LCA files amicus brief in support of HathiTrust and its partners - 06 Jun 2013 The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) recently filed an amicus brief in support of HathiTrust and its partners as they defend their district court victory on appeal in the Second Circuit. LCA consists of three major library associations - the American Library Association, ARL, and the Association of College and Research Libraries - that collectively represent over 300,000 information professionals and thousands of libraries of all kinds throughout the US and Canada. In the powerful brief, LCA counsel Jonathan Band explains that the HathiTrust Digital Library's digitization of over 10 million books for preservation, non-consumptive research, and accessibility is lawful. The Digital Library is a research tool and an accessible resource of world-historical significance that the court should welcome. The brief makes three core arguments - the HathiTrust project is a fair use consistent with library best practices; the specific exceptions favouring libraries do not preempt fair use; and libraries are 'authorised entities' who can make accessible books available to the print disabled under the Chafee Amendment. In the process, the brief responds to the Authors Guild's reading of the Copyright Act, which would make basic library activities illegal and treat patrons with print disabilites as second-class citizens. The LCA brief is one of 12 amicus briefs filed this week in support of HathiTrust and its partner libraries.

Scientific journals in US told to avoid manuscripts from Iran governmental researchers - 06 May 2013 Scientific journals are reportedly being asked to help tighten US trade sanctions on Iran. On April 30, Dutch publisher Elsevier sent a note to its editorial network saying that all US editors and US reviewers must 'avoid' handling manuscripts if they include an author employed by the Iran government. Under a policy that went into effect in March reflecting changes in a law passed by the US Congress in December, even companies like Elsevier that are not based in the US must prevent their US personnel from interacting with the Iranian government. The sanctions, aimed at punishing Iran for its pursuit of nuclear technology, have been broadened somewhat from previous rules issued by the enforcement agency, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a division of the Treasury Department. According to a treasury official, OFAC has not changed its 'general license' policy for journals; it still allows them to publish articles authored by nongovernmental scientists from Iran and other sanctioned countries. The new wrinkle is that OFAC insists that all US citizens, no matter who employs them, comply with the sanctions against papers authored by governmental researchers. That apparently prompted Elsevier to issue a warning to its employees. An Elsevier spokesperson has explained that the new restrictions were expected to affect a small number of papers and that the company had implemented 'more specific sanctions … over the past year or two' as a result of UN recommendations. OFAC tangled with scientific journals almost a decade ago when it proposed much harsher restrictions on communications from Iran. That led to an organised protest by the American Institute of Physics, the Association of American Publishers and others, resulting in the current understanding: OFAC permits the exhange of scientific but not government-sponsored communications from Iran.

ARL applauds US Judiciary Committee action to reform privacy laws - 26 Apr 2013 The US Senate Judiciary Committee has, on April 25, reportedly taken another crucial step toward fixing outdated privacy laws by endorsing a bill proposed by Chairman Patrick Leahy. The bill includes vital reforms to give appropriate privacy protection to e-mail and cloud storage. The committee passed a similar bill in November 2012, but the legislative session ended before the measure could reach the full Senate. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) applauds Chairman Leahy and all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for their strong, bipartisan support for reasonable privacy protections online. For more information about the committee action and the bill, which would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), see "Updating an E-Mail Law from the Last Century" in the New York Times (April 24, 2013). ARL is a nonprofit organisation of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve.

Publisher associations unveil safe harbour rules for use of out-of-commerce journals - 22 Apr 2013 The International Association of Scientific, Technical&Medical Publishers (STM), Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), and the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division (PSP) of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) have issued a joint statement setting out clear rules for the digitisation of copyright works which are out of commerce. Along with these rules, the trade associations also mutually granted a 'safe harbour' on behalf of publishers in the form of a waiver of claims for fees or damages for use of works when the new rules are followed. Following on from the EC Memorandum of Understanding 'Key Principles on the Digitisation and Making Available of Out-of-Commerce Works', which was signed by a number of organisations including STM in September 2011, the new joint statement applies the same principles as the Memorandum in terms of providing a safe harbour for digitisation projects taking place within EU countries. Likewise, it follows the three trade associations' safe harbour statement on the use of content from orphan works in new works, course-packs and compilations, which was released in 2007 and has subsequently been signed by more publishing houses. The rules for the use of out-of-commerce works set out in the new joint statement recognise that the right to authorise the use of an out-of-commerce work is vested in the copyright holder (authors and publishers) and that voluntary solutions involving collective management represent the most logical and practical ways forward. The safe harbour document outlines a need for a viable and diligent search to exclude materials that are not out of commerce, as well as for clear and adequate attribution in order to respect the authors' moral rights. Users who comply with these rules when completing their digitisation projects will be subject only to normal licence fees and will not be subject to any statutory, punitive or special fees or damages under the terms of the safe harbour arrangement.

SAGE welcomes OSTP announcement increasing access to results of federally funded scientific research - 05 Mar 2013 Ziyad Marar, Global Publishing Director of academic and professional publisher SAGE, has welcomed the OSTP Director's memorandum to Heads of Executive Department and Agencies directing agencies to develop clear and coordinated policies to increase access. Ziyad Marar welcomed the OSTP's announcement and their approach of setting out policy objectives but not mandating specific solutions and their recognition that embargo periods will need to be set appropriately for each subject area. He hailed OSTP's recognition of the value of the services that publishers provide. According to Marar, SAGE is ready to work with OSTP and other stakeholders to help create sustainable solutions that increase access and dissemination while maintaining the many existing valuable attributes of the scholarly communication ecosystem.