A quick history of the changing lengths of copyright protection
Since its codification in Britain in 1710, the length of copyright protection has continued to be extended, from an initial 14 years to today’s 70 – 120 or more years.
Copyright and the public domain
Randy Picker has a fascinating post on the Faculty Blog of the University of Chicago’s law school of the copyright status of scans (by Google, for example) of public domain works. Does the effort of digitizing the work qualify as enough original effort to create a new copyright?
The Statute of Anne: "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning"
300 years ago Saturday, the Statute of Anne created the first modern system of copyright.
You do not get an “A for effort” with copyright
In reaction to claims that copyright exists to protect creators because of the effort they’ve put into their work, Techdirt points us to a Supreme Court case that clearly says otherwise. History and precedent back it up.
Google and the historian
Dan Cohen gave an interesting talk at the American Historical Association meeting recently, where he discussed the benefits Google brings to historical research, as well as some pointed criticisms.
Google Books adds open-standard downloads
For anyone using any kind of electronic reader — including a regular computer — this addition to Google Books may well prove quite useful: EPUB as a download format.
What modern copyright law means to our culture
What does it mean to our culture that we have imposed the most draconian restrictions on the reuse of intellectual creations than at any other time?
What does it mean to be in the public domain? Thoughts about the AP licensing scheme.
The AP has begin trying to license content through a payment scheme. Some of the content — as recently demonstrated by James Grimmelmann “purchasing” a Thomas Jefferson quote — is in the public domain. Does the AP have the right to sell/license this public-domain content? What does it mean to be in the public domain?
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