“OpenDocument was ratified as a file format standard Tuesday night by an international standards group, setting the stage for greater worldwide adoption of the open-source file format technology.

“A number of productivity applications, such as OpenOffice 2.0, Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice 8 and IBM’s Workplace, support the OpenDocument file format. Microsoft, however, is not supporting OpenDocument and instead is seeking ISO standardization for its own Office Open XML file formats.”

Dawn Kawamoto. OpenDocument Standard Ratified. News.com. May 3, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Most state governments are not actively tackling the creeping problem of digital archives and long-term access to public documents, according to the head of an industry group.

“Apart from a handful of cases, states have not devised comprehensive strategies for retaining ‘born digital’ documents. Such documents are created in electronic format and do not exist on paper.

“The state of Minnesota introduced a bill last month that would mandate the use of “open data formats” in state agencies by having them use standards-based products. By avoiding proprietary products and formats, the proposal’s backers hope to ensure access to state information.”

Martin LaMonica. States Struggling to Deal With Digital Documents. News.com. April 25, 2006.

See also:

Ingrid Marson. OpenDocument Group ‘Optimistic’ on Certification. News.com. April 20, 2006.

Minnesota House of Representatives. A Bill for an Act Relating to State Government; Requiring State Agencies to Use Open Data Formats. (H.F. No. 3971; 84th Legislative Session). March 27, 2006.

Martin LaMonica. Mass. Hands OpenDocument Reins to New CIO. News.com. January 31, 2006.

Groklaw. Peter Quinn’s First Interview. Jan. 23, 2006.

Stephen Kurkjian. Technology Adviser Quits Unexpectedly. Boston.com. December 28, 2005.

Martin LaMonica. Office Standards Battle Grinds On. News.com. December 13, 2005.

Groklaw. Peter Quinn Exonerated. Dec. 12, 2005.

Stephen Kurkjian. Review Backs Trips by Technology Chief. Boston.com. Dec. 10, 2005.

Martin LaMonica. OpenDocument Format Gathers Steam. News.com. November 10, 2005.

Hiawatha Bray. Senators Question File-Storage Shift. Boston.com. October 29, 2005

Martin LaMonica. Massachusetts Moves Ahead Sans Microsoft. News.com. September 23, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

In the March edition of E-Content, Walt Crawford discusses the open access possibilities and economies of scale that could result from a loose collaboration between Google’s Book Search project, the Open Content Alliance, and the Creative Commons license scheme.

What do you get when you combine a four-year-old licensing system and two possibly complementary projects to digitize substantial quantities of print information? With luck, a substantial ecommons: millions of digital items that can be used directly and as the basis for derivative works without infringing copyright. These projects should also result in full-text indexing for millions more items that won’t be freely available online but can be acquired through libraries and booksellers.

Crawford, who is a senior analyst at RLG and the namesake author of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large, continues

Pulling these threads together, OCA encourages use of Creative Commons licenses whenever that makes sense. That makes it more likely that a good deal of copyright material will be available under appropriate license, since Creative Commons licenses offer carefully drawn ways to “give away” some copyright control without losing copyright. Google isn’t part of this combination yet, but it wouldn’t take much to make the public domain works part of the greater whole.

Conceptually, Crawford’s observations make sense. But I think Crawford’s view of the potential inherent in such a combination is unlikely to happen. Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft are competing publicly-held corporations that ultimately are looking to exploit the next great market. To be fair, I’m sure each of these companies has some altruistic motive for being involved in their respective projects, but their ultimate goal is to be in the game if and when the content market shifts significantly enough for them to be major players in it. And once they find the game, each wants to write its rules.

In my view, the involvement of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft the digitization game amounts to a scouting session wherein each company will determine just how involved they will get in the content market beyond search. The possibilities — research database, bookseller, music seller, or even publisher — are endless. It’s not about the commons; it’s about the cash.

Walt Crawford. Building the Econtent Commons. EContent. March 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Open Access journal publishing has created a number of entirely new copyright models. These copyright models stand in contrast to the model used by traditional academic journals in which the copyright is effectively transferred from the author to the journal publisher, with only minor variations in practice. The emergence of new models is providing a wide range of choices for authors wishing to publish their work, and it is important to have some sense from academic authors as to the advantages and disadvantages of these new models.

“Our survey asked academic authors to express their views on the usefulness of present-day copyright policies for scholarly communication. In general terms, the survey shows that authors publishing in Open Access journals appear to be no longer satisfied with assigning copyrights to publishers. One of the key elements is authors’ interest in being read and cited, and thus in maximising the free availability of their output. A creator’s right to let his or her work to be used in order to advance science and culture is seen as very important, and the survey therefore emphasises that the views of authors should be taken into account when determining copyright models.

“The purpose of this article is to stimulate libraries and academic institutions to take the authors’ views into account and to represent the authors’ interests along with their own in the aforementioned copyright debate in the scholarly communication system.

Esther Hoorn and Maurits van der Graaf. Copyright Issues in Open Access Research Journals: The Authors’ Perspective. D-Lib Magazine. February 2006.

See also:

Julie Cohen. The Place of the User in Copyright Law. Fordham Law Review (via Social Science Research Network). 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Archivists and collectors have long lamented the lack of access to older recordings. So the Library of Congress commissioned a team to find out just how many are out of print. The report — released in August — suggests that over 70 percent of American music recorded before 1965 is not legally available in the United States.

“But it’s not just economics that keep older recordings out of print. It’s also a matter of copyright. Sound recordings made after 1972 are protected by federal law. Recordings made before that were covered by state and common law copyright. These laws do not have expiration dates.”

Joel Rose. Copyright Laws Severely Limit Availability of Music. National Public Radio. Jan. 9, 2006.

See also:

June M. Besek. Copyright Issues Relevant to Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Pre-1972 Commercial Sound Recordings by Libraries and Archives. Council on Library and Information Resources. December 2005.

Tim Brooks. Survey of Reissues of U.S. Recordings. Council on Library and Information Resources. August, 2005. (”The purpose of this study was to determine the legal accessibility of sound recordings published in the United States. The survey was designed to quantify the degree to which rights holders of historical sound recordings have made available, either directly or through licensees, past recordings that they control.”)

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“What if 2006 is the year big media players take aim at Google’s kneecaps? No, not with more lawsuits. Rather, picture this: Walt Disney, News Corp., NBC Universal, and The New York Times, in an odd tableau of unity, join together and say: ‘We are the founding members of the Content Consortium. Next month we launch our free, searchable Web site, which no outside search engines can access. From now on we’ll make our stuff available and sell ads around it and the searches for it, but only on our terms. Who else wants to join us? Membership’s free.’

“A Content Consortium would wreak havoc with the Web as we know it in its bid to restore the role of content owner as gatekeeper. Doing it would require spinal implants for intimidated media barons. But the notion that some pushback is pending is not far-fetched.”

Jon Fine. Putting The Screws To Google. BusinessWeek Online. Jan. 23, 2006.

See also:

Techdirt. How Jealousy Could Destroy The Internet. Jan. 13, 2006.

BNA E-Commerce Law Daily. In Battle Over Use of News Headlines, Court Focuses on Policy Implications for Web. Jan. 12, 2006.

Updates:

Center for Citizen Media Blog. Biting the Hand that Feeds? Feb. 1, 2006.

Greg Sandoval. Newspapers Want Search Engines to Pay. News.com. Jan. 31, 2006.

Adam Pasick. Newspapers Take Aim at Google in Copyright Dispute. Reuters UK. Jan. 31, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“What would you do if you had a personal home library numbering in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands of books? Hire a librarian, right?!

“The open access movement has put masses of scholarly content, similar to what one would expect to find in an academic library’s periodical collection, into the line of sight of Yahoo! Search, Google Scholar, Scirus, and other free Web search engines. How is a user to tell the wheat from the chaff, the plums from the prunes, the true from the false? Hire an information professional, right?!

“Well, we know they need us, but do they?”

Barbara Quint. The Home Guard. Searcher. January 2006.

Updates:

Chris Alden. Libraries Begin Uncertain New Chapter. The Guardian. Feb. 22, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.