- A short GBS note: Google has reached an agreement with Hachette Livre (in France) for more in-copyright-out-of-print scanning. What the article never discusses, though, is whether Hachette Livre has the authority to enter into such an agreement; given the strength of droit morale and droit repentir in French law, all a copyright holder-author need to is object and the publisher has no right at all...
- A bookstore in Jordan specializes in banned books.
- Seattle establishes a consumer right to reject home delivery of the old-fashioned, on-paper, kills-a-tree-each commercial phone directory — the part printed on yellow paper. Natürlich, the vendors of such have sued, alleging a constitutional violation. Yes, it is indeed a violation of the First Amendment for a consumer to say "I don't want your ad-ridden, noncomprehensive, foolishly contrived garbage dropped on my doorstep when I use the 'net to find vendors." We just can't have any restrictions on advertising! We can, however, have restrictions on who may voluntarily purchase videogames because they're "too violent" (compared to an evening news broadcast depicting southeast DC, the south side of Houston, or the mountains east of Kabul).
- Make sure you look at both graphics in this story on trademarks, Greg Norman, great white sharks, and territoriality... because it has some disturbing implications for copyright, e-readers, supposedly public domain libraries, etc. Not to mention ACTA (as I mentioned yesterday, and gets more analysis at Patently-O). Plus, that first graphic is really cute; the second one, not so much.
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Law and reality in publishing and entertainment (seldom the same thing) from the creator's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into politics, military affairs, censorship and the First Amendment, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting. |
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