Intellectual Property Archives | The Digital Reader

Disney Reportedly Withholding Royalties From Alan Dean Foster Over Star Wars, Aliens Novels

19 November, 202021 November, 2020Intellectual Property, Piracy2 Comments

Disney has replaced Amazon at the top of many people’s shit-lists this week when the SFWA publicly criticized the media giant for not paying royalties to...

Why the Internet Archive’s The Open Library is Not a Real Library

13 June, 202013 June, 2020Intellectual Property, Piracy3 Comments

One of the more common arguments made by defenders of the Internet Archive’s site, The Open Library, is that it is a library. They point out...

Internet Archive is Shutting Down National Emergency Library Two Weeks Early

11 June, 202011 June, 2020Intellectual Property, Lawsuit, Piracy3 Comments

The Internet Archive is shutting down one of its pirate sites ahead of schedule, and they are also not being honest about the reason. Yesterday IA...

Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post Takes Pro-Piracy Position on Internet Archive

11 June, 202011 June, 2020Intellectual Property, Piracy3 Comments

With one of the strictest paywalls in the news industry (you can’t even view an article if you block adverts), the Washington Post takes getting paid...

Four Publishers File Suit Over Internet Archive’s Pirate Site

1 June, 20201 June, 2020Intellectual Property, Piracy10 Comments

I can’t beleive it – book publishers have given Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle exactly what he wanted. Today the AAP announced that four US publishers...

You Give Up a Lot of Rights When You Post Works on Social Media, New Ruling Says

15 April, 202015 April, 2020Intellectual Property4 Comments

An interesting copyright ruling crossed my desk today. I don’t think it has been explained very well, so I would like to explain what it means...

French Court Rules Consumers Have the Right to Resell Games, Bringing eBook Resale One Step Closer to Being Reality

22 September, 201922 September, 2019Intellectual PropertyOne Comment

Just about every type of publisher making digital content today uses restrictive licenses to deny your rights over the content you buy, but those restrictions are...

eBook Resale Ruled Illegal in the EU (Actually, No, It Hasn’t)

11 September, 201922 September, 2019Intellectual Property5 Comments

For the past seven years it has been legal to resell software in Europe under what is known as the “UsedSoft” decision, a court ruling that...

The Biggest Plagiarism Scandal in the History of eBooks Slipped by Amazon Unnoticed

1 May, 20191 May, 2019Amazon, Fraud, Intellectual Property, Piracy, Uncategorized10 Comments

When news broke a little over two months ago that the Brazilian author person Cristiane Serruya had copied parts of Courtney Milan’s book, The Duchess War,...

Anti-Piracy Service Blasty is Back Online After a Week’s Downtime

22 March, 201924 March, 2019Intellectual Property, Piracy6 Comments

Since 2015 Blasty has been offering an anti-piracy service where they automatically scanned the web for pirated copies of an author’s work and gave authors the...

US Supreme Court Rules Copyright Holders Must Complete Registration Before Filing Suit

7 March, 20197 March, 2019Intellectual Property2 Comments

It has long been established that you had to register a copyright before you could file an infringement lawsuit, but some courts had accepted merely filing...

Could The Movie “Yesterday” be Based on the Book “Enormity”? (Maybe, but Probably Not)

20 February, 201911 July, 2019Intellectual Property15 Comments

The publishing industry’s current controversy of the week for this week revolves around an upcoming movie, and an author who is claiming implies that the movie’s plot...

The Writers’ Union of Canada Condemns The Internet Archive’s Pirate Site, “The Open Library”

23 January, 201923 January, 2019Intellectual Property, Piracy4 Comments

Hard on the heels of news that the UK Society of Authors condemning the Internet Archive for piracy comes an announcement from The Writers’ Union of Canada...

The Authors Guild Calls for a “Public Lending Right”

16 January, 201918 January, 2019Intellectual Property, Libraries17 Comments

The Authors Guild looked at the survey report on author income that they released a couple weeks ago, and they have come up with a solution...

For the First Time in Over 20 years, Copyrights Will Expire in the US

20 December, 20181 January, 2019Intellectual Property3 Comments

The problem with copyright law – particularly in the US – is that people keep wanting to profit off of that which they did not create....