Archive for April 2004
Solving the Scholarly Publishing Conundrum
“Google, the popular search-engine company, has teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 16 other universities around the world to provide a way to search the institutions’ collections of scholarly papers, according to university officials.
“A pilot test of the project is just getting under way. If all goes as planned, the search feature could appear on Google in a few months, said MacKenzie Smith, associate director of technology for MIT’s libraries. She said the search would probably be an option on Google’s advanced-search page.”
One of the most troubling issues that universities face these days is how to manage the crushing expense of subscriptions to scholarly journals (or the databases that house past issues of those journals). This effort by Google may turn out to be one of several steps — others include MIT’s DSpace and the Public Library of Science –that make scholarly research more widely available, and at a more affordable cost.
Jeffrey R. Young. Google Teams Up With 17 Colleges to Test Searches of Scholarly Materials. The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 9, 2004.
Patrick Brown. For Cracking the Spine of the Science Cartel. Wired. April 2004. (This article was written to commemorate the Public Library of Science winning the Science category of the 2004 Rave Awards.)
Copyright Activism
"One of the great hopes I had while I researched and wrote Copyrights and Copywrongs was that copyright debates might puncture the bubble of public consciousness and become important global policy questions. My wish has come true. Since 1998, questions about whether the United States has constructed an equitable or effective copyright system frequently appear on the pages of daily newspapers. Activist movements for both stronger and looser copyright systems have grown in volume and furor. And the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in early 2003 that the foundations of American copyright, as expressed in the Constitution, are barely relevant in an age in which both media companies and clever consumers enjoy unprecedented power over the use of works."
Siva Vaidhyanathan. The State of Copyright Activism. First Monday. April 2004.
The Looming Threat of Digital Control
"Commentator David Weinberger, a technology writer and lecturer, says new computer hardware and software is being designed to give "big content companies" more control over your computer than you have. With the Orwellian trifecta of ‘Digital Rights Management,’ ‘Digital ID,’ and ‘Trusted Computing,’ every image, phrase and music piece will be owned, tracked and accounted for."
David Weinberger. Regulating the Idea Market. National Public Radio. April 5, 2004. (Audio: Real Player, Windows Media Player 9).
See also John Walker. The Digital Imprimatur. Sept. 13, 2003.
(Both cites courtesy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)
File Sharing Doesn’t Hurt CD Sales
According to a News.com story, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads for more than four months in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. The conclusion? "Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.
"We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales," wrote the study’s authors wrote. "While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing."
John Borland. Music Sharing Doesn’t Kill CD Sales, Study Says. News.com. March 29, 2004.
Felix Oberholzer and Koleman Strumpf. The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis. (.pdf).
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Profit From Them
[Editor’s Note 1: Wired Magazine broke this story in October with a profile of BigChampagne, but it is worth reviewing now, given the music industry’s continued courtroom and legislative assault on file sharing and P2P networks.]
"While the music industry publicly flays Kazaa and other file-swapping services for aiding piracy, those same services provide an excellent view of what’s really popular with fans.
"Record-label executives discreetly use BigChampagne and other services to track which songs are traded online and help pick which new singles to release. They increasingly use such file-sharing data to persuade radio stations and MTV to give new songs a spin or boost airplay for those that are popular with downloaders.
"Some labels even monitor what people do with their music after they download it to better structure deals with licensed downloading services. The ultimate goal is what it always has been in the record business: Sell more music.
…
"I definitely don’t like to spin it that piracy is OK because we get to look at the data. It’s too bad that people are stealing so much music,” said Jeremy Welt, Maverick [Records’] head of new media. "That said, we would be very foolish if we didn’t look and pay attention to what’s going on.”
[Editor’s note 2: Maverick is Madonna‘s record company, and the company’s use of P2P networks in order to boost or protect sales has a history beyond BigChampagne. Last year, Maverick posted dummy copies of songs from the Madonna’s American Life album that repeatedly asked "What the f*%! do you think you’re doing?"]
Dawn C. Chmielewski. Music labels use file-sharing data to boost sales. The Mercury News. March 31, 2004.
Jeff Howe. BigChampagne is Watching You. Wired. October 2003.
Oh, Canada! P2P Sharing is Legal
A federal court in Canada has ruled that people who share copyrighted works on peer-to-peer networks are not liabile for copyright infringement.
COPYCENSE 