Melville House Books

You got the rights?

• Harper Lee sues agent after being “duped” out of the rights to To Kill A Mockingbird

  On Friday, Harper Lee filed a lawsuit in Manhattan to regain the copyright to her only published novel, the classic To Kill A Mockingbird, from her literary agent. The lawsuit alleges… Read more »

• Who should get the data from your book purchase?

  According to Cory Doctorow, publishers shouldn’t just be fighting with Amazon over DRM and ebook pricing, but also over data. Specifically, the myriad of information that online booksellers collect about… Read more »

• First request for Six-Strike data in Verizon lawsuit

  Although the six-strike copyright alert system only began in February this year, it’s already being used in a civil legal action—one thing the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) tried to… Read more »

• Reselling ebooks may be copyright infringement

  Only weeks after the Supreme Court affirmed the First Sale doctrine for books bought overseas in Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley, a district judge has ruled that reselling digital copies is copyright… Read more »

• “The enduring emptiness of our technology debates has one main cause, and his name is Tim O’Reilly.”

  The latest issue of The Baffler contains an article by Evgeny Morozov, “The Meme Hustler”, on Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, which goes a long way in tracing the potentially dangerous semantics… Read more »

• Supreme Court upholds First Sale doctrine

  Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley, a case that MobyLives has been following since April last year, has finally been resolved in the Supreme Court. The Court, by a 6-3 margin, held that… Read more »

• Cambridge & Oxford University presses sue Delhi University for copyright infringement — over course packs

  Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Taylor & Francis are suing a photocopying store at Delhi University for copyright infringement. The store, who they accuse of creating photocopied “course… Read more »

• The rise of the agent model in Chinese publishing

  With China’s domestic book market booming, and spurred by the rabid demand for the work of Nobel laureate Mo Yan, the nation’s publishing industry has set its sights on a… Read more »

• Obama backs open access to all federal research

  The United States will soon follow in the UK’s footsteps and allow open access to federally-funded research.  A welcome development for open-access advocates, John P. Holdren, director of the White House… Read more »

• Maryland wants to copyright students’ homework

  “Works created by employees and/or students … are properties of the Board of Education”… Read more »