Nixon Library to Open New Materials in June

On June 23, 2009, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum will make newly available 154 hours of Nixon White House tape recordings and textual materials among the Nixon Presidential Historical Materials.

"The tape recordings will be made available on the Web at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov beginning at 9 a.m. (EDT)/6 a.m. (PDT). The textual materials will be made available at the National Archives building at College Park, MD beginning at 11 a.m."

http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/E9-11515.htm

Southeast Alaska Funerary Object to be Repatriated

Notice appearing in the Federal Register, E9-10577:
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/E9-10577.htm

Quote:

In 1976, an object was removed from a cave in Port Malmesbury, Kuiu
Island in Southeast Alaska, by a Forest Service archeologist. The
object is a wooden artifact that is believed to be a funerary object
since the cave where it was removed from contained human remains and
associated funerary objects. The human remains and associated funerary
objects that were removed from Port Malmesbury, Kuiu Island were
repatriated to the Organized Village of Kake in 1998, and are described
in a Notice of Inventory Completion previously published in the Federal
Register (63 FR 18034-18035, April 13, 1998). Due to an administrative
oversight this funerary object was not included.
   Historical and ethnographic records, along with Tlingit oral
history, indicate that a smallpox epidemic in the 1800s decimated the
Tlingit communities on Kuiu Island and the survivors moved to Kake and
Klawock. The members of the Killerwhale clan in these villages are the
descendants of these survivors.
   Officials of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tongass National
Forest have determined that, pursuant to 25 U.S.C. 3001(3)(B), the one
object described above is reasonably believed to have been placed with
or near individual human remains at the time of death or later as part
of the death rite or ceremony and are believed, by a preponderance of
the evidence, to have been removed from a specific burial site of a
Native American individual. Officials of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Tongass National Forest also have determined that,
pursuant to 25 U.S.C. 3001(2), there is a relationship of shared group
identity that can be reasonably traced between the unassociated
funerary object and the Klawock Cooperative Association and Organized
Village of Kake.

[Today] The Wikipedia Revolution

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/webofideas/2009/03/wikipediarevolution

From the Berkman Center: "The Wikipedia Revolution is the first narrative account of the remarkable success story of the "encyclopedia anyone can edit." Andrew Lih, a Wikipedia editor/administrator, academic and journalist, tells how the Internet's free culture community inspired its creation in 2001, and how legions of volunteers have emerged to create over 10 million articles in over 50 languages. The book recounts colorful behind-the-scenes stories of how obsessive map editors, automated software robots and warring factions have come to shape a complex online community of knowledge gatherers. Learn about the historical underpinnings of Wikipedia, of how a Hawaiian vacation and a fringe piece software from Apple Computer inspired the wiki concept, and realized the original read-and-write capabilities of the Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web. While Wikipedia has become firmly planted at the top of Google's search results, what are the challenges as sum of all human knowledge becomes more complete, and its problem is not growth, but reliability? Should we be putting so much trust in a resource created by anonymous nobodies?"

Orphan Works Act

http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/

Legislation is pending in Congress that would ease the “orphan works” problem - this is a nice summary.

The Obama Hope Poster Case

NPR has conducted a series of interviews with the interested parties. I include a link to the interview with law professor Greg Lastowka.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101187066

To clarify his discussion - the Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. (1994). 510 U.S. 569, 583-585 case never actually held 2 Live Crew's use was fair use, but instead suggested the use might be fair use, and sent it back down to the lower court for a determination. To quote: "Held: 2 Live Crew's commercial parody may be a fair use within the meaning of §107. Pp. 4-25. " Notice the word "may." http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1292.ZS.html

The four factors are not applied as willy nilly as might be suggested in the interview.

David Nimmer (2003), a leading intellectual property scholar, conducted a study on copyright cases decided between 1994 and 2002, and found 90% of the time, if three of the four factors are found in favor of fair use, fair use is affirmed. One cannot generalize his findings though, because he did not randomly select the 60 cases he examined, nor did he analyze all reported decisions. Overall, of the 60 cases he examined, 24 upheld fair use and 36 denied it (pp. 269-277). Nimmer also analyzed percentage correspondences between each of the four factors and a favorable determination with correspondences ranging from 42% correspondence to factor two, and 57% correspondence to factor four, in the context of overall favorable findings. He states across all four factors, there is a 51% correspondence to a favorable legal outcome.Nimmer, D. (2003). “Fairest of them all” and other fairy tales of fair use. Law & Contemp. Probs., 66, 263-287.

There's other copyright and non-copyright issues as well other than the "fair use" claim. (I have not read the case but according to NPR, the potential copyright infringer is the one who filed the case for some kind of declaratory relief - always problematic because whoever filed the case has the burden -- I always think of this as if you are going to start the problem, then you will have the burden of proving yourself correct).

If I were arguing against the AP, I’d assert that the Obama photograph is not original. Per copyright law, in order for an artifact to be copyright protected, it must be an “original work of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression.” http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102

Also note that “fixed” means fixed with authorization. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102

Then there is right to publicity issues going against AP:
http://www.publaw.com/rightpriv.html

Then of course, I’d recommend the AP lawyers read chapter 7 of this book when it is published in 2 months.
http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61789

:)

The Student Term Paper Websites Case Continues . . .

http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2008/11/student_paper_w.htm

This is a link to Eric Goldman's blog wherein he summarized the Axact v. SNR New Jersey case involving two companies, one in the US, and one in Karachi, Pakistan. This case has piqued my interest and it has a rich set of documents available for analysis. Thus, I've decided to propose an article on this case for a special issue of a journal in our field.

Today I have spent a few hours reading through the court pleadings and documents. The most interesting order was produced 12-12-08 involving google, inc.'s agreement to remove the student term paper websites associated in the court pleadings with Axact from its search engine.

The documents can all be accessed through justia.com.

Free Software Group Sues Cisco For Open Source Violations

Reported by Information Week:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212400491&subSection=Operating%20Systems

I've been wondering when we might get over the "wow" phase on open source -- perhaps as the lawsuits start piling up, a more critical view will be struck regarding the discourse of the commons and the concept of "open source." Open source does not mean a free for all, it's turning out.

Human Origins: A NSF RFP

"Human Origins": A National Science Foundation Request for Proposals.

My interest in copyright law, in what it tries to accomplish, is linked to my broader interest in origins, and in discourses about origins, including human origins. Origins, as I've previously mentioned, is linked to the concept of "authorship." I've been following numerous publications that provide information on new RFPs -- funding opportunities. And so, I thought I'd collect this RFP on Human Origins from the NSF. The rest of this post is a direct quote from the RFP:

http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf09521

This competition is directed towards increasing our knowledge of the complex biological, physical, and behavioral interrelationships that led to the development of our species and that are responsible for both the shared and variable features that characterize living human populations. It recognizes that understanding of the processes and pathways of human evolution requires input from a wide range of disciplines which examine our species from multiple perspectives and across both time and space. Accomplishing this goal requires a large scale initiative which allows research activities that go beyond the smaller, shorter duration, single investigator awards that disciplinary programs have been able to provide in the past. The Human Origins: Moving In New Directions (HOMINID) competition will support large scale, long term, integrative research and infrastructure projects through awards of up to $500,000 per year for up to five years. Contingent on the availability of funds, the program expects to make two awards in each fiscal year. It is intended that HOMINID awards will provide for transformative approaches to long-standing questions about the history of our species. Infrastructure development is also eligible for support either as a stand alone project or as part of a research award. One goal of the competition is to develop a portfolio of awards that reflects the multiple approaches to the understanding of human origins. It is expected that the combination of awards will complement each other and prove to be mutually informative as they progress.

College Sues Saying its Poetry Program was Stolen

Poetry, if anything, definitely depends on the concept of the "single author" in order to remain legitimate. So it makes sense to me, that if any program were to allege that it has been stolen by another institution, it would be a poetry program. I just can't imagine something like this happening with a "digital rhetoric" program, for example, although I suppose it's possible.

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education contains a headline: "In Lawsuit, New England College Says its Poetry Program was Stolen." The article reports: "New England College has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the former director of its master’s-degree program in poetry stole faculty members and students from the New Hampshire institution and re-created the program at Drew University, in New Jersey." The full article is here: http://chronicle.com/jobs/blogs/onhiring/794

The Concord Monitor article is located here: http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081123/FRONTPAGE/811230350

The Monitor article quotes Peter Callaghan, "a Concord employment lawyer who regularly litigates cases in federal court," and hasn't worked on the case but has read the files, as stating: "if the facts are as New England College has alleged, the court will have to decide whether Macari was working for Drew University while she was being paid by NEC." He points out that employees are supposed to be working exclusively for their employers.

The problem as I see it, is the instructor involved, based on my reading of these news articles and not the case files at this point, was an adjunct. The news articles are unclear, but it appears that she was an adjunct at least part of the time when the events of the case unfolded. Adjuncts by nature often work at multiple institutions simultaneously. When I did this, it was common practice to use the same teaching materials at various institutions in order to work as efficiently as possible. It seems to me, by the nature of the beast, adjuncts always already work for "competing" employers simultaneously.

Apparently, at least according to the Monitor, "In a letter to the Drew University president, NEC President Michelle Perkins expressed concern that Macari had also made off with NEC's proprietary information like inquiry lists for recruiting future students."

What an interesting situation. A case like this should leave no doubt in any one's mind that the educational institution is indeed a business, in the most material way, and that evidence of its business nature can even been seen in the poetry department.

The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/world/asia/19mummy.html?_r=1

According to Edward Wong of the New York Times, a mummy find of global significance is challenging the master narrative of the peopling of China:

"One called the Loulan Beauty lies on her back with her shoulder-length hair matted down, her lips pursed in death, her high cheekbones and long nose the most obvious signs that she is not what one thinks of as Chinese."

The "Tarim mummies" on display at a museum in Urumqi, China, might indicate that a certain sometimes contested area of China was settled by people from the west rather than people from China's interior. The older mummy is 3,800 years old. Ancestors of the people from the west are taking this idea and using it to argue that "Xinjiang has belonged to the Uighurs throughout history."

"What is indisputable is that the Tarim mummies are among the greatest recent archaeological finds in China, perhaps the world" Wong reports that scientists have not been permitted to perform genetic testing on these mummies, due in part to the fact that the evidence they present, by way of complicating settled histories of the peopling of China, will challenge the status quo.

This controversy in China reminds me of that surrounding the Kennewic Man in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man

Authorship and Origins

Foucault says that the origins of anything is an ever receding point. However, we should still try to trace origins. Tracing origins necessitates the tracing of authorship, every time, even in science, because in science origin stories are still authored.

The simple connection between authorship and origins is that both are strategies for ownership. A claim to authorship is a claim to ownership. An origin story as well, is a claim to ownership. If a certain peoples originated in a certain geographical location, than that gives them a claim to ownership. There are also claims to the ownership of one’s origins. The claim that human kind originated in the Garden of Eden at the hand of god, is a claim to ownership of the history of human beings, ownership of the correct, real, true story. A claim to authorship is a claim to being the originator of something. If I claim authorship in this blog or that power point, than I claim that it originated in me. This is the simple connection between authorship and origins. They aren’t the same thing, but they are connected.