As you know no way she could do this without copyright...

I googled "ebook library" and was happily surprised to see the number of sites available. These are books you can download for free, some of them for a limited time and others indefinitely, some still covered by copyright, but others not.

Ebook publisher Harper-Collins sees this as a threat to its business and so wants to limit the number of times an ebook can be lent out link here. Mike Masnick at Techdirt observes, "two of the big publishers -- Macmillan and Simon & Schuster -- don't allow any lending of ebooks, which is unquestionably worse." He thinks such publishers will simply lose business in a publishing world that is becoming increasingly digital.

I suspect we will end up in a divided world, one part with cheap or free e books and another with expensive ones with sharply limited use. Nor would I count on big business being unable to get legislative changes that further limits user rights, all in the name of protecting authors but really to protect copyright owners who by then will be mostly "publishers". Competition might provide a better outcome, but it hasn't stopped cartels in other business lines. For the moment, however, the news is good.

A hopeful story about monopoly under attack is by Julian Fisher, MD whose piece entitled Read This Academic Journal Article, but Prepare to Pay looks at the outlandishly high cost of medical journal reprints and more broadly, of scholarly journals link here.

He asks why the journals in all disciplines are so expensive and demolishes the argument that their costs are high. Authors are not paid by the publication, and the editor, normally a prestigious academic, works only for the honor. The journals ask $20-50 for reprints or require expensive subscriptions and there are lots of journals. In a limited breakthrough, "the National Institutes of Health now insists that the research they fund, when published, must be made available somewhere at no cost." Thus, that part of the government imposed monopoly has been broken. But the broad academic requirement for publication in one of those scholarly journals persists.

Fisher goes on to note, "The market has long been monopolized by mega-corporations making mega-bucks. But new business models abound. In the spirit of full disclosure, I started a not-for-profit to offer an alternative to the traditional models." That website is here

This interesting innovation is of interest to patients, doctors, and academics of all persuasions. It has been slow in coming, but there are other opportunities as well. One is the cost of textbooks. I note the price of N. Gregory Mankiw's recent rewrite of his basic economics text, Principles of Economics, "on sale" at Amazon for $199.11 with free shipping, as against the list price of $238.95.

Ah, to be an academic monopolist with what amounts to a perpetual copyright.

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal

This is usually attributed to Pablo Picasso, but I'm not sure he ever actually said it. It sure has been copied a lot!

http://mimiandeunice.com/

We economists are frequently accused of making too many assumptions. As a rule we look to evidence for our facts not to assumptions. Not so the rest of the world.

The front page of today's NYTimes carries Daniel WAKIN's story on making sheet music available for download on the internet link here(log-in required). It is quite a saga. The site is the International Music Score Library Project or imslp.org. It was started by Edward W. Guo, a music student, computer geek, and now a law student. It makes tens of thousands of scores free to download.

It started with scores that were out of copyright but has expanded to those made available under Creative Commons license. Guo was sued in 2007 by a commercial publisher of scores in Europe and had to close for a time because he didn't have the resources to fight. His solution is ingenious. He set the website up in Canada where copyright is less onerous in a separate corporation to remove personal responsibility and disclaims local legal responsibility. He warns downloaders that they are responsible for complying with their local variants on copyright. The organization is now run largely by volunteers. It arranges low cost printing services in addition to free downloads.

The economics of this is that the old line music publishers are about to become largely technologically unemployed, as their business will be increasingly reduced to publishing current works or copyrightable corrected versions of those out of copyright. Wakins quotes both Guo's public service logic in promoting a much cheaper innovation and the defense of music publishers that their profits helped induce publishing new music. That excuse sounds pretty feeble.

It involves a somewhat detailed question of law, but the background of the case is worth reading here:

http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/02/argument-preview-court-to-consider-standard-for-secondary-patent-liability/

Via The Arizona Republic / Tucson Citizen (with selected bold emphasis added):

A Tucson portrait photographer whose image of 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green was shared with media outlets by her family after she was killed is seeking compensation from numerous media companies, including The Arizona Republic and TucsonCitizen.com, and has threatened to sue if he is not paid.

Photographer Jon Wolf owns the photo's copyright and told the Green family that he intended to donate a portion of his earnings to a charity that helps grieving children and their families. However, Tucson charity Tu Nidito has since declined any funds he might receive. The Greens say they are infuriated by Wolf's actions. A public Facebook movement to boycott Wolf's business is circulating.

Gannett Co., Inc., parent corporation of The Arizona Republic and more than 140 other media entities including 12 News and USA Today, "respects intellectual property" and is willing to pay a standard licensing fee, said Barbara Wall, Gannett's vice president/senior counsel, but the sum will be far shy of the $125,000 Wolf has specified.

...

Wolf's request included a release form signed by both of Christina-Taylor's parents during the three-day period after their daughter's death, acknowledging Wolf as the copyright holder and freeing him to pursue damages.

A representative for John and Roxanna Green has said that, at the time, the Greens didn't fully comprehend Wolf's intentions.

"It's not right," John Green said. "People are angry at him, and they should be."

Read further details of this sordid tale here:

http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/2011/02/18/tucson-photographer-jon-wolf-seeks-fees-for-image-of-christina-taylor-green/

See the Facebook boycott page continue to grow here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-Jon-Wolf-Photography-for-suing-over-Christina-Greens-photo/145558518837516?ref=ts&sk=wall

Public Knowledge, the IP blogging site, is once again organizing to get people to weigh in on current policy debates over patents, copyright, net neutrality and other issues of concern to us users. It is currently organizing a call-in-your-Congressperson effort to support net neutrality link here. You can sign up at their website for the big call-in day tomorrow.

If you want to beat the big business lobbyists, you need to act.