Read Understanding Library eBook Lending: Q&A with Panorama Project Lead Guy LeCharles Gonzalez (IBPA)

(Manhattan Beach, CA - October 13, 2020) -- When an IBPA member sent the office a link to this Wired article about ebooks flying off libraries’ virtual shelves with the question,...

“I am a bit confused by why one ebook could cost 40-60 dollars. Is that only with the Big 5?”

...IBPA reached out to Panorama Project lead Guy LeCharles Gonzalez for more information.


IBPA: Hi Guy. So, what's with the average $40 price for a library ebook?

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez (GLG): That Wired article has caused quite a stir despite being a little behind the story! The ebook pricing cited is a little too broad, but it's on the right track, especially for Big 5 ebooks which are what most of these articles tend to focus on.

I’ve been meaning to do some research into pricing that libraries pay. Apparently it’s more than I would have expected.
Replied to Proposing a Microformats2 Markup for Licensing Information by Jamie TannaJamie Tanna (Jamie Tanna)
Some recommendations for how to mark up licensing information with Microformats, for making license information machine-discoverable and machine-readable.

Great write up Jamie. Some interesting things to think about and lots of useful examples.

I suspect that for most personal websites the idea of fair use will give people enough protection for reply contexts. Of course it will depend on their jurisdiction as fair use can vary by country or potentially even within countries in terms of how it is applied.

I would almost have to think that barring particular legislation and precedent that people/companies who are explicitly providing Open Graph Protocol or similar meta data on their websites are explicitly granting a license to use that content as the only use for that data on most systems is to provide it for creating contexts on services like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Facebook likely created OGP as a proprietary format to give itself broad legal protection for just such use cases, though I suspect they parse pages and take titles or other snippets when OGP doesn’t exist. Naturally some large systems like WordPress may push OGP into code without the site’s owners being aware of what they’re potentially giving away, so the area is really murky at best. It would be beneficial to consult an attorney to see what their best advice might be or if there are precedents with respect to these areas.

For future reference, here is the relevant section for Fair Use from Title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States:

107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use40

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

👓 Your Licenses? Frankly My Dear… | CogDogBlog

Read Your Licenses? Frankly My Dear… by Alan Levine (CogDogBlog)
I have openly shared, published online, gave away the store on just about everything I have created since getting into ed-tech in the early 1990s (c.f. “old dude”). I did this before there was a Creative Commons, I embrace and advocate CC, yet I don’t find all that much interesting in debating the various license flavors. While I understand the reasons for having so many two letter alphabet combos to string along after CC BY, frankly my dear, I think there are way too many of them. I’d rather be making stuff than dissecting licenses.
tl;dr: Is it really worth the effort to put a license on anything? Who’s going to steal it? And if they do, god bless them.

I could go with this…

👓 Petition to Re-License React has been Escalated to Facebook’s Engineering Directors | WP Tavern

Read Petition to Re-License React has been Escalated to Facebook’s Engineering Directors by Sarah Gooding (WP Tavern)
React users are petitioning Facebook to re-license React.js after the Apache Software Foundation announced its decision to ban Apache PMC members from using any technology licensed with Facebook’s BSD+Patents License. So far the GitHub issue has received 627 “thumbs up” emoji and 66 comments from concerned React users who are hoping for a change in licensing. Many respondents on the thread said that ASF’s decision affects their organizations’ ability to continue using React in projects. “Apache CouchDB and others will switch away from React if we have to,” CouchDB committer Robert Newson said. “We’d rather not, it’s a lot of work for no real gain, but we don’t have a choice. Changing license can be simple (RocksDB completed that change in a day).”