The Creative Librarian is a hub for matters important to librarians/information scientists of today. There is a definite lean towards electronic issues, however it isn't restricted to only those. Hopefully this site will also be useful for informing non-librarians on these issues as so many of them affect us all.
RDF Site Summary (RSS) – inSilico- First came the announcement in July that Elsevier would expose their PRISM metadata in an RSS compliant manner. In doing so, libraries and end users could access tables of contents for Elsevier journals in their favorite tools. …imagine being able to display the current issue’s TOC next to the [...]
EFF: Senator Brownback Introduces Digital Rights Bill- Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) today introduced the Consumers, Schools, and Libraries Digital Rights Management (DRM) Awareness Act of 2003. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) supports the bill as an important step toward balancing the rights of the public and the interests of entertainment industries in the age of [...]
EFF: RIAA Petition To The United States Congress: We are the customers and former customers of the member labels of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). We love music and will gladly pay a fair price for it, but we are outraged by the RIAA’s tactics in suing ordinary Americans for filesharing. We condemn [...]
Technology – story – canada.com network- Confessions of Kazaa downloader Personally, I’ve sworn off Kazaa but my CD purchases will still be few and far between. Until the music industry comes up with a win-win business model for consumers and the labels, I’ll just listen to all my old CDs that have been collecting dust. [...]
Consumers strike back, sue RIAA- It’s likely the RIAA will have to admit that they don’t have the authority to release all claims, because they don’t have the power to stop these lawsuits, because they don’t own the copyrights.
O’Reilly Network: Hardball assessment of the future of media [Sep. 09, 2003] Many people have predicted that peer-to-peer file-sharing will change the face of media, but this paper by Scott Jensen is the most thoroughgoing research I’ve seen into the commercial and artistic effects that peer-to-peer can potentially lead to. The paper is bold and [...]
RIAA settles with 12-year-old pirate’s mother The settlement was reached with the mother of 12-year-old Brianna Lahara, a user of the Kazaa file-sharing service. Lahara was featured on the cover of Tuesday’s New York Post newspaper, which described the girl as being scared and on the verge of tears when she discovered she was being [...]
Databases–the next copyright battle? | CNET News.com Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are circulating a proposed bill that would prevent wholesale copying of school guides, news archives and other databases that do not enjoy copyright protection. The proposed bill would provide a legal umbrella for publishers of factual information such as courtroom decisions [...]
DRM Avoidance – September 8, 2003 – LibraryPlanet.com is a beautiful collection of quotes from knowledgable people around the web. The last one in particular puts it perfectly for me.
The Shifted Librarian: Monday, September 08, 2003- Apple: Libraries Circulating Digital Content Is “Impractical” In other words, Apple (what appeared to be one of�the most customer-friendly and educational institution-friendly companies) doesn’t think enough of the “First Sale” doctrine to build support for it into its digital music product. To them, it’s “impractical” and you might, [...]