The Chronicle of Higher Education – Inspired by University of California’s decision to drop its “big deal” with Elsevier, university librarians are laying the foundation to follow suit. ” University librarians have long griped about the rising cost of their “big deals” with major publishers, but relatively few have followed through on threats to cancel… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Intellectual Property
Experts, authors and Guardian readers who illegally download books assess the damage
The Guardian – The UK Intellectual Property Office estimates that 17% of ebooks are consumed illegally. “…The UK government’s Intellectual Property Office estimates that 17% of ebooks are consumed illegally. Generally, pirates tend to be from better-off socioeconomic groups, and aged between 30 and 60. Many use social media to ask for tips when their… Continue Reading
Skyrocketing cost of textbooks prices – Four publishers control more than 80% of the market
Vox: “…A 2014 report by the Public Interest Research Groups [PIRG] found that two-thirds of surveyed students had skipped buying or renting some of their required course materials because they couldn’t afford them.Textbook publishers, for their part, have begun acknowledging that textbooks and other course materials have become so expensive that some students simply can’t… Continue Reading
OpenAI’s Recent Announcement: What Went Wrong, and How It Could Be Better
EFF: “Earlier this month, OpenAI revealed an impressive language model that can generate paragraphs of believable text. It declined to fully release their research “due to concerns about malicious applications of the technology.” OpenAI released a much smaller model and technical paper, but not the fully-trained model, training code, or full dataset, citing concerns that… Continue Reading
IBM X-Force Intelligence Threat Index 2019
“As the cyber threat landscape evolves, what we saw in 2018 is organisations across all industries are facing unmanageable levels of cyber threats brought on by the changing threat landscape, the risk of exposure and an ever-growing attack surface. The IBM X-Force Research team is a crack team of security professionals who run thousands of… Continue Reading
1 in 5 corporations say China has stolen their IP within the last year
CNBC CFO survey: Theft of intellectual property by Chinese companies is a major point of contention between the Trump administration and Chinese government. Just under one-third of CFOs of North America-based companies on the CNBC Global CFO Council say Chinese firms have stolen from them at some point during the past decade. U.S. trade policy… Continue Reading
Internet Archive’s ebook loans face UK copyright challenge
The Guardian UK – “The Society of Authors (SoA) is threatening legal action against the Internet Archive unless it stops what the writers’ body claimed is the unauthorised lending of books unlawfully scanned for its Open Library. Set up in San Francisco 1996 to preserve pages published on the internet, the Internet Archive also collects… Continue Reading
Huawei Is Blocked in U.S., But Its Chips Power Cameras Everywhere
Bloomberg [paywall – alternate free article via Gadget Hours]: “Pelco, a California-based security camera maker, set lofty sales targets last year for a model with sharper video resolution and other cutting-edge features. That was until Congress derailed its plans. In August, updated legislation barred the U.S. military and government from buying tech gear from firms… Continue Reading
Seven Out of Every Ten Open Vulnerabilities Belong to Just Three Vendors
Computer Business Review: “Seven out of every ten open vulnerabilities observed by customers belongs to just three vendors, Oracle, Microsoft and Adobe. These are the findings of cyber security enterprise Kenna Security in their new report Prioritization to Prediction, which explores how enterprises are dealing with open vulnerabilities. In their report Kenna found that Oracle… Continue Reading
For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain
Smithsonian.com: “At midnight on New Year’s Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain. It has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S. That deluge of works includes not just “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which appeared first in… Continue Reading
Firm Led by Google Veterans Uses A.I. to ‘Nudge’ Workers Toward Happiness
The New York Times: “Technology companies like to promote artificial intelligence’s potential for solving some of the world’s toughest problems, like reducing automobile deaths and helping doctors diagnose diseases. A company started by three former Google employees is pitching A.I. as the answer to a more common problem: being happier at work. The start-up, Humu,… Continue Reading
NYT historical news clippings and photos via Google Cloud
Google Cloud: “For over 100 years, The New York Times has stored its historical news clippings and photographs in an underground archive lovingly named the “morgue.” Most of us keep stacks of pictures in our attic or basement. And media organizations are no different. The New York Times has archived approximately five to seven million… Continue Reading
