Flashback (Week of 1/15/07)

What was new and interesting during the week of 1/15/07? (Brief quotes follow article/Web page titles.)

• "Behind the Anshe Chung DMCA Complaint"

  Outraged by the video and the collection of images used in the news reports—which spread quickly across the Internet—Ailin Graef's husband and business partner, Guntram Graef, fired off a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint to YouTube, which pulled the video, citing a "copyright infringement" violation.

• "Can HP Fool Moore's Law?"

  Researchers from HP Labs plan to publish a paper this month that outlines how it may become possible to substantially increase the performance of certain types of chips, and reduce their power consumption, by replacing the communication wires inside chips with an overhead grid of tiny nanowires.

• "Cap'n Crunch at 63 "

  During Silicon Valley's hacker heyday in the 1970s, John Draper, now 63, was the legendary phone phreaker who hung out with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and used a whistle toy from a cereal box to generate the squeal necessary to trick Ma Bell's phone system into free long distance.

• "Digital Music Sees Sales Double"

  Global digital music sales have almost doubled to around $2bn (£1bn) in 2006, according to an industry report.

• "Documents Borne by Winds of Free Speech"

  It is a messy plot that pits Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant at the center of several articles in The New York Times suggesting that the company tried to hide or play down the health risks of its leading antipsychotic drug, Zyprexa, and lawyers representing various individuals, organizations and Web sites—all arguing that their online speech has been gagged.

• "A DVD Copy Protection Is Overcome by Hackers"

  Last weekend, a loose-knit coalition of hackers around the world defeated the antipiracy software protecting several high-resolution movies in the HD DVD format.

• "Elesevier Talks Up Output Informatics for Academia"

  STM publishers can provide universities with the help they need in measuring their output so as to attract funding and students in the face of increasingly stiff competition, says Elsevier.

• "The Flawed Agreement between the National Archives and Footnote, Inc."

  I'm a little concerned about the new agreement between Footnote, Inc. and the United States National Archives. . . . Guess what? From now until 2012 it will cost you $100 a year, or even more offensively, $1.99 a page, for online access to critical historical documents such as the Papers of the Continental Congress.

• "Knopf: What to Look for in 2007 in Canadian Copyright"

  There are rumours of a copyright bill being tabled, possibly in the first few days of when parliament returns on January 29.

• "Library of Congress Unveils Beta of New THOMAS"

  The Library of Congress has released a new beta version of THOMAS, its Web site that provides access to federal legislation and related documents(http://thomas.loc.gov/beta).

• "A Line in the Tundra: After Complex Negotiation, Norwegian Libraries Drop Journal Package"

  In a breakdown that illustrates the ongoing complexity of e-journal licensing deals, four Norwegian universities announced on the SPARC electronic discussion list that they would not renew their subscription to Blackwell journals.

• "My Review of Wikinomics"

  Wikinomics is a good book for managers who want to understand the latest trends in technology and society.

• "New University Librarian at UM Is Not a Librarian"

  Paul Courant is UM’s new university librarian. He was UM provost from 2002-2005, currently is the Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor of Public Policy in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, professor of economics in LSA and professor of information in the School of Information.

• "Privately, Hollywood Admits DRM Isn't About Piracy"

  If we believe Ronald Grover's sources in his BusinessWeek article of last week, the problem is liberal DRM and not piracy, and this is a startling admission. According to him, an unnamed studio executive said that a major reason why studios weren't jumping on board with the iTunes Store and other similar services is that their DRM is too lax. "[Apple's] user rules just scare the heck out of us." It's not piracy that's the concern, it's their ability to control how you use the content you purchase.

• "Prospecting for ORE"

  At the end of last week, I attended the first meeting of the—deep breath —Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange Technical Committee (that's OAI ORE TC from now on!). . . . ORE is a recently launched project within the OAI, and is funded by the Mellon Foundation, with some additional support from the National Science Foundation.

• "Repeat PERFORMance"

  The 110th Congress's first copyright initiatives came on January 11th, with two bills introduced in the Senate. S. 258, introduced by Senator Akaka and 20 other Senators is a bill "to clarify provisions relating to statutory copyright licenses for satellite carriers."

• "Researchers of the World: Unite to Support European Commission Open Access Policy"

  A consortium of European organisations working in the scholarly communication arena is now sponsoring a petition to the European Commission to demonstrate support for these recommendations on the part of the European and worldwide research community.

• "RIAA Wins Judgement against Soccer Mom's Daughter "

  Judge Stephen C. Robinson of United States District Court ordered the daughter, Michelle Santangelo, to pay $750 for each of the 41 songs she is accused of downloading illegally—a total of $30,750—because she failed to respond to the record companies' claims.

• "SPARC at Ten: A Decade Later, Organization Still Aims to Be Part of the Solution"

  What a difference a decade makes. In 2007, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) celebrates its tenth anniversary, now with an expansive mission to work not only on behalf of libraries but for the welfare of the higher education community at large, and for individual researchers and the public.

• "US Congress Seeks to Add DRM to Podcasts"

  A bill has been proposed in Washington that would make digital rights management (DRM) software mandatory in podcasts and internet radio broadcasts.

• "U.S.: No Net Governance Changes Expected"

  Are tensions related to the United States' historic influence over key Internet management functions a thing of the past?

• "When Is Open Access Really Open Access?"

  Some forms of open access are, it seems, more open than others, with an American Scientist Open Access Forum debate ending with a consensus that a number of open access (OA) models exist.

• "Wiley Digitises 750 Books in Landmark Series"

  The digitised content from 750 volumes will be hosted on the Wiley InterScience online publishing platform, and an estimated 21 book series will be uploaded over the coming year. Wiley currently hosts 2,235 online books and the additional 750 volumes are expect to take total content to well over a million pages.