Book links round-up: happy authors, Amazon in Spain, and more

• University of Chicago study ranks being an author as one of the 10 happiest jobs
• Actress Emma Thompson lands a deal with Penguin Young Readers Group to write The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit
• Milan-based publishing house 40K Books caters to short attention spans with digital essays, novelettes, and novellas
• In copyright case between five publisher plaintiffs and Google Books, deadline to agree on a settlement extended to 2012
• Amazon launches online store in Spain, possibly presaging expansion to the Netherlands, Sweden, and India

Lawsuit targets efforts to digitize books

Quebec’s Writers’ Union, the Union des écrivaines et des écrivains Québécois (UNEQ), is one of three major authors’ groups that filed a lawsuit yesterday against five U.S. universities for copyright infringement, The New York Times reports. The writers’ groups, which include the Authors Guild and the Australian Society of Authors along with eight individual authors, argue that the digital archive known as HathiTrust, a partnership between universities and libraries that houses millions of books and journals, does not respect authors’ rights.

From The NYT:

The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, contends that “by digitizing, archiving, copying and now publishing the copyrighted works without the authorization of those works’ rights holders, the universities are engaging in one of the largest copyright infringements in history.”

The plaintiffs are also concerned with the security of HathiTrust’s files. Rather than seeking damages, authors’ groups are asking that HathiTrust remove their digital collection.

This isn’t the first time the Authors Guild has taken issue with digital books. In 2005, the guild filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google for its initiative to digitize print texts through Google Books. That case remains unresolved.

Publishing at the polls: federal parties respond to arts and culture questions

The Canadian Conference of the Arts sent leaders of the five federal parties a series of questions pertaining to arts and culture, and have posted the responses on its website. All of the parties responded, except for the Conservatives.

The answers are published without edits, and in a handy table format so you can compare responses. Of particular interest are questions pertaining to the Copyright Modernization Act:

Which elements of Bill C-32 will your party keep, and which elements of the bill will your party remove or change in a new bill to modernize the Copyright Act?

Bloc Québécois: The Bloc Québécois will ensure that the new bill is fair to both creators and consumers. This balance must be achieved, most notably through: an upgraded system for private copying, applying to Mp3 players and other digital music players; reasonable royalties to artists for redistribution of their works; the abolition of the education exemption and fair recognition of the resale rights of visual artists.

The Bloc Québécois is committed to fostering a regime requiring ISPs to pay royalties, which will go towards a fund to pay creators in Quebec who have been harmed due to the illegal downloading of artistic works.

Conservative Party:

Green Party: The Green Party of Canada strongly supports artists’ rights to guaranteed fair compensation through fair patent and copyright laws. At the same time, we consider the digital lock provision in Bill C-32 to be excessively restrictive in that it will not allow students and journalists to properly create and conduct research.

We will work with the CCA and other stakeholders to sharpen the definition of “educational uses” to find the right balance to give researchers this ability in a manner consistent with a thriving information commons, fair dealing principles, and moral rights.

Liberal Party: Recent studies have shown that Canada’s out-of-date Copyright Act translates into major economic loss (up to $965 million lost last year due to piracy, according to an Ipsos/Oxford economics study) for Canadian creators all across the country; the Liberal Party will thus start working on presenting a modernized copyright act as soon as we form government. Bill C-32, the latest Conservative attempt to modernize copyright, was unbalanced and unfair; a Liberal government will work with all stakeholders to ensure creators rights and their sources of revenues are protected under the Copyright Act.

Digital technology offers many new opportunities, but enjoying content without compensating its creators shouldn’t be among them. A new Liberal government will introduce technology neutral copyright legislation that balances the needs of creators and consumers and reflects the principle that our artists and musicians should be paid for their work. We will stand with Canadian creators as they navigate both the opportunities and challenges of the new digital society.

During the debate on copyright legislation in the last Parliament, it was the Liberal Party that developed a practical solution to providing musicians with compensation through a new private copying compensation fund rather than a levy. A Liberal government will look to develop similarly innovative solutions to ensure that the Copyright Act protects creators’ existing and future rights and revenue streams in a digital age. Likewise, the Liberal party believes that any exception under fair dealings must be clearly defined with a clear and strict test for fair use so that creators are fairly compensated for their work.

NDP: In reviewing Bill C-32, New Democrats would closely examine a number of key issues contained in the proposed legislation, including (but not limited to) ISP liability, Technological Protection Measures (TPMs, or so-called “digital locks”), statutory damages, private copying and reproduction for private purposes, broadcast mechanical licensing and fair dealing.

In order to arrive at an equilibrium between the interests of rights-holders and those of consumers, New Democrats would likely begin developing new copyright laws, beginning by consulting widely with stakeholder groups with the aim of creating a legislation that is – unlike C-32 – truly technology-neutral, balanced and flexible enough to ensure its adaptability to new platforms and technologies in the years to come. We would also determine definitively Canada’s obligations as a signatory to various international treaties governing copyright and intellectual property.

And when you’re done reading all the responses, reward yourself with a visit to vintagevoter.ca.

Publishing at the polls: Copyright reform

As Canadians head to the polls on May 2, Q&Q looks at key federal policies affecting the publishing industry. Stay tuned for upcoming features on federal funding, mass digitization, and foreign-ownership regulations.

After nearly a year of parliamentary hearings and heavy industry lobbying, Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act, succumbed to a sudden death on March 26, when the latest Canadian federal election was called.

For nearly a decade, publishers, authors, and other content creators have lived without a copyright act that takes into account the realities of a digital economy. Bill C-32 was the federal government’s third attempt to update the legislation. To get a sense of how outdated Canada’s current laws are, the last copyright reform, passed in 1997, instituted a levy on cassette tapes. It will now be up to the new government to table yet another copyright bill — and successfully get it passed for there to be meaningful reform.

As Canadians head to the polls once again on May 2, Q&Q spoke to several publishing copyright advocates about the lessons learned from Bill C-32.
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Book biz round-up: Canada’s poor copyright rep, and more

• Canada lands on the International Intellectual Property Alliance’s priority watch list as “haven” for international piracy organizations
• All-nighter term papers just got a lot trickier: design flaw at University of Calgary’s new state-of-the-art library leaves book stacks off-limits until end of summer
• Saudia Arabian book club’s discussion of Blink a sign of impending youth revolt?
• Authors’ #whyIwrite hashtag trends on Twitter
• Funny or Die will launch publishing arm this summer. Fingers crossed for tell-all memoir by Pearl the landlord

New media “unconference” in Toronto this weekend

It can be a little tricky staying on top of the latest in new and social media these days. A few hours at PodCamp Toronto this weekend could be time well-spent in figuring out how to make better use of these tools for your business.

On Feb. 26 and Feb. 27 at Ryerson University, the self-described “unconference” will bring together hundreds of professional and amateur Web content producers and online community-builders – writers, bloggers, digital publishers, e-commerce professionals, Web designers, photographers, and podcasters among them. The event has dozens of free sessions, a number of which might be of interest to publishing professionals. Saturday is particularly meaty, with presentations on copyright and social media, social media trends for business, the legalities of blog advertising, online reputation management, core messaging, plus a roundtable on e-book trends, and a panel discussion on community management (a.k.a. online customer service). The schedule is available at the PodCamp Toronto 2011 website. Though the conference is free, there is a registration process.

Last year’s event attracted nearly 900 participants. A video archive of sessions from 2010 is available here.

East Coast author files lawsuit against Warner Bros.

A Nova Scotia sailor and writer is suing Warner Bros. for allegedly plagiarizing his novel, Fandango’s Gold, for their 2008 Matthew McConaughey/Kate Hudson vehicle Fool’s Gold.

In a statement of claim filed in federal court last week, Lou Boudreau maintains that writer-director Andy Tennant’s screenplay shares “uncanny” similarities with Boudreau’s book, written in 1999. Fandango’s Gold, based on the author’s real-life experience as a diver and fisherman, was registered with the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and published in 2006 by Tiller Publishing, a Maryland-based press specializing in nautical books.

The claim doesn’t specify the amount Boudreau is seeking in damages, though he says he’s entitled to the same cut afforded to the screenwriter of the film, which made over $300 million.

From Halifax’s The Chronicle-Herald:

In his statement of claim, Boudreau says his manuscript ended up in the hands of movie industry insiders, particularly in California, because he spent about five years between 1999 and 2004 promoting it.

In an interview… Boudreau said Fandango’s Gold starts out as the tale of a Spanish sailor on a galleon laden with gold sailing for Spain. It runs into a hurricane and is wrecked on a remote atoll in the Caribbean. The crew carries the treasure ashore and hides it in an underground cave with a passage to the sea.

[...]

In his statement of claim, Boudreau lists pages of similarities between his book and the film. They include the two romantic leads looking for the galleon’s treasure, the female lead being taken hostage by the bad guys, and the lead characters finding the treasure in an underground cave and swimming through an underwater tunnel to safety.

Boudreau is wading into risky waters – many an author has taken on big U.S. production companies and filmmakers, and the results haven’t necessarily been favourable. (Remember when Rebecca Eckler took on Judd Apatow in 2007?) In the end, Boudreau says he has to stand up for his work and his “moral rights.”

“I’m the little schooner captain from Cape Breton and they are Warner Bros. Therein lies the great inequity,” he told The Chronicle-Herald. “It’s important for me because I wrote this book. It was very personal to me.”

Book scanner could allow consumer to create their own e-books

At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, ION Audio introduced a device that should strike fear in the hearts of publishers: a consumer-grade book scanner that can create e-books at a rate of one page per second.

Set to go on sale this spring at an expected retail price of $150 (U.S.), the scanner is outfitted with two overhead cameras that simultaneously photograph the pages of an open book, which rests on an angled cradle. Described by ION Audio as an “e-reader conversion system for printed materials,”  the ironically named Book Saver “promises to shake the publishing industry in the same way CD burners shook the music industry and forever changed copyright laws in the early 1990s,” says the National Post.

The Post goes on to highlight the paradigm-shifting repercussions of the device in the context of Canadian copyright law:

The Book Saver device [...] arrives as Canada is once again trying to amend outdated copyright legislation to better address the digital era.

…

A key question in the current round of talks is whether consumers have any right to make personal copies of DVDs, e-books and video games for personal use.

Quebec National Assembly protests Bill C-32

As Q&Q has previously reported, the debate over Bill C-32, the copyright modernization act now being reviewed by legislative committee, is heating up, with writer and publisher groups speaking out in support of the rights of content creators.

Now, as representatives from the publishing industry engage in a lobbying blitz in Ottawa, Quebec’s National Assembly has unanimously voted against the legislation in a motion that proposes amendments to key aspects of the bill. According to The Hill Times The Wire Report, the motion calls for a personal copying levy on digital media players:

“That the National Assembly recognize the crucial role of content creators and the importance of intellectual property in the economic model of Québec arts and culture,” the motion says.

“That it concur in the concerns of the artistic milieu, particularly in music and literary publishing, and ask the Federal Government to modify as often as necessary Bill C-32 on copyright, to ensure Québec creators the full recognition of their rights, adequate protection against illegal copying of their works, the application of the private copying principle, and income in accordance with the value of their intellectual property.”

The House of Commons legislative committee on Bill C-32 held its first meeting on Tuesday. According to The Hill Times The Wire Report, the bill won’t be ready for third reading until February at the earliest.

Books of the Year 2010: Books for Young People

There’s no formula for choosing the books of the year. Some break ground, some tackle familiar themes with new energy. Some represent the best work from established authors, some introduce us to important new voices. And some are simply in-house favourites we feel deserve a little more attention. Here are the Books for Young People that made the most impact in 2010.

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