News: Authors Guild Sues HathiTrust and Five Universities

[victor steinbok]

I am sure everyone will be happy to learn that the EU has extended recorded
music copyright to 70 years. Recordings and compositions will be treated
differently--which, I am sure, will make the studios happy. Not sure any
actual musicians will notice a whole lot of difference. Authors have 70
years after their death to hold on to the copyright--well, sort of ;-) US
copyright is 95 years, but may well get extended again by 2018.

VS-)

It is interesting that no one ever suggested that performance copyright
should be more flexible--e.g., give holders who are not actual performers 40
years, after which the right reverts to the performers and their estates for
50 years. This would be an ideal compromise.

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> List members who use HathiTrust may be interested in the following
> news. HathiTrust does not display snippets of copyrighted works, but
> their massive joint database does contain copies of copyrighted works,
> and now it is the target of a lawsuit. The Authors Guild also dislikes
> the new project involving "orphan" works.
>
> Copyright Clash: Authors Guild and Others Sue HathiTrust and Five
> Universities
> By David Rapp Sep 13, 2011at libraryjournal.com
>
> The Authors Guild預long with Australian and Canadian authors'
> organizations and eight individual authors庸iled suit yesterday
> against the HathiTrust digital repository and five of its member
> universities to stop them from "reproducing, distributing and/or
> displaying" copyrighted works, among other alleged infringements預nd
> charged them with "engaging in one of the largest copyright
> infringements in history."
>
> Link to libraryjournal.com: http://goo.gl/MftZ8
> Link to publishersweekly.com: http://goo.gl/f7sF8
>
>

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