize Chinese rare book collection
,----[ Quote ]
| One of the most extensive collections of rare
| Chinese books outside of China will be digitized
| and made freely available to scholars worldwide
| as part of a six-year cooperative project
| between Harvard College Library (HCL) and the
| National Library of China (NLC). ...
`----
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/10/harvard-to-digitize-chinese-rare-book.html
ABC chief champions 'free' online content
,----[ Quote ]
| ABC managing director and tweeting Web 2.0
| aficionado Mark Scott will maintain the public
| broadcasters' policy of free online content, and
| says traditional publishers like Rupert
| Murdochâs News Limited and Fairfax plan to
| charge fees for content is unrealistic.
`----
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/28518/53/
OpenFlights data released under Open Database License (ODbL)
,----[ Quote ]
| OpenFlights is a site for âflight logging,
| mapping, stats and sharingâ.
`----
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/10/14/openflights-data-released-under-open-database-license-odbl/
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