Brenda Dawson pointed out that I should have posted the link to the original article location in the previous post.  Absolutely right, of course.

However, you can't post links in comments, so here it is in a post all by its lonesome.

Enjoy.

http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=630

Bob

In keeping with my theme in this blog, I found an interesting paper asking some fundamental questions about problems with current copyright, with special attention to education.  Here's a snippet....

In this article, we explore how the technological, social, cultural, and legal developments of the digital age challenge educators and students who seek to make use of copyrighted material for educational purposes and offer educators strategies for dealing with today’s copyright challenges.

This article is from Innovate, an online magazine. Citation information is at the end of the article and yes, I checked very carefully to make sure I could post it here. There are a number of references to new legislation and other initiatives that aim to adapt copyright law to the digital age. 

How this will sort out is anyone's guess, but one step we can all take is to do our best to know and to follow current law.  Bob

Recently, Google announced that a settlement had been reached with a large group of authors and publishers who were suing the giant search engine because it had scanned and indexed large numbers of books, including library collections from major universities.  Many of these books were still protected by copyright.  If you want to see how this works, go to http://books.google.com/ and search for a book.  Not only can you see some pages from the book, you see search terms highlighted in the text.

Anyway, the news of the settlement is huge and has major implications for  publishing, copyright, and on and on.  What doesn't Google impact these days!

Google's own internal Blog has a pretty good description here....

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-chapter-for-google-book-search.html

In our own way, ANR is playing a role in this soap opera.  Check out the "Google Books" search widget on the ANR catalog site.

On the other hand, the settlement raises ongoing questions about just what exactly constitutes a copy.  Suffice it to say that the biggest battles will be about money.  Unless someone out there is writing the first book in a block buster series about a Wizard Farm Advisor going off to school at Nuthatches School at the end of an invisible high speed rail link to West Davis, I don't think one of our books will be the topic........no matter how good it is!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bob

For some time, the issue of open  source software and other forms of "community license," including things like Creative Commons and, in our case, the eXtension contributor and institutional agreements, has been relatively unimportant for UC.  Recently, all that has changed.  For one thing, there are a number of major projects involving open source software that are aimed at major business and educational computer systems.  At UC Davis, the "Smart Site" learning system for course support and other stuff is based on Sakai, an open source learning management system.  Also, DaFIS, the financial system, is migrating towards a platform based on Kuali, another open source system.

In addition, faculty researchers are buildling complex high performance computing systems based on open source cluster computing software and writing complex software for their research that may be subject to the license terms of the open source platforms it runs on.  This is new territory for copyright and intellectual property at UC and for higher ed everywhere.

Across the UC IT environment, there is a need to update big systems like payroll and the human resources information system (HRIS). Increasingly, higher education across the country along with UC are looking to shared systems development, mostly in open source environnments. 

 I think we'll see pretty quick movement towards a much more complex copyright and intellectual property environment in UC and guess what that means?  Things aren't going to get any simpler, that's for sure.

Bob Sams

rwsams@ucdavis.edu

 

 

 

 

At least once a week, I get a question about posting publications on the web.  I wish these questions were easy to answer and straightforward, but often that is not the case.

However, in the case of ANR numbered publications that are printed, please ask us first.  We don't want to inhibit the distribution of information, but we also have a responsibility to manage our inventory responsibly.  Posting publications to the web can have unanticipated financial implications that should be considered in advance.

Suppose ANR Communication Services is about to negotiate a significant sale with an agency or wholesaler and the publication suddenly appears for free on the web.

I'd be happy to help with your questions about posting to the web.  In the case of numbered ANR publications in print, please contact me in advance.

Thanks,

Bob Sams   rwsams@ucdavis.edu