US Copyright office no fan of google book settlement
Building on our previous post about today's House hearing on digital books, it appears that Marybeth Peters, head of the US Copyright Office, is not supportive of the google book settlement. In written testimony (PDF) before the House Judiciary Committee, she wrote that the settlement...
“...inappropriately creates something similar to a compulsory license for works, unfairly alters the property interests of millions of rights-holders of out-of-print works without any Congressional oversight and has the capacity to create diplomatic stress for the United States.”For more, see today's Wallstreet Journal blog: "Copyright Office No Fan of Google Books Settlement." Continue reading
lunchtime listen: Carl Malamud’s address at Gov2.0 summit
Carl Malamud (from public.resource.org) gave what was generally agreed was a rousing talk at Gov2.0 Summit this morning. The talk was entitled "By the people..." Please go to his site to access the pamphlet he created (and order it for your library!) and a live pre-recording of the address. I promise it'll be worth it! Continue reading
Feds Launch OpenID Pilot
It is no surprise that plenty of people have been saving up their big announcements for the Gov 2.0 Summit. The OpenID Foundation, for example, used the conference venue to announce that they will be collaborating with the U.S. General Services Administration to test OpenID at several federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health. For more information, see:
- OpenID press release, 9 September 2009
- OpenID and Open Government home page
- OpenID in Government FAQ
- Open Identity for Open Government Explained, from Identity Woman blog
September 10: House Hearing on Digital Books
The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on "Competition and Commerce in Digital Books" at 10 a.m. tomorrow, September 10. The hearing will be webcast; the link is on the committee's hearings calendar page. ALA has some information available on its site. See: Library Associations submit testimony... and the ALA Google Book Settlement page. Continue reading
Gov 2.0 Expo and the Apps for America 2 Challenge Winners
The Sunlight Foundation announced the winners of their "Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge" at the O'Reilly/techweb Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase in DC yesterday. The web applications were to be built with data available from the U.S. Data.gov site. And the prizes go to...
First prize: DataMasher.org. Combine and compare government data at the state level.
Second prize: GovPulse. Making Federal Register access easier.
Third prize: ThisWeKnow.org. Find government info by zip code.
Prize for best data visualization: QuakeSpotter.org. Global view of earthquakes with links to quake-related tweets.
Get complete information from Sunlight's press release.
The one-day Gov 2.0 Expo is over, and the two-day Gov 2.0 Summit (with bold face names) is in progress. They are tweeting up a storm over at the Hyatt, using the hashtag #gov2s.
[Update: They are using the #g2s tag, too.]
I will blog more later on how the Gov 2.0 Expo went.
Continue reading