BIBLIOTHEKE

Open-Access Journals Flourish by Randy Dotinga
Wired 4.11.5

Directory of Open Access Journals

Steven Cohen posts critically about authors tagging their own work.
I’ve noticed that quite a few bloggers have been tagging their own blog posts on del.icio.us. My belly barometer goes off when I see this. It just doesn’t seem right to me. I find it counter-intuitive to the collective knowledge base. It also seems a bit […]

The BBC has launched a pilot project to work out the details of releasing the BBC archives DRM-free. It’s pretty nice to see the tagline “Find it. Rip it. Mix it. Share it.”
- link to site

It’s real spooky when CIOs advocate locking down the internet and greatly restricting access and the freedom to make even little scripts:
Let’s make all end user devices nonprogrammable. No one can connect to the Internet on a machine that creates code. If you want a computer to do programming, you would have to be licensed. […]

Timothy K. Armstrong sat in and has a long post detailing the argument. SCOTUSblog also has good info, including:
Several members of the Court — but especially Justices Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter — seemed troubled about the potential impact of a tightening of copyright law on small inventors — “the […]

Via BB, a c-span segment with a debate between EFF’s Fred von Lohmann and Solcitor General Theodore Olson (in the RIAA/MPAA ring) on Grokster. Some callers make very good points, including one who notes that indie musicians rely on P2P for exposure. As Cory Doctorow points out, Fred von Lohmann totally schools Olson.

It’s a decent length and covers many of the competing interests and issues. Music file-sharing case before high court. Ruling could have major effect on future of entertainment industry, consumer rights. Benny Evangelista, 3.28.5

When should virtual property be treated like physical property?

excerpt:
Massive multiplayer games have exploded in popularity, with games that range far beyond the quests and giant rat killings of a traditional title such as “Everquest II.” Some skip Dungeons & Dragon-style role-playing altogether in favor of a free-form world not unlike a virtual “Burning Man.” … […]

Copyfight’s Alan Wexelblat comments on P2P FUD and cites a japanese study (PDF) that didn’t find any negative effect on CD sales due to p2p and, in fact, found evidence that using p2p may increase CD purchases. That’s not the only study to find similar results, and just the other day I mentioned the […]

The Economist is running a story on tomorrow’s Grokster v MGM hearing that gives a short overview of the case and the history of attacks on the tech industry by the content industry.

The conclusion (also cited by BB):
But even if the entertainment business manages to coax more users into paying for legal downloads and succeeds […]

And he makes some important points in his blog post on it:
It wont be a good day when high school entrepreneurs have to get a fairness opinion from a technology oriented law firm to confirm that big music or movie studios wont sue you because they can come up with an angle that makes a […]

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch has a blog post taking a critical look at tagging and the history of web metadata attempts. He notes that metadata has largely been useless and overly complicated for use in the overall web and argues that tagging has the same problems, one major problem being the lack […]

Yahoo! has added a search page specifically for content licensed under a CC license. Stuff like this makes me love search wars.

Excerpt:
Three months after undertaking an ambitious project to digitize thousands of books, Harvard University Library (HUL) and the Google Print project are facing scrutiny from publishing organizations, who claim the project may infringe copyright law.
Read on @ the Havard Crimson Online

Earlier this month, Greg Duffy posted a fascinating dissection of Google Print with details on how Google’s cookie apparently works and an algorithm for getting past the copyright restrictions. Excerpt:
Most web browsers allow small text files, called cookies, to be stored on behalf of web servers … this allows a persistent state to be […]

The BBC has a great overview on the current state of DRM and ‘trusted computing.’ This is something that will likely have a strong impact on libraries considering how quickly we are moving to electronic publications and restrictive contracts. While I don’t know the details regarding what trusted computing is capable of […]

Last week SFGate ran a story discussing the storm surrounding the unreleased Fiona Apple album. What’s really interesting is that it vividly demonstrates the faultiness of the RIAA fear mongering toward p2p. You see, the album has leaked online and fans are sharing it like crazy. According to the RIAA fictional narrative, […]

Over at Loomware Mark Leggott has linked to a fascinating look at the evolution of a Wikipedia article as demonstrated by John Udell. Using the heavy metal umlaut entry, he shows how certain threads go through life cycles, how vandalism is swiftly corrected and the way in which the famous Wikipedia self-correcting NPOV mechanism […]

A book locating/lending phenomenon known as the “Dewey Decimal System” — enabling users to get access to copyrighted text for free — has sent shockwaves through a panicked publishing industry.

“Why would anyone pay for a book once it’s accessible for free?!” - Publisher’s spokesman Brent Aullett
continue reading @ Salon…
from turtleyclub.net

What it does:

removes ads on most Google pages
fixes fonts on most Google pages
Google web search:

adds links to other search sites (”Try your search on…”)
in news results, adds links to other news sites
in movie results, adds links to other movie sites
in weather results, adds links to other weather sites
in product results, adds links to other product […]