Free for a Fee

What child has not sat starry-eyed around the fire, dreaming of the goodies to come on January 1—Public Domain Day? The thought of new books and movies and music coming out from copyright is enough to send sugarplums dancing through heads, unless you live in the US in 2010. In which case, you have nothing to celebrate, since nothing is entering the public domain this year.

Thanks to various copyright terms extensions over the last four decades, the US is living in the midst of a public domain “donut hole” under which no important works will come out of copyright protection. Before the 1976 Copyright Act reforms, copyright in the US lasted for 28 years, with another 28 if an extension was applied for. Under the old regime, works from 1953 would have entered the public domain this week, works like C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair and Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March.

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This Friday is the deadline for documents to be filed with the court that’s overseeing the Google book settlement, which will absolve the search giant from liability for its book scanning activities and set up an independent entity that will oversee the distribution of e-books from its digital stacks. Amazon, given its sales of both print and e-books, has joined a group that opposes the deal, but that hasn’t stopped it from filing an objection to it individually. Amazon’s lawyers spend over 40 pages arguing why that the deal should be rejected on copyright and antitrust grounds, while throwing in a very explicit admission that it’s bad for its business model.

The proposed settlement arose form a series of lawsuits that accused Google of violating copyrights via its book-scanning agreements with various libraries. The settlement would absolve the company of further claims and set up an independent body, the Books Rights Registry, which would oversee payments for authors arising from Google’s use of the works; the Registry would also have the right to license the digital library to commercial or private entities.

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Yahoo has sued the NFL Players Union re the use of statistics in fanstasy football games, after Minnesota District Court rules in favor of CBS Interactive in similar suit. CBS decision and Yahoo complaint reproduced below.

Decision Cbs v Nfl

Complaint Yahoo Nfl Pa

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Yahoo has filed a lawsuit against the National Football League demanding access to player stats without having to pay licensing fees. Yahoo argues that player names, bios, and game statistics are not copyrightable information owned by the NFL, and that third parties should be able to make use of it for fantasy football leagues. Given a 2007 ruling on the same topic for Major League Baseball, there’s a good chance that Yahoo will end up taking home the win.

Under the current system, third parties (such as Yahoo) don’t have access to NFL player information for free—the NFL licenses it out for millions of dollars so that only certain fantasy football leagues are “legit” while others are not. The NFL argues that this information belongs to the NFL alone and that using the data without permission is a violation of the organization’s IP rights.

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