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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Authors Take Libraries to Court in Face Off on Copyright Issues

Yesterday a blog I wrote was posted concerning the move by authors - led by the Author's Guild - to blog efforts by libraries to increase access to the world's literature by making digitized versions of works available for searching and/or access. The post is part of Information Today's NewsBreaks feature and available for free access.

Clearly current copyright law is ineffective, leaving anyone dealing with information uncertain of exactly what is owned, what isn't -- and even more so, is just owning some work make it inaccessible? Libraries are diligently working to create what Robert Darnton has called the Digital Public Library to serve all people and make information more readily available to all people. The copyright law, as it stands, clearly isn't giving people the guidance or clarity needed. Given the problems in getting anything done in Washington, a more likely resolution is through the courts - which obviously will leave libraries - and our users - in the lurch for the foreseeable future.

Take a look at the blog posting - and the various sources linked to it - and feel free to share your ideas or opinions here as well.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Books & Media Move to the Clouds; Apple, Amazon, and Walmart Fight for Market Share

Things are getting interesting with cloud-based information access and commerce. In the past month Amazon, Apple, Walmart, and others have announced plans to migrate information access or sales of media (ebooks, music, programming) to the cloud. Apple's policies have created opportunities and antagonisms in the industry as reflected by Amazon and Walmart's latest moves. I covered this for Information Today's NewsBreaks a few weeks ago - and more and more announcements are following. Just today in the New York Times, Netflix has just initiated a two-year project to "move most of its Web technology -- customer movie queues, search tools and the like" to an Amazon-powered infrastructure. With Steve Jobs leaving Apple it will be interesting to see the impact of all of these developments on the marketing giant. Your thoughts?