Boston/Cambridge CopyNight: Tuesday, 11/27

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The next Boston/Cambridge CopyNight is tomorrow Tuesday, November 27th at 7:30pm. We'll meet at the Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard Square (back on the ground floor now that renovations are complete).
Hong Kong Restaurant
1238 Mass Ave.
Cambridge, MA, 02138
Phone: 617-864-5311
Web: http://www.hongkongharvard.com
Peter Olson, the co-host of our CopyNight, has revitalized our blog at http://cambridgecopynight.blogspot.com where he posts useful information about our meetings and a variety of relevant new items. Be sure to check it out. He's also interested in your opinions on how to best use the blog or some other medium like a wiki.
Email us here about what you think or just comment at the blog.
Recent News Items of Interest Posted by Peter on Our Blog:
PLoS Biology: When Is Open Access Not Open Access?

Since 2003, when PLoS Biology was launched, there has been a spectacular growth in “open-access” journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/), hosted by Lund University Libraries, lists 2,816 open-access journals as this article goes to press (and probably more by the time you read this). Authors also have various “open-access” options within existing subscription journals offered by traditional publishers (e.g., Blackwell, Springer, Oxford University Press, and many others). In return for a fee to the publisher, an author's individual article is made freely available and (sometimes) deposited in PubMed Central (PMC). But, as open access grows in prominence, so too has confusion about what open access means, particularly with regard to unrestricted use of content—which true open access allows. This confusion is being promulgated by journal publishers at the expense of authors and funding agencies wanting to support open access.
Five Free Feature Films

A lot of people have asked us if BloodSpell is the first Creative Commons feature film, or the first Machinima feature film, or even the first feature film released for free on the Internet. Whilst we like being first as much as the next guy, actually quite a lot of lunatics actually not only make entire feature films for no money, but then release the bloody things on the Internet for free - and we're proud to be amongst them.
If it has DRM, you don't own it (part II):
If You Purchased MLB Game Downloads Before 2006, Your Discs/Files Are Now Useless; MLB Has Stolen Your $$$ And Claims "No Refunds"

Background: Beginning in 2003, MLB offered fans the chance to download full games to their computer at $3.95 each. When you attempted to open the media file -- either on your hard drive or after it was burned to a CD -- it connected with a MLB.com webpage to obtain a license. Once the license had been verified, the game would play.

At some point during 2006, MLB deleted that essential webpage. Since then, none of the videos that fans purchased will play.
(Warning, angry language appears in the blog posts.)
From Ars Technica: Prince to fan sites: No pictures, no artwork, no album covers 4 U

Prince's lawyers have requested that three fan sites remove the offending artwork, images, and even their "own photographs of their Prince-inspired tattoos," according a to a joint statement from the site operators. Houseofquake.com, princefans.com, and prince.org have banded together to fight the cease-and-desist notices and have launched princefansunited.com to make their case to the world.
Ars Technica: Overly-broad copyright law has made USA a "nation of infringers"

How many copyright violations does an average user commit in a single day? John Tehranian, a law professor at the University of Utah, calculates in a new paper that he rings up $12.45 million in liability over the course of an average day. The gap between what the law allows and what social norms permit is so great now that "we are, technically speaking, a nation of infringers."
Peer-to-peer filesharing continues to be in the news
From numerous sources:

TechCrunch: Attributor Launches Service to Track Copyright Infringement Across the Web

Ars Technica: AT&T takes another step towards filtered network with investment in Vobile

Ars Technica: Comcast hit with class-action lawsuit over traffic blocking

last100: Vuze petitions FCC to restrict Internet traffic throttling by ISPs

TorrentFreak: The War Against BitTorrent: Attack of the ISPs

TorrentFreak: MediaDefender Emails Disprove MPAA Claims

p2pnet.net: Jammie Thomas: her story in her own words

p2pnet.net: The Gnu and the RIAA’s worst nightmare
From Ars Technica: Infringus maximus! Rowling gets injunction against Harry Potter Lexicon

J.K. Rowling is suing the publisher of the Harry Potter Lexicon, which began life as a popular Potter blog, and wants a court to rule that she has the sole right to profit from the "descriptions, character details, and plot points" of the Potter tales. Now, a federal judge has issued an injunction against RDR Books to prevent them from completing the typesetting, selling the books, or even marketing it on Amazon.com.
Congress is about to vote on a bill mandating open access to research funded by the National institutes of Health.
You can more postings by Peter and further information at the blog.
Best,
Andrew Jankowich