2007 July :: Copyright Reform

“Attempted infringement” appears in new House intellectual property bill

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/7
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles, Legal Articles | Comments(0) July 2007

Back in May, the Justice Department issued some proposed legislation to tighten US intellectual property laws and to criminalize some forms of “attempted infringement.” Now, legislation based on the proposals has been introduced in Congress by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH), complete with stiffer jail terms for violators and the controversial “attempted infringement” clause. H.R. 3155, the Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007, aims widely. Everything gets a section: unauthorized recording of films in theaters, circumventing copy protection, trafficking in counterfeit goods. The bill even directs the Attorney General to send federal prosecutors to take up permanent residence in Hong Kong and Budapest and specifies the number and makeup of FBI investigative teams.In most cases, the bill appears to simply double existing penalties. Section 12 alone, for instance, makes a 10-year prison term into a 20-year term, three years into six, five into 10, and six into 12. Poof! More prison time!

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Some numbers from an on-demand publisher…

Permalink: http://questioncopyright.org/publishing_on_demand_case_study
Posted by kfogel | Posted in: Syndicated Articles | Comments(0) July 2007

The article Publishing Renaissance by Allison Randal, over at the O'Reilly Radar, is a fascinating read. She describes how her press was able to publish its first book — helpfully, she gives actual numbers:

Print-on-demand technology allows individual books to be printed as they're ordered, and shipped directly to the purchaser. The technology has developed to the point that the quality of a print-on-demand book is equal to the quality of a traditional printed book. This style of publishing is cheap. You generally pay a small set up fee, and then have no other expenses until the book actually sells, and then only pay for the printing. (The printing cost is about $1 per copy higher than a traditional printer at high volume, and cheaper than a traditional printer at low volume.) It cost me well under my goal of $1k to produce Gravitas from start to finish. With all this power at their fingertips, publishers could experiment much more freely with low risk.

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The “Author-Approved” Mark: A Proposal for Informed Sharing

Permalink: http://questioncopyright.org/author_approved_mark
Posted by kfogel | Posted in: Syndicated Articles | Comments(1) July 2007

Author-Approved Mark

Imagine if when you obtained a book (or a song or a movie), you could know if the way you obtained it was approved by its author. Could you use that information to make better choices?

I think so. Imagine this scenario: you walk into your local copy shop and ask for a book you saw recommended on someone's blog. (Machines to print books on demand are already here; see the Bookmobile, for example.)

Under the current copyright system, the copy shop must have permission from the copyright holder to print the book for you. One way for them to get permission is to work out bulk deals with publishers, so that every time the copy shop prints a book, a certain percentage goes to the publisher (and then a percentage of that goes to the author). Another possibility is for copy shops to become publishers themselves, bypass the traditional publishers, and work out deals with authors directly.