TAA has joined nearly 40 national and international organizations in an appeal to librarians and readers to discontinue a practice called “Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)”, an initiative started by the Internet Archive that supports libraries in making unauthorized digital copies of print books to distribute to readers online.
The joint statement, released by the groups on February 13, calls CDL “a flagrant violation of copyright and authors’ rights”, and appeals “for a dialogue among writers, authors, publishers, and librarians on how to enable and create the digital libraries we all want, in ways that fully respect authors’ rights.” [Read more…]
Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) is an effort to provide broader access to works held in libraries by creating a digital copy and then lending it out on terms that are ostensibly analogous to the ways that physical copies of books are lent from the library. The practice was initiated last year by the Internet Archive (IA) through its Open Libraries project. CDL.org now appears to be incorporated as a separate entity from the Internet Archive, though IA continues to promote it. 
In a recent TAA webinar, Stephen E. Gillen, a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in and around the publishing business, and author of the book, 
Whether you are publishing open access articles, working on open textbooks, or simply securing images for use in your manuscripts, chances are you will encounter the Creative Commons licensing model at some point.
Your contract provided by your publisher will probably put the burden of securing permission for the use of third party material solely on you. How much of this is negotiable? What are the possible compromises? And regardless of whether you end up doing it or the publisher does it, under what circumstances do you need permission and how do you best go about getting it? Get answers to these questions from Stephen E. Gillen, a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in and around the publishing business, and author of 
The U.S. Copyright Office announced that it will begin accepting applications for group registration of photographs through the Office’s online registration system starting February 20, 2018. In most cases, applicants will generally be required to file such applications online, and may include up to 750 photographs in each claim.
