| the full-text databases used in our library
and potentially millions of dollars. The courts might act to issue injunctions
against offending publishers. Publishers may ask for a rehearing en banc
or appeal to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, a bill introduced in Congress may give publishers the right
to own collections of facts for the first time. H.R. 354 holds the potential
for publishers to collate information from other sources and own it as
a collection. This "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act" is strenuously
opposed by librarians and scholarly societies and could mean that, for
the first time, copyright law protects the ownership of information itself
rather than the particular expression of information. Once again, as has
been the case in the regulation of speech on the Internet, Congress and
the Courts seem to be heading in opposite directions on electronic matters.
Libel knows no borders? As mentioned in an
earlier issue, the permeability of markets has made the concept of "foreign
rights" a shaky one these days. With web-based bookstores available internationally,
there is no reason for an American to wait for a U.S. publisher to acquire
the |
rights to a British book, and vice versa. Now
there is a new sticky wicket: U.S. publishers have found themselves newly
liable in British courts, where libel laws are stricter. The Committee,
a book about politics in Northern Ireland, has generated several libel
suits filed in UK courts against the author, the publisher, and against
Amazon.UK. Before internet sales were a significant factor, publishers
were unlikely to sell foreign rights to a book for UK publication without
revisions if it seemed likely to fall afoul of British law.
The limits of search engines A study published
in Nature July 8th this year reported that search engines,
even those that dig the deepest, index no more than 16% of the web. This
is sharply down from a similar study performed in 1997, in which the most
complete search engines reached an estimated 60% of web pages. Moreover,
the authors felt the indexing tended to promote the most popular sites,
making them even more popular, and that the percentage of broken links
was fairly high, approaching 10% in some search engines. In response, several
search engine producers have vowed to create better, more complete systems
for indexing more of the web. Others have expressed doubts: why index more
when there is already too much? The greater challenge will be providing
filtering that takes better account of quality and relevance than current
search engines provide. |