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Copyright Registrations = Copyright Free

The U.S. Copyright Office has confirmed that U.S. Copyright Registrations are in the public domain. Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights, writes: "There is no copyright protection in these records -- they are in the public domain." This is a good clear answer for which Marybeth, Carl Malamud of Public Resource and Peter Brantley of the Digital Library Federation should be heartily thanked.
In celebration (and thanks) I have put one of their Copyright Registration feeds on this blog. Already it has payed dividends with my discovery of an assignment of a security interest in "Four Dogs Playing Poker" between Mercantile National Bank and International Entertainment Corporation. More history of the work is available from the Copyright Office. I had thought that "Four Dogs Playing Poker" was the title of the famous painting of four dogs playing poker, but in fact, it isn't. What I was thinking of is a series of sixteen paintings by C. M. Coolidge commissioned to advertise cigars. Maybe the subject of the assignment is the movie by that name (a thumbnail of its poster is incorporated here, click on the image to purchase the DVD) but that's unclear from what I could find.

Larry and Sergey Interview

A good interview of Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the two founders of Google) being themselves. I particularly like what I can only assume to be Larry making a "swoosh" sound to connote javascript and flash flying around at 16:03.

In Defense of Alpha Flight

My co-worker Mike slams the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight as not ready for a feature length movie. Perhaps I am biased (being both Canadian and American and a big fan of the original Alpha Flight comics) but I would welcome an Alpha Flight film. That comic had depth and great characters. I'd also remind Mike that Wolverine, a part-creation of the Canadian government and one-time member of Alpha Flight, has already been seen in three X-Men movies (and those movies would have been much worse without him).

Really Modern Library Brainstorming

Over at if:book, Ben Vershbow writes about a set of brainstorming sessions about how to kickstart thinking about a "Really Modern Library" (something I have thought about some as part of the Google Book Search team). From the post:
Over the course of this month, starting Thursday in Los Angeles, we're holding a series of three invited brainstorm sessions (the second in London, the third in New York) with an eclectic assortment of creative thinkers from the arts, publishing, media, design, academic and library worlds to better wrap our minds around the problems and sketch out some concrete ideas for intervention.
...
The goal of this project is to shed light on the big questions about future accessibility and usability of analog culture in a digital, networked world.
An interesting project that will no doubt come up with some useful ideas but...
for reasons both practical and political, we've considered restricting this contest to the public domain
Of course I understand that it may be easier to deal with all of the other issues they've identified without adding copyright (for one thing, they would have to add some lawyers to their eclectic assortment of thinkers) but I worry that their focus on the public domain means that the "Really Modern Library" will be missing any way to discover "Really Modern" books.
Still I wish them well and look forward to hearing the results of their discussions. One of the really good things that our announcement almost three years ago helped to do in encouraging reaction to it is increase the focus on digitization and the next generation of libraries. We weren't the only ones, or the first and didn't claim that we were trying to change what a library is, but I think we have been useful in helping raise the profile of the discussion.

Updating Feed

I've updated my feed serving to Feedburner.

IP in a Canadian Penny > $47K USD

The Canadian penny recently crossed the one cent USD threshold for the first time in a long time. Now comes news that the Royal Canadian Mint is asserting that pictures of it are worth a lot more.
Boing Boing and the Globe and Mail have the story that the Canadian Mint is attempting to assert intellectual property rights in pictures of Canadian pennies and use of the phrase "one cent" in a Toronto fundraising campaign. Seems wrongheaded, but one question not discussed is whether this could fly in the US.
The quick answer to whether a picture of a US penny is copyright infringement in the US is no. Under US copyright law a picture of a coin may be protectable based on the protection of the image on the coin itself, but if that image is the work of the US Government, then it is not protectable in the US because of 17 USC 105 which reads:

Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.

You might get the opposite answer if the coin was developed by a non-employee and was not a work for hire, or if the copies were made outside of the US (for example, if Toronto had used a US penny in its campaign), or if US copies were made of Canadian coins. And that doesn't even begin to address the potential for a claim in trademark.
In each case, regardless of the legal analysis, enforcement would be wrongheaded.
Update: Howard Knopf has an very smart post on this subject in the Canadian context with the further suggestion that the image on the coin may have rejoined the public domain in Canada because it may have been "authored" in 1937. Also, his title is better than mine: "Excessive Non Cents about "One Cent""


Image of Canadian penny courtesy of miguelb who also has a website.

Congratulations to Creative Commons

Creative Commons, just announced the hiring of a new General Counsel (and it should be said that the GC role at Creative Commons has and will always be more than merely a GC). This is wonderful news for them and for the world.
As Professor Lessig points out in his blog post, I've been lucky enough to have the two of the former Creative Commons General Counsel, Glenn Brown and Mia Garlick, decide to come to Google as Product Counsel. Both Glenn and Mia are phenomenal lawyers and great to work with. They get products and are zealous advocates for users. From what I've heard about the new General Counsel, Virginia Rutledge, she is cut from the same cloth and will serve Creative Commons very well.
Congratulations!