Authors Alliance firmly believes in the importance of open licensing to vibrant and productive scholarship. But open licensing is legally complex and simply calling a license “open” does not make it so. We need open licenses that work to promote access and that enable open resources from various publication platforms to be used together in […]
Guest-blogged by Authors Alliance member Matthew Sag, a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Authors Alliance supports Google’s fair use defense because it helps authors reach readers. Matthew provides another reason why this case is important to the advancement of knowledge and scholarship. Earlier this month a group of more than 150 researchers, […]
By Authors Alliance co-founder Pamela Samuelson. It was nearly a decade ago that the Authors Guild and three of its members brought a class action lawsuit against Google. It charged that Google’s digitization of in-copyright books from major research library collections for its Book Search project was copyright infringement. The plaintiffs have asked for an […]
Authors Alliance is joining 34 other organizations in telling the negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) not to extend copyright terms beyond the current international minimums. The international group signing the letter includes representatives of libraries, archives, educators, and authors; leaders such as the Association of Research Libraries, Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, the Canadian Library […]
By Authors Alliance co-founder Pamela Samuelson. During the Authors Alliance launch at the Internet Archive, I talked about why the problem of orphan works is one of the pressing concerns the Authors Alliance seeks to address with its Principles and Proposals for Copyright Reform. Many of us, including academics, biographers, writers of historical fiction, and […]
By Authors Alliance co-founder Molly Van Houweling. Yesterday Judge Richard Posner, writing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, ruled that the copyrights in stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle and published before 1923 have expired, clearing the way for the publication of an anthology of new stories featuring Doyle’s famous detective […]
By Authors Alliance co-founder Pamela Samuelson. The Authors Guild may have suffered a major loss today when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against its copyright infringement lawsuit against HathiTrust. But the HathiTrust win is an important victory for authors who write to be read and want readers to know their works exist. The […]
By Authors Alliance co-founder Pamela Samuelson. The time is ripe for considering how copyright policy should respond to the opportunities and challenges of the digital age. Indeed, the top U.S. copyright official, Maria Pallante, has urged Congress to get to work on “The Next Great Copyright Act.” As we prepared for the launch of the […]
In conjunction with its public launch, the Authors Alliance has announced its Principles and Proposals for Copyright Reform. This document outlines the Authors Alliance vision for a copyright reform effort that would work for authors who write to be read.
Knowing a publisher’s copyright policy is essential to making informed choices in the publication process, particularly for authors who wish to ensure they have the rights needed to ensure their work’s availability and to keep it up to date. Fortunately, the SHERPA/RoMEO search engine makes the process much simpler by presenting copyright policy information for many academic publishers in an accessible, color-coded manner.
For more information on authorship and ownership, please read our FAQ on the subject.
