Congressman defends fair use

Citation

Falk, H. (2002), "Congressman defends fair use", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 19 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2002.23919eae.001

Congressman defends fair use

Congressman defends fair use

Rick Boucher, Congressman from Virginia, has detailed his reasons for calling for revision of section 1201 of the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). This section prohibits circumventing any measure used by a copyright owner to control access to a copyrighted work. Boucher points out that the DMCA law does not limit itself to copyright circumvention, so any action without consent of the copyright owner becomes criminal. For example, this means that copyright owners can require payment of a fee each time a library e-book is used by a library patron. Students who want basic access to a portion of an e-book to write a term paper could have to pay to avoid committing a crime. Copyright owners can also limit what buyers of e-books may do. For example, they may prohibit reading an e-book out loud or make it a violation to criticize the contents of a work. Boucher sees the fair-use rights of the public at risk. College students who photocopy a page from a library book or print an article from a newspaper's Web site for use in writing a report, newspaper reporters who excerpt material for a story, the consumer who records a TV broadcast program for viewing at a later time, all depend on the ability to make limited copies of copyrighted material without having to pay a fee or obtain prior approval from the copyright owner. Fair-use rights are essential to the exercise of First Amendment rights. Democracy depends on information availability facilitated by fair-use. Boucher wants a law that can provide adequate protection for copyright owners without subverting the legitimate fair-use rights of consumers, libraries, educators and other users.

DMCA court challenge

The case against ElcomSoft, a Russian software company accused of violating the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), continues to slowly make its way through the courts. If found guilty, ElcomSoft could face a fine of $2.25 million. ElcomSoft's programmer, Dimitry Skylarov, who was detained for six months, has been released and allowed to return to Russia. Now, ElcomSoft's attorney has filed a motion with the court arguing that the DMCA is vague and overly broad. A second motion claims the law violates the First Amendment rights of software programmers.

ElcomSoft CEO Alex Katalov explains that the tool his company developed was designed to give buyers of e-books the same rights they would have with any printed book they purchased. To give it away, send it to a loved one, or read it to their children. The tool lets owners of Adobe-coded e-books copy or transfer their e-books from one computing device to another.

ElcomSoft attorney Joseph Burton hopes that the case will clarify the lawful boundaries of the DMCA. He points out that every technology company has a stake in the outcome of the case. It is clear that every library also has an important stake in this case.

Appeal on e-book copyrights

In an attempt to stop RosettaBooks (www.rosettabooks.com) from selling e-book editions of print books, Random House tried to get an injunction, but a US district court refused. The district judge ruled that the original publishing contracts for the books in question, authored by Robert Parker, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron, were signed before e-books were available and did not confer e-book rights.

The case tested whether print publishers own the e-book rights to the hundreds of thousands of backlist titles published before 1990. These titles make up over half of the traditional publishing industry's annual sales.

Now Random House is hoping to overturn the district court's decision, claiming that the authors in question had signed away e-book rights to their works when they gave Random House the right to sell printed editions. The appeals court judges have heard the case but no decision is expected until the spring.

Flip-through e-books

Software that allows e-book users to flip through multiple pages, while viewing images and text as they flip, has been demonstrated and is being offered together with software that allows users to rapidly magnify portions of text. The MultiFlip software is designed to mimic the way readers scan printed book pages, allowing serendipitous searching to complement the exact-word searching offered by "find" software. For a free trial of an earlier version of the software see www.go-io.com

Enhanced Palm Reader software

A new version of software (Palm Reader Pro) for displaying e-books on handheld devices now includes dictionary software, and a wider choice of character fonts and sizes to meet personal needs for the appearance of displays. To use the dictionary feature, users hold their stylus on a word for a few seconds until the definition is displayed. The same procedure can be used on the dictionary display to find definitions of the words given in the definitions. If the dictionary does not find a definition it will automatically define word roots or related words.

Serif, sans serif, and condensed font styles are now included in Palm Reader. The new Palm version provides fonts in 10, 12, 18, and 24 point sizes and uses a font-smoothing technology that further improves text displays for color and gray-scale displays. The new Reader software version for Pocket PC devices now has scaleable fonts for each of the three styles. The new Palm Reader Pro is available for download from www.palm.com/ebooks

E-books by wireless

Audible (www.audible.com), a source of spoken-word e-books is testing delivery of their titles over the AT&T Wireless network. This technique would be used to deliver products such as serialized e-books and audio versions of newspapers and magazines direct to users' mobile devices. Currently, Audible uses a more complicated method to deliver audio e-books to handheld devices: the e-book is first downloaded to the user's personal computer; then it is transferred to the handheld device.

Library automation handles e-books

The Auto Librarian automation package from MC2 Systems (www.autolib.com/elibrary) gives users access to data entry, circulation, reports, notices and database searching. The software allows overdue, fine and reserve notices to be sent via e-mail or printed out. E-books in Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader or Microsoft Reader format can be browsed, checked out and downloaded onto a patron's computer for a specified length of time. The package is available on a yearly contract basis.

PDF e-book backup is possible

The Adobe eBook Reader imposes restrictions on e-book purchasers, including preventing transfer of a title to machines other than the computer for which it was originally purchased. Adobe Systems now points out that such transfers are possible, but only with specific permission from Adobe. The user can make a copy of the data folder for the title, install Adobe eBook Reader on the new machine, place the data folder copy on the new machine, then contact Adobe and receive an activation code that allows them to use the title.

Gemstar slips

With the loss of Barnes and Noble as an outlet for their e-book reading formats and devices, Gemstar has lost a major outlet for its e-book products. According to Thomson Multimedia, a manufacturer of Gemstar readers, the devices are not doing well in the marketplace. Gemstar has its own retail Web site (www. gemstar-ebook.com) and also sells its devices at www.skymall.com

Free e-books

E-documents about small business are available at the Edward Lowe Digital Library (www.lowe.org). Almost 4,000 documents discuss how to start, manage and prosper with small businesses. The collection can be queried by full text search or by browsing subject lists.

For free e-books about religion, mythology, legends, folklore and the occult, try the Internet Sacred Text Archive (www.sacred-texts.com)

Jack Hogan (hoganbooks.com/freebook/webbooks.html) offers e-books about the computer and the Internet. All books are available free, can be browsed by title, and are in English.

E-books and articles available at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (metalab.unc.edu/docsouth) portray the American South from the viewpoint of Southerners. The collection can be browsed by subject, title and author.

E-galleys for reviewers

What a fine way to get new book galleys to reviewers: put them on the Web. That's what St Martin's Press has done for the upcoming novel Acrobat by Gonzao Lira. Over 50,000 books are published each year and galleys for most of them go to reviewers and booksellers. From 100 to 1,000 galleys are mailed before a typical book is released to the public, at a cost of about $10 per galley. St Martins now uses the E-Galley service offered by Texterity, Inc. (www. texterity.com). The benefits Texterity cites for this service include providing a hosted private-label Web site to allow publishers to make galleys available through a simple Internet address, shortening delivery time of galleys by 50 percent over that for print galleys to provide more time for reviews, giving publishers a means to keep track of galley downloads, and allowing publisher sales forces to place new titles on laptop computers or handheld devices.

E-comics on the Web

Comics are coming off the newsstands and onto the Internet. The Web audience is rapidly growing and there are many advantages to online comics. For example, printed comic books often go out of print and become unavailable, but e-comics can easily be archived at Web sites and accessed whenever readers wish. Despite intense interest in e-comics, the publishers are still struggling to become profitable on the Web.

Marvel Comics (www.marvelcomics. com), which publishes X-Men and Spider-Man, has some 1.3 million e-comic strips downloaded each month. Like its print editions, Marvel e-comics include full-page ads. Soon, Web circulation will be added to print circulation totals when determining Marvel's advertising rates. Most of the strips offered on the Web site sell for $2.50 each but there are some free samples and viewing is a slow process. At present the strips are for viewing over the Web only, but downloads are planned.

The Unbound Comics Web site (www.unboundcomics.com) charges $1.50 for each downloaded e-comic (in PDF format). That's about half the price of a printed comic book. In recent months, more than 72,000 pages were viewed at the Unbound site and there were about 5,000 visitors to the site. About half the material on the Unbound Comics site is new; the rest is out-of-print material. The two best-selling titles are an adoption of Shakespeare's Hamlet and a reissue of Dalgoda, a science fiction series from the 1980s. The site started up on a $15, 000 loan. It has two employees, including the owner.

Astounding Space Thrills (www.astounding spacethrills.com) offers a satirical science fiction e-comics strip that is syndicated to many other Web sites and is also offered, free, as a daily e-mail item. The Astounding site raises money by selling advertising and sponsorships, and also sells a print comic book. The Astounding Space Thrills e-comic strip is syndicated to more than 3,000 Web sites. It is also offered, free, as a daily e-mail item.

Other online e-comic book sites include www.dccomics.com; www. sluggy.com and www.zark.com The www.webcomics.com site offers a longer list of e-comic sites.

Howard Falk (falkho@msn.com) is an independent consultant based in Bloomfield, New Jersey, USA.