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Information

Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Time: 8:30PM
Place: Torgerson 3180

News

New startup offers Creative Commons textbooks

Flat World Knowledge, a new startup textbook company, is planning on offering cheap textbooks in print (about $30) and PDFs of their textbooks free of charge. The books will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Flat World Knowledge plans on making money primarily by selling supplemental material as well as physical books.

Bills introduced to deal with orphaned works

Two bills have been introduced in Congress, one in the House and the other in the Senate, that attempt to address the issue of orphaned works. An orphaned work is a work that is still under copyright, but the copyright holder is unable to be found (such as when a copyright-holding company goes out of business). Under the current laws, if someone uses an orphaned work without permission, and a copyright holder emerges, the copyright holder is able to sue for full statutory damages. This bill would limit the amount that the copyright holder could claim, so long as the user of the orphaned work has made a "good faith" effort to locate the copyright holder and was unable to do so. The bills define in detail what "good faith" effort is required and what needs to be documented by the user of the orphaned work in order to qualify for the protections under one of these bills.

BusinessWeek slams RIAA

The magazine BusinessWeek has an "in depth" article on Tanya Anderson and her case against the RIAA. Anderson was sued by the RIAA for file sharing, even though she was completely innocent. She was able to prove her innocence in court, have the RIAA pay her attorney's fees, and is now counter-suing the RIAA under conspiracy laws.

Metallica considers following Radiohead and NiN's example

Metallica is well known for being the first artist to go after the Napster file sharing network. However, with the success of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails' new music distribution experiments, Metallica is hinting at following a similar path when their contract with Warner expires. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Metallica says that they have been “observing Radiohead and Trent Reznor and in twenty-seven years or however long it takes for the next record, we'll be looking forward to everything in terms of possibilities with the Internet.” Metallica also says that they now sell MP3s and FLACs directly from their Web site.

Hans Reiser Convicted

@CNN need we say more?

He could be innocent... --Conley 09:20, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

MSN pulls the plug on paying customers' music

"Rob Bennett, the head of MSN Entertainment and Video Services, told customers in an email that “[a]s of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers.""

EFF