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 | Congress Introduces Bill To Stiffen Copyright Penalties, Widen Enforcement
Backed by the strong support of the entertainment industry, the legislators introduced a bill that would stiffen penalties for copyright infringement and establish a federal appointee to address intellectual property issues. The bipartisan bill, dubbed the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PROIPA) is co-sponsored by a long list of legislators including House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Lamar Smith (R-TX), and Howard Berman (D-CA), chair of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. In introducing the bill, legislators repeated claims that "piracy costs the United States between $200 and $250 billion annually in lost sales, and 750,000 jobs."
The bill offers a range of sweeping reforms to current copyright and patent enforcement, including raising statutory damage levels, lowering the bar for handing out prison terms, and allowing more seizures of hardware and property. The most ambitious aspect of the bill, however, is the creation of a new federal position called the White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (WHIPER). If passed, the new copyright bureaucracy would be headed by a presidential appointee to advise the president. In addition, the U.S. Justice Department would establish an "Intellectual Property Enforcement Division" for IP-related matters.
Prue Adler, associate executive director of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) said that librarians were still fully reviewing the bill, but that the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), a group consisting of the nation's major library groups, has expressed concerns over section 104 of the bill which raises the ceiling for statutory damage awards. In a letter to the bill's sponsors, LCA said that "greatly increasing the amount of statutory damages plaintiffs could recover for infringements of compilations and derivative works…will make libraries and their patrons even more reluctant to use orphan works."
A letter signed by a who's who of the nation's top IP scholars, meanwhile, said the legislation would also harm fair use. Increasing penalties "will not prevent infringement by either individual infringers in the U.S. or commercial infringers abroad," the scholars noted, but "will have a negative impact on many lawful uses." Since the "precise boundaries of fair use are uncertain," they noted, many creators may decide not to make fair uses if it means running the risk of facing costly litigation with large statutory damages on the line.
The bill was the latest effort to be introduced with heavy lobbying from the entertainment industry, including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as well as the pharmaceutical and publishing industries. In a statement, Pat Schroeder, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), said publishers were "gratified" by the bipartisan nature of the bill. "American jobs and America's competitive edge depend on our ability to protect our creative resources," she said. "This legislation goes a long way in strengthening that protection."
The bill met with strong opposition from the technology sector. Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), said PROIPA would harm creativity by increasing the risk that potential innovators could be "baselessly persecuted" and subjected to endless, "frivolous" litigation. In a letter to the bill's sponsors, companies ranging from Paypal and Visa to all the major search engines said such sweeping changes to copyright law were simply unwarranted. "We are not aware of any instance where the existing statutory damages framework did not sufficiently compensate a rightsholder," they noted.
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Columbia University Libraries Joins Google Scan Plan
The Columbia University Libraries announced this week that it is the latest library to sign an agreement with Google to digitize library books in the public domain and make them available online. Under the agreement, librarians and Google will select "hundreds of thousands" of volumes from Columbia's 25 distinct libraries, including its rarest holdings. Digital copies of the books from Columbia will be fully searchable through Google.
Because the books scanned will be in the public domain, users will be able to view the full text of the books and download them for leisure reading, research, or printing. As part of the deal, Columbia will also receive a "library" copy of every book scanned, which library officials said it will use both for preservation and instruction purposes. Library officials said they expect eventually to "integrate digital copies" into its extensive digital library program "to extend their utility for research and teaching."
Columbia University Libraries is one of the top academic library systems in the nation, with 9.2 million volumes. James Neal, VP for information services and university librarian, said Columbia's participation in the Google plan will make available "significant portions" of the university's collections "in ways that will ultimately change the nature of scholarship."
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| Boston University Lands Mellon Grant for Collaborative MLK, Jr., Finding Aid
Boston University (BU) has received two grants totaling over $600,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to catalog its extensive Martin Luther King, Jr., Collection. The project, officials say, will also help fund a previously reported collaborative effort with the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center Consortium and the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University to unite two major King collections online via an "integrated, electronic" finding aid.
BU's Martin Luther King, Jr., Collection consists of over 80,000 items including King's office files, manuscripts, awards, and extensive correspondence. King received his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from BU in 1955. The collection has been open to the public free of charge since his donation of the papers to BU in 1964, however, during the two-year duration of the cataloging process, the collection will be closed, beginning November 2007.
The Morehouse King Collection in Atlanta, meanwhile, contains many of King's original manuscripts, writings, and sermons as well as his personal library. It was purchased on behalf of Morehouse, King's alma mater, for which Woodruff serves as the sole academic library. Vita Paladino, director of BU's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, which houses the King collection, said that a searchable, electronic inventory would both "aid in the preservation of our collection and save researchers valuable time and resources."
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| British Library Purchases Pinter Archive
The archive of Harold Pinter, considered one of Britain's leading modern playwrights and writers, has been acquired by the British Library. Library officials said that the collection comprises over 150 boxes of manuscripts, scrapbooks, letters, photographs, programs, and emails, offering an invaluable resource for researchers. The entire archive was purchased for a hefty £1.1million ($2.2 million) with the funding made possible by a grant of £216,000 ($534,000) from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) as well as grants from Alice Griffin, American Trust for the British Library, Michael Marks Charitable Trust, other private trusts, and donors. The British Library also provided an undisclosed sum.
Library officials said highlights of the archive include letter from Samuel Beckett; letters and hand-written manuscripts revealing Pinter's close collaboration with director Joseph Losey; "a highly amusing exchange" of letters with Philip Larkin; and a draft of Pinter's unpublished memoir of his youth, The Queen of All the Fairies. In addition, the archive documents "all international performances of Pinter's plays, as well as exchanges with academics that highlight Pinter's engagement with the global scholarly community," as well as materials relating to Pinter's commitment to human rights.
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Best Sellers in Engineering, February 2007–present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
(13 digit ISBNs in brackets)
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Special Effects: The History and Technique
Rickitt, Richard
Billboard/Watson-Guptill
2007. ISBN 0823084086 [9780823084081]. $75.00
-
Technology in Postwar America: A History
Pursell, Carroll W.
Columbia University Press
2007. ISBN 0231123043 [9780231123044]. $35.00
-
Ingenium: Five Machines that Changed the World
Denny, Mark
Johns Hopkins University
2007. ISBN 0801885868 [9780801885860]. $25.00
-
Web's Awake: An Introduction to the Field Of Web Science and the Concept of Web Life
Tetlow, Philip
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 0470137940 [9780470137949]. $49.95
-
Biotechnology and the Human Good
Mitchell, Ben C. et al
Georgetown University Press
2007. ISBN 1589011384 [9781589011380]. $24.95
-
Blip, Ping and Buzz: Making Sense of Radar and Sonar
Denny, Mark
Johns Hopkins University
2007. ISBN 0801886651 [9780801886652]. $27.00
-
Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity
Cuomo, Serafina
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521810736 [9780521810739]. $80.00
-
Unleashing Web 2.0: From Concepts to Creativity
Vossen, Gottfried, and Hagemann, Stephan
Morgan Kaufmann
2007. ISBN 0123740347 [9780123740342]. $49.95
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Nanoconvergence: The Unity of Nanoscience, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and
Cognitive Science
Bainbridge, William Sims
Prentice Hall
2007. ISBN 013244643x [9780132446433]. $26.99
-
Architectural Graphic Standards
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 0471700916 [9780471700913]. $250.00
-
Wireless Sensor Networks: Technology, Protocols, and Applications
Sohraby, Kazem
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 0471743003 [9780471743002]. $89.95
-
Biotechnology Policy Across National Boundaries: The Science-Industrial Complex
West, Darrell M.
Palgrave Macmillan
2007. ISBN 1403972516 [9781403972514]. $69.95
-
Network Security: Current Status and Future Directions
Douligeris, Christos
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 0471703559 [9780471703556]. $84.95
-
Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels
Jonnes, Jill
Viking
2007. ISBN 0670031585 [9780670031580]. $27.95
-
Excel for Scientists and Engineers: Numerical Methods
Billo, E. Joseph
John Wiley
2007. ISBN 0471387347 [9780471387343]. $49.95
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Mimo Wireless Communications: From Real-World Propagation to Space-Time Code Design
Oestges, Claude
Elsevier Academic Press
2007. ISBN 0123725356 [9780123725356]. $89.95
-
Innovation with Chinese Characteristics: High-Tech Research in China
Jakobson, Linda
Palgrave Macmillan
2007. ISBN 0230006922 [9780230006928]. $80.00
-
Computational Vision in Neural and Machine Systems
Harris, Laurence R.
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521862604 [9780521862608]. $120.00
-
Imitation and Social Learning in Robots, Humans and Animals: Behavioral, Social and
Communicative Dimensions
Nehaniv, Chrystopher L.
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521845114 [9780521845113]. $120.00
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Implicit Large Eddy Simulation: Computing Turbulent Fluid Dynamics
Grinstein, Fernando
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 052186982x [9780521869829]. $120.00
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