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Turn Your Laptop Into an Earthquake Sensor | Comment
Writing Students and Professors Fight to Keep Theses From Being Freely Available Online | Comment [4]
Educause Issues Statement on RIAA's Methods of Catching Music Pirates | Comment
ABC News to Open 5 University News Bureaus | Comment [10]
How a Lawsuit Over Electronic Reserves Could Affect Colleges | Comment [5]
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May 12, 2008
How a Lawsuit Over Electronic Reserves Could Affect Colleges
Laura N. Gasaway, associate dean for academic affairs and a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law, says that a lawsuit recently filed against Georgia State University regarding electronic reserves could have implications for how colleges distribute course material online. The suit, brought by three publishers — Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and SAGE Publications — alleges that Georgia State professors infringed publishers’ copyrights by “inviting students” to download, view, and print material from thousands of copyrighted works. Ms. Gasaway’s remarks assume the details of Georgia State’s practices, as described in the complaint, are accurate.
Q. Is Georgia State’s use of electronic course material different from other institutions?
A. If you have a continuum where on one side are institutions that always seek permission before putting things on electronic reserve and on the other side are institutions that never seek permission, Georgia State appears to be on that far end of almost never seeking permission. My belief is that more libraries fall somewhere in the middle. They certainly believe that some of the material they put on electronic reserve can be disseminated under fair use. But they believe they need to get permission and pay royalties to use other material.
Q. Are there other reasons the publishers sued Georgia State?
A. The publishers may have been interested in showing that state-supported institutions are not immune from litigation. State-supported entities can’t be sued for damages. And the publishers in this case did not seek damages. They asked only for an injunction.
Q. Is this lawsuit a warning from publishers to other institutions that they’ll be sued, too, unless they negotiate with publishers about their use of e-reserves?
A. One could certainly take it that way. Several other institutions, once they got cease-and-desist letters from publishers about their use of online course material, developed policies and began to pay royalties.
Q. What’s your best guess of how this case will be resolved?
A. It will settle.
Q. What would such a settlement look like?
A. Georgia State could be required to adopt certain policies in order for the publishers to drop their litigation. What other institutions have done is to develop and publicize policies and remind their faculty about them. —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Monday May 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]May 9, 2008
School Administrator Files Lawsuit Over Facebook Profile
A high-school dean of students and a Roman Catholic archdiocese are suing Facebook over a fake profile created with the dean’s name. They are trying to get Facebook to identify the creators of the phony page, the Indianapolis Star reports.
Facebook took down the profile in April but has declined to name its creators. Impersonating someone or using a false name is banned in Facebook’s terms of use.
This is not the first Facebook impersonation case, and some have noticed a rise in the number of Facebook users who are using aliases—either original or borrowed—on their profiles. Know of any cases of hijacked profiles on your campus? —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Friday May 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]May 6, 2008
You Say It's Your Birthday
Robert Brauneis at George Washington University Law School has written a paper on the history of what may be the world’s most oft-infringed piece of music. No, it’s not a Britney Spears ditty or a LimeWire hit. It’s “Happy Birthday,” which was originally written with different lyrics as “Good Morning to All.”
Mr. Brauneis has also created a vast online repository of documents and sound recordings related to legal disputes over the song.—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Tuesday May 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [7]April 30, 2008
Tech Bloggers Debate Article Attacking Controversial Law Professor
The tech blogosphere is atwitter over a new paper from the Progress & Freedom Foundation criticizing Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor.
The paper, by Thomas D. Sydnor II, a senior fellow and director of PFF’s Center for the Study of Digital Property, says that Mr. Lessig’s 2004 book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity “‘demonize[s]’ property owners in order to convince the government to impose a form of ‘radical’ and ‘quasi-socialist’ utopianism.” It also refers to Mr. Lessig as a “name-calling demagogue.”
The paper from PFF, a market-oriented, technology and public-policy think tank, has been criticized by some high-profile tech bloggers around the country, many of whom have disagreed with Mr. Lessig in the past. Mr. Lessig remains a controversial figure for his views on intellectual property, but he retains a strong following of legal scholars, some of whom tried to get him to run for the Congressional seat of Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who died in February. —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Wednesday April 30, 2008 | Permalink | CommentAnother Threat to RIAA's 'Making Available' Theory
Yet another court decision questioned one of the Recording Industry Association of America’s main legal arguments in prosecuting alleged music pirates.
The RIAA argues that people who have made copyrighted music available for sharing have committed copyright infringement, whether or not the music was then illegally copied and downloaded by an unauthorized user. This argument was questioned in several recent conflicting court decisions. A judge this week in Atlantic v. Howell rejected the “making available” theory and denied the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment. (There are other wrinkles in the case, too, such as whether the defendants intended to share the music or whether they did so accidentally.)
A bench trial for the self-represented defendants will likely happen sometime in September, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in the case. The judge’s 17-page decision can be found here.—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Wednesday April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [15]April 29, 2008
A Class Blog Studies Fair Use
A professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law has created a nifty blog for students to hash out a debate about a fictional copyright-infringement case.
The blog, What Is Fair Use?, follows students’ arguments about whether the song “K Cera Cera,” created by former members of the band The KLF, infringed on “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera),” a tune made famous by Doris Day. Students, all posting anonymously under the name “Friedman Advocates,” have linked to interesting copyright debates around the Web, as well as parodies, satires, and other controversies involving fair use. You can find music and video mash-ups on the blog, too.
The blog, created by associate professor Peter B. Friedman, supplements a legal analysis and writing class. Each semester the students are given a legal problem that’s used in their writing assignments. Mr. Friedman said this is the first time he’s used a blog to extend class discussion, and the second time he’s chosen a fair-use issue for the course theme (the previous fair-use problem covered Google’s library digitization project).
“Of all the things I’ve tried, the blog has been the most successful in promoting discussion,” Mr. Friedman told the Chronicle. “It’s certainly especially suited to fair-use discussions, since we can post videos.”
He said he has been trying to get in touch with the former members of The KLF—which some believe stands for Kopyright Liberation Front, though the origin is disputed—to hear their thoughts on the fictional case.
—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Tuesday April 29, 2008 | Permalink | CommentApril 17, 2008
Company Defends Selling Blog Space at '.edu' Domain
A free article in The Chronicle today describes a controversy over an online college selling space on its .edu domain to just about any blogger who will pay $50 per month. Critics say the practice waters down the value of .edu Internet addresses, which are supposed to be reserved for accredited educational institutions.
The online college, the Pickering Institute, and the Internet company it is working with, LinkAdage, did not return calls and e-mail messages from The Chronicle. But John Lessnau, an official for LinkAdage, posted a comment on the Conversation Marketing blog today with a defense of the practice:
“What I am helping PI.edu do is create a blog community with a strong educational slant,” he wrote. “Our TOS requires us to be very strict as to the quality of our member blogs – and yes, the TOS will be enforced,” he added, referring the the “terms of service” that says the company will turn away blogs offering porn, online gambling, or misleading information. “Rest assured, blogs that are not up to standard will be given a warning, and deleted and refunded if they do not meet our TOS.”
Some have argued that the Pickering Institute should not even have a .edu address, since it is apparently not accredited by a qualified educational organization (its founders did not respond to a request for comment for this story). But officials for Educause, which manages .edu registrations, said that the institute received its approval for a .edu address back before the current rules were strictly enforced, and such institutions were grandfathered in and are allowed to keep their addresses. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Thursday April 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]April 15, 2008
Duke Is Rebuffed in Bid to Shut Down Lacrosse Players' Blog
(Updated at 8 p.m.)
A federal court today rejected Duke University’s argument that a Web site run by student lacrosse players suing the institution should be shut down. The Web site, DukeLawsuit.com, updates visitors on the status of the case, which 38 students filed over the university’s response to rape accusations against the students in 2006. The blog posts briefs filed by both sides in the case, including those regarding the motion to shut down the site.
Lawyers for Duke, the City of Durham, and the Duke University Health System objected to the Web site and a news conference organized by the plaintiffs, alleging that those actions violate the North Carolina Professional Rules of Conduct and will “have a material prejudicial effect on [the] proceeding.”
The News & Observer, a newspaper, Raleigh, N.C., reported today that Judge James A. Beatty of the U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem, N.C., had rejected the request to shut down the Web site, but also cautioned lawyers to stay within the rules of conduct and avoid public statements that might prejudice potential jurors.
The National Law Journal has more on the controversy. —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Tuesday April 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [13]April 14, 2008
New Batch of RIAA 'Settlement' Letters Sent to Campuses May Be Biggest Yet
The Recording Industry Association of America late last week fired off 569 “pre-litigation settlement letters” to university students whom it suspected of pirating music. It appears to be the largest batch of letters sent since the RIAA launched an expanded campaign in February 2007.
Most previous waves of letters targeted around 400 students each, according to press releases on the RIAA’s site. Students who receive such letters are identified after investigators hired by the RIAA download music available on the students’ computers, RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said. Whether making a song “available” constitutes copyright infringement has been questioned in several recent court decisions.
Upon receiving the letters, students have the option of paying the RIAA several thousand dollars to avoid going to court and potentially facing higher penalties. Mr. Lamy said the latest wave of letters was unrelated to bills in Congress that would revamp copyright infringement penalties and university requirements for curbing on-campus file-sharing.
Twenty-six institutions received letters last week. Here’s a full count of the letters each institution received, courtesy of RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth:
University of Texas at Austin, 75
University of Tennessee at Knoxville, 74
University of Washington, 36
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, 35
Iowa State University, 32
Central Michigan University, 31
Columbia University, 26
University of Georgia, 26
Yale University, 26
University of Nebraska at Lincoln, 22
Cornell University, 21
University of California at Davis, 20
Drexel University, 19
Florida State University, 18
University of California at Santa Barbara, 18
University of Pennsylvania, 18
University of New Mexico, 15
Duke University, 14
University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, 12
University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, 9
University of California at Merced, 8
University of Wisconsin at Madison, 6
University of Wisconsin-Stout, 5
University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, 1
University of Wisconsin-Parkside, 1
University of Wisconsin at River Falls, 1
Officials from several universities not on this list have also recently reported sizable increases in the number of letters they’ve received.—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Monday April 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [10]April 10, 2008
Foreign Tech Students Are Given More Time to Stay in U.S. After Graduation
With little fanfare, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has extended the amount of time foreign students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics can stay in the United States without a work visa after graduation. The rule was changed in response to the overwhelming demand for skilled-worker visas.
Under the new rule, students will be able to stay in America for “Optional Practical Training” for 29 months after graduation, up from 12 months, without a work visa. In its official rule change [PDF], the department declared the shortage of H-1B visas an “emergency” that justified making the rule change without notice or comment.
This year and last, the cap for H-1B visas — given to skilled workers — was reached almost immediately after the application window opened at the beginning of April. Because H-1B applicants must have a college diploma in hand to apply, students who graduate after April 1 this year were shut out of the process.
High-tech companies, which complain that the United States is not doing a good enough job training home-grown talent in science and math, have been lobbying Congress to increase the visa cap.—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Thursday April 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]