Why is it hard to believe that a monkey selfie can be in the public domain? Probably because we have a hard time recognizing that some things just can’t be owned by anybody.

If you regularly read the Europeana Pro blog, you have probably already heard of the open access policy of the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. Europeana …

[ Editor’s Note: I asked Jake Berg to publish this piece on LtaYL after sitting with him in the hearing on the draft Framework at the Amer...

Following up on Jackie’s post on the RBMS 2014 Preconference, and Michelle Light’s #bestplenaryever* I asked Michelle to give me a list of the various reproduction, permissions, and copyright policies …

Digitization with private partners should not remove digital surrogates of public-domain materials from the public domain.

Common misinformation.

State legal codes are under fire for copyright walls.

This paper explores restrictions that are being applied to New Zealand public domain books once they have been digitized and hosted online. The study assesses access and usage restrictions within six online repositories, using a sample of 100 pre–1890 New Zealand heritage books. The findings indicate that new restrictions are being applied to works no longer protected by copyright. Out of the 50 titles that had been digitized, only three were hosted by repositories that do not restrict any type of subsequent use. Furthermore, 48 percent (24) were subject to access restrictions. Copyright law’s delicate balance between public and private interests is being eroded by the prevalence of online terms and conditions, which invoke the doctrine of contract law in an attempt to restrict the public domain and opt–out of limitations upon copyright. Furthermore, ambiguity surrounding the copyright status of some books is encouraging digitizers to adopt restrictive access policies, even when a work is highly likely to be in the public domain. Unless clear rules of online curatorship are articulated within legislation, previously liberated public domain works are at risk of being restricted by online intermediaries.

Vendor propaganda FTL.

$ for permissions never works out.

Copyright protection has lost touch with its intended purpose. Derek Khanna lays out some striking evidence in "Guarding Against Abuse: Rest...

Like most people, I’ve spent most of my life not actually thinking about copyright law. I bought into the idea that copyright “protects” creative works and encourages creativity. …

Editor's note: Sacha Labourey is CEO and Steven G. Harris is senior vice president of products for CloudBees.  APIs exist for a reason: They act as the communication channel, the lingua franca, the boundary, between the provider of the implementation and users of that implementation -- developers. Will our economy thrive and be more competitive because companies can easily switch from one service provider to the other by leveraging identical APIs?

A federal judge has ruled that Google's Android operating system infringes Oracle's copyrights. The ruling is bad news for the software industry.