Copyright Office's Priorities for 2011-2013

The United States Copyright Office released a report on the Office’s priorities and focus subject areas for the over next two years with respect to copyright policy and administrative practice and a series of new projects designed to improve the quality and efficiency of its services in the twenty-first century.   The Office’s policy priorities for the next 24 months are as follows, subject to new developments in the United States and abroad.  Some of the notable items, according to the Register, includes streamlining litigation, perhaps even a recommendation for a special venue for copyright litigation, Orphan Works, and Library exemptions.

STUDIES

Small claims solutions for copyright owners

Legal treatment of pre-1972 sound recordings

Mass book digitization

LEGISLATIVE WORK

Rogue websites

Illegal streaming

Public performance right in sound recordings

Orphan works

Copyright exceptions for libraries

Market-based licensing for cable an d satellite retransmission

TRADE AND FOREIGN RELATIONS

World intellectual property organization (wipo)

Trans-pacific partnership and other trade priorities

Priorities in Administrative law Practice

Prohibition on circumvention of measures controlling access to copyrighted works

Electronic system for the designation of agents under the dmca

Review of group registration options

Registration options for websites and other forms of digital authorship

Electronic administration of the statutory licenses

Recording notices of termination of copyright transfers

Special Projects

Study of fees and services

Revision of the compendium of copyright office practices

Technical upgrades to electronic registration

Dialogues and roundtables with copyright community

Research partnerships with academic community

Revision of copyright office website

Public outreach and copyright education

Business process reengineering of recordation division

Public access to historical records

Skills training for copyright office staff

Local libraries sell e-books too

A story from last month discussed a new offering that would allow local libraries around the world to provide eBook catalogs to their patrons.  The new functionality would provide library visitors the ability to reference, browse, sample, and buy eBooks that are not available through the library system by linking them to national and local booksellers.

"Public libraries offer for lending a small fraction of publishers' ebook or audiobook catalogs," said Erica Lazzaro, OverDrive Director of Publisher Relations. This initiative "will take hundreds of thousands of early, midlist, and backlist eBook titles that are virtually invisible to library customers and present them for discovery. [It] will also enable for patrons who do not want to wait for popular titles to become available the option to immediately shop for it from a list of booksellers that support their local library."

With local libraries entering the retail ebook business, local booksellers will find themselves with even more competition.  The emphasis here is on future market share, to be sure, but it is a great example of the potential of emerging technologies can reshape entire industries.

E-readers Get Heavier With More E-books- It's true

The Science section of the NY Times has a story that claims the more e-books you load on your Kindle the heavier it gets. Really, it’s true.   John Kubiatowicz, a computer scientist faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, explained that a Kindle with thousands of e-books weighs a billionth of a billionth of a gram more than a factory fresh Kindle.

New CDF digital format on the rise

From my archives of items to post:
According to  an article in the Library Journal earlier this year, there is a new digital format that will challenge the PDF. The CDF, or Computable Document Format, is a new standard that was released on July 21st by Wolfram Research, and it enables users to “interact with online documents, input their own data, and generate results, live.”

Comparatively, CDF allows interactivity and motion in a document, whereas in PDF, documents are static and unchangeable. CDF files behave more like apps than documents, and they allow users to make their own “knowledge apps”, of which more than 7,000 have already been created by researchers, educators, and students using an early version of CDF. CDF documents can currently be created using Mathematica 8 and distributed for free using the Wolfram CDF Player, which is required to view the CDF document. Currently, there is a beta CDF in an e-textbook currently on the market: Briggs/Cochran Calculus, and many other publishers are showing great interest in the technology. The CDF technology is on its way to changing the way that online documents and e-textbooks allow users to access, and interact with, information.

It will be interesting to see if this format can stand up to other developments, such as those around Epub3.

Follett Sees Growth in Both Rental and Digital

PR Newswire reports that Follett saved students close to $90 million in three months mainly due to their Rent-A-Text program.  According to the article, Follett textbook rentals doubled in 2011 compared to 2010 and expects to see saving of up to $200 million for the 2011-2012 academic calendar.  Follett also saw digital textbook sales double in 2011 compared to 2010.

We have heard other anecdotal information that digital sales, where the inventory option exists, doubled in sell-though this fall, growing from 2-3% up to 5-6%.  This data has not yet been verified or examined across a larger pool of stores. 

Google eBooks come to College Stores

The Canadian Campus Retail Associates (CCRA) and Independent College Bookseller's Association (ICBA) announced this week that they have completed an agreement and integration with Google eBooks to distribute ebooks through college stores in Canada and shortly in the U.S.  This is similar the arrangement that the American Bookseller's Association (ABA) has with Google to distribute ebooks via Indie Commerce. This brings yet another option for college stores to provide customers with opportunities to discover, read and buy digital books on a range of devices and at competitive prices.   
 
Chris Tabor from the CCRA noted that "This is our first step with the potential of the Google ecosystems. Google is an incredible company to work with.  We learned a lot and are looking forward to more."


18 Canadian stores are participating in the initial launch, and other stores will begin to have access within the next 60 days.  Roughly 200 college stores are expected to be live with Google ebooks soon, as this service is offered to all CCRA and ICBA members, as well as stores currently participating in the Digital Content Platform initiative which is also co-sponsored by the two organizations.
 
Disclaimer:  Some folks who read this blog may know that NACS Media Solutions (NMS) did work with CCRA and ICBA on the digital content platform initiative and related pilots.  While we were aware of this pending development in advance from our prior participation, at this time NMS has no direct financial stake or active engagement in this initiative other than a sincere desire to see this initiative and others like it be successful within the college store industry.  Any questions about the current and upcoming offering should be directed to either CCRA or ICBA. 

Blackboard Allows Sharing of Content

The Chronicle reports that Blackboard will add a “Share” button that will allow faculty to share course materials free and open to nonregistered students.  This is a big win for the Open Education Movement and for schools since they will  not be charged extra for additional viewing.  Blackboard’s “Share” initiative is partnering with Creative Commons where faculty will have the option to attach a Creative Commons license to the content.  Cable Green, director of global learning for Creative Commons, says his “goal is to have this kind of option in every commercial learning-management system and also open-source ones,” according to the article.