http://www.antiquusmorbus.com/Index.htm

Antiquus Morbus is a collection of old medical terms and their modern definitions.

Languages: English, German, Latin etc.

Summary

In this case, two archives ask the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to hold that statutes that extended copyright terms unconditionally — the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)— are unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and that the Copyright Renewal Act and CTEA together create an “effectively perpetual” term with respect to works first published after January 1, 1964 and before January 1, 1978, in violation of the Constitution’s Limited Times and Promote...Progress Clauses. The Complaint asks the Court for a declaratory judgment that copyright restrictions on orphaned works — works whose copyright has not expired but which are no longer available — violate the constitution.

FAQ:
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/kahle_v_ashcroft.shtml

http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=17661

UK Web Archiving Consortium launched:
http://www.davidmattison.ca/wordpress/index.php/archives/2004/06/22/558/

Peter Suber has written a helpful short Open Access overwiew for those who are new to the concept:

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

A few comments:

Suber gives his text the title: "Open access to peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints"

My opinion is: Open Access is a wider concept.

"Open-access literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions."

Right.

"The campaign for OA focuses on literature that authors give to the world without expectation of payment."

Right.

"OA focuses on royalty-free literature because it is the low-hanging fruit, but OA needn't be limited to royality-free literature."

Right.

Open Access is a general concept including the creation of a rich public domain (for scholarly and other purposes) by e.g.
- making accessible scholarly and other works (e.g. historical sources) which are in the public domain or should be.

One can e.g. mention XIXth. century scholarly articles/monographs or source editions.

The Berlin declaration is demanding Open Access also for heritage collections ("Kulturgut"). This is not quite popular in the OA community (focussed on journal literature) but it is IMHO very important for the future of the humanities and historical research. I do not appreciate that Suber has omitted this fact. Berlin says: "We define open access as a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community." (my emphasis).

Postscript
Suber has recently added the following:
"Nor need OA even be limited to literature. It can apply to any digital content, from raw data to music, images, and software. It can apply to works that are born digital or to older works, like public-domain literature and cultural-heritage objects, digitized later in life."

A survey of recent developments in the LibraryLawBlog:

http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2004/06/canadian_copyri.html

Quote: on January 1, 2004, every unpublished document whose author had died on or before December 31, 1948, passed from copyright into the public domain in Canada.

President Bush has nominated Allen Weinstein to be head of the National Archives. Whereas the former national archivist is an ex-governor, this time the custodian of America's key documents would be a true scholar, experienced not only in rummaging around in primary texts but in running a Washington agency. Weinstein, a noted historian, is currently the dirrector of the Center for Democracy, which has helped bring election reform to nations around the world. But his nomination is being opposed by the Society of American Archivists, the Organization of American Historians, editorialists for "The Nation," and other liberal pundits. Why? Because Weinstein wrote the book "Perjury" proving that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent.

[...]

http://www.worldmagblog.com/archives/005530.html

http://library.usask.ca/~fichter/weblog/

Blog Search Engines
http://www.aripaparo.com/archive/000632.html
http://www.aripaparo.com/archive/000654.html

http://www.17th-century.info/news/

An online community for early modernists (weblog)

Copyright for Archivists and users of archives
Second edition
Tim Padfield
March 2004; 272pp; paperback;
1-85604-512-9; £24.95

This new book explains the provisions of copyright law in the UK with particular reference to unpublished material, the most important part of the holdings of any archive. It gives advice and examples that take account of the special interests of archivists and users of archives; provides worked examples based on real-life enquiries answered by the author; and includes the full text of the statutory regulations for the copying of archival and library materials.

http://www.recordmanagers.gov.uk/news-copyright-publ.asp