SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION ISSUES
A NEWSLETTER FOR THE UIUC COMMUNITY
Issue No. 52
September 30, 2003
Paula Kaufman, University Librarian
Editor   

ONLINE VIDEO ARCHIVES COMING SOON

Imagine a search engine that hunts for video images only. That's the basic concept behind the Moving Image Collections, a new project from the Library of Congress, in cooperation with Rutgers, Georgia Tech and the University of Washington. Those four are teaming up with IBM to create an online archive of film, television and digital images—celestial scenes from the Hubble Space Telescope, clips from Gone With the Wind, a volcanic eruption, and many more. The three universities received an initial $900,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the project, originally commissioned for design by the Association of Moving Image Archivists through a grant from the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. When completed, the online archive of 80,000 moving images will be the largest repository of its kind, drawing images from CNN, HBO, National Geographic, The Smithsonian and other sources. The Library of Congress—the driving force behind the project—hopes the archive will not only help preserve historic video images, but provide researchers with useful information. The Association of Moving Image Archivists and the National Film Preservation Board also are playing key roles in providing content for the archive, which will be on the LoC Web site beginning next year. The archive also will point users to video collections at other media outlets. Someone searching for information about giraffes, for example, could receive video recommendations from National Geographic. (Atlanta Journal Constitution 4 Sept 2003, Seattle Post-Intelligencer 3 Sept 2003) http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0903/04library.html?urac=n&urvf=10627213212190.42104626341368223

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/137751_archive03.html

ShelfLife, No. 124 (September 18 2003) 

PDF-A: COULD IT BE THE ANSWER TO LONG-TERM PRESERVATION

The problem with archiving computer-based data is that files which are easily accessible by any 10-year-old today will be totally unreadable by any but the most determined, well-equipped researcher tomorrow. Computer technology evolves continuously—and rapidly—and when it does, it leaves behind mountains of data locked in archaic formats. The need for a long-term answer to the problem of preserving digital data is compelling, and a team of government, business and academic representatives is exploring a potential solution based on Adobe’s popular PDF technology. Known as PDF-A, the new standard promises to meet the three basic requirements of digital preservation: files must be easy for document producers to work with; they must be reliable and easy for users to find; and they must be based on non-proprietary and stable technology suitable for the needs of archivists. PDF retains the original "look and feel" of documents, and the most recent version offers a rich metadata capability based on XML and RDF specifications. The potential standard intends to specify a limited, stable subset of PDF for text-based documents that must remain valid for a number of years. The ultimate aim of the effort is to have PDF-A endorsed and owned by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). (Government Record News May-June 2003) ShelfLife, No. 124 (September 18 2003) http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/gov/newsletters/May2003.asp#digital 

BIOMED CENTRAL MAKES ARCHIVING ARRANGEMENT

The National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek or KB) announced recently that it would "secure the long-term digital archiving of all research published by BioMed Central.” The BMC articles will be available in print to walk-in KB patrons and online at the KB web site. Quoting KB official Wim van Drimmelen: "Long-term preservation is part of the mission of the KB and features among our main strategic goals. Unlike printed publications, digital publications require from the publisher an active part in the archiving. Therefore arrangements with publishers are essential to realize the safe-keeping of the intellectual output of scientists." Quoting BMC publisher Jan Velterop: "Open Access authors want reassurance that their work will be freely available in the future. The KB deal delivers such assurances. This is the first sizeable quantity of fully open access research articles to be archived by the KB, which means that that part of the library's archive can be fully open to anyone who cares to seek access.  Open Access News 9/17/03  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-09/bc-nlo091503.php 

ASHCROFT TO DECLASSIFY SOME DATA

In response to strong criticism from the American Library Association (ALA) for derisive remarks he made about ALA and other critics of the USA Patriot Act during a September 15 speech to restaurateurs, Attorney General John Ashcroft informed ALA President Carla Hayden by phone on Wednesday, September 17, that he would declassify data showing how often the Justice Department has sought the records of libraries, bookstores, and other businesses under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.  Bookselling This Week, September 18, 2003  http://news.bookweb.org/freeexpression/1821.html 

DATA SHARING IN ANATOMY

Douglas Steinberg explores why digitizing and sharing anatomical data is difficult, and what progress is being made to do so. Excerpt: "One difficulty plaguing all computer-based efforts to describe model organisms has been many researchers' reluctance to share data. This problem is 'slowly being resolved' because 'people are understanding why it's important to do [that].' Yet few rewards exist for sharing data or analyzing other investigators' data, and ethical guidelines for sharing are still under discussion. Another hindrance is that contributing to model-organism Web sites is 'not an accepted way to get recognition' professionally, even though many sites name their contributors. The act of providing data is described as still 'very much altruistic.'"  Open Access News 9/21/03  http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2003/sep/research2_030922.html 

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY'S STRUGGLES WITH NEW TECHNOLOGIES

The NY Times ran a pair of interesting articles that highlight the music industry's previous opposition to new technologies.  One article notes that the reaction has been to consistently express concern that radio, cassette recorders, FM frequency, and MP3s will harm the industry. The second article demonstrates the parallels between the debate on encryption in 1990s and the debate on peer-to-peer today. BNA's Internet Law News (ILN) - 9/22/03 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/technology/22tune.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/technology/22neco.html 

RIAA SETTLES 52 LAWSUITS

The recording industry says it has settled 52 of the 261 suits it filed against Internet users accused of illegally permitting others to download music from their computers.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which plans to file hundreds more lawsuits in October, did not specify how much it collected from the settlements it announced on September 29.  Defense lawyers familiar with some cases said most payments ranged from $2,500 to $7,500 each, with at least one settlement for as much as $10,000. The settlements, which do not include any admission of wrongdoing, require Internet users to destroy copies of illegally downloaded songs and agree to "not make any public statements that are inconsistent" with the agreement. The RIAA also said 863 people have requested amnesty from future lawsuits, in exchange for a formal admission they illegally shared music and a pledge to delete the songs off their computers. The offer does not apply to people who already are targets of legal action. The RIAA, the trade group for the largest labels, said one dozen other Internet users also agreed to pay unspecified amounts after they learned they might be sued. They had previously been notified by their Internet providers that music lawyers were seeking their names to sue and agreed to pay to avoid a lawsuit. LimeWire and other file-sharing companies have announced a new trade group, P2P United, to urge Congress to approve compulsory licenses for music files, which would force labels to offer songs on services for flat fees. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-09-30-riaa-settles_x.htm

 PROTECTING A TRADEMARK?

OCLC, the nonprofit library cooperative that owns the Dewey Decimal system, has filed suit against a library-themed luxury hotel in Manhattan for trademark infringement.  The Library Hotel, which overlooks the New York Public Library, is divided according to the classification system, with each floor dedicated to one of Dewey's 10 categories. Room 700.003 includes books on the performing arts, for example, while room 800.001 has a collection of erotic literature. In the lawsuit filed recently, lawyers for OCLC said the organization acquired the rights to the system in 1988 when it bought Forest Press, which published Dewey Decimal updates. OCLC charges libraries that use the system at least $500 per year. Melvil Dewey created his system - used in 95 percent of all public and K-12 school libraries and here at UIUC - in 1873, but it is continually updated, with numbers assigned to more than 100,000 new works each year.  OCLC lawyers explained that it has become necessary to defend trademarks vigorously or lose one’s rights.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3172401,00.html

 IS IBM’S WEBFOUNTAIN THE NEXT BIG THING?

The answer to the oft-posed question, “What comes after Google?,” may not be the name of a new competitor chasing the market leader in Web search, but an effective, innovative use of Web information. IBM has launched a service named WebFountain that applies an elaborate mesh of software called text mining or text analytics to spidered data from across the Web. Developed at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, WebFountain will provide a platform for developing new products and services in partnership with IBM (“powered by IBM”). Factiva has announced the first partnership from the traditional information industry in a service called Reputation Manager, scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2004. WebFountain is a Web-scale mining and discovery platform that extracts trends, patterns, and relationships from massive amounts of unstructured and semi-structured text. It consists of three primary components:

- A supercomputer-based platform infrastructure that integrates “miners,” crawlers, and applications to open, scalable standards, which will host services

- Multi-terabyte data stores of unstructured and semi-structured data including all kinds of Internet data, from Web pages to blogs, bulletin boards, enterprise data, legacy data, licensed content, chat rooms, e-mail, etc.

- Text analytics including natural language processing, statistics, probabilities, machine learning, pattern recognition, and artificial intelligence

Robert Carlson, IBM WebFountain vice president, describes the current content set as over 1 petabyte in storage with over 3 billion pages indexed, 2 billion stored, and the ability to mine 20 million pages a day. “We plan to have the entire Net mined in 12 months,” said Carlson. The system also works across multiple languages. According to Carlson, it currently covers the large majority of languages on the Net and will cover 21 languages by the end of 2004.  http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030922-1.shtml

 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS ISSUES FACING SELF-ARCHIVING 

Inspired by the Open Archives Initiative, the United Kingdom (UK) Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) established the FAIR (Focus on Access to Institutional Repositories) program in 2002. One of the program's objectives was to "explore the challenges associated with disclosure and sharing [of content], including IPR and the role of institutional repositories." To this end, the JISC funded a one-year project called RoMEO (Rights Metadata for Open archiving). RoMEO, which took place between 2002–2003, specifically looked at the self-archiving of academic research papers, and the subsequent disclosure and harvesting of metadata about those papers using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) by OAI Data and Service Providers [Open Archives Initiative, 2002a].  The RoMEO project aimed to develop simple rights metadata by which academics could protect their research papers in an open-access environment and also to develop a means by which OAI Data and Service Providers could protect their open-access metadata. RoMEO proposed to show how such rights solutions might be disclosed and harvested under OAI-PMH.  The RoMEO Project’s findings, particularly the Directory of journal publishers' self-archiving policies, should encourage academics that self-archiving is a realistic approach. Nevertheless, the project has also highlighted a number of concerns about publishers' copyright agreements, which—if dealt with—could greatly improve an author's rights under the current journal publishing system.  Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog, 9/22/03 http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september03/gadd/09gadd.html

 THE INTERNET REBORN

Despite its enormous impact, today’s Internet has been likened to a 1973 Buick refitted with air bags and emissions controls. Its decades-old infrastructure has been rigged out with the Web and all it enables (like e-commerce), plus technologies such as streaming media, peer-to-peer file sharing, and videoconferencing; but it’s still a 1973 Buick. Now, a grass-roots group of nearly 100 leading computer scientists, backed by heavyweight industrial sponsors, is working on replacing it with a new, vastly smarter model: PlanetLab.  Within the next three years, researchers say, it will help revitalize the Internet, eventually enabling you to forget about hauling your laptop around. No matter where you go, you’ll be able to instantly recreate your entire private computer workspace, program for program and document for document, on any Internet terminal;

escape the disruption caused by Internet worms and viruses—which inflicted an average of $81,000 in repair costs per company per incident in 2002—because the network itself will detect and crush rogue data packets before they get a chance to spread to your office or home; instantly retrieve video and other bandwidth-hogging data, no matter how many other users are competing for the same resources; archive your tax returns, digital photographs, family videos, and all your other data across the Internet itself, securely and indestructibly, for decades, making hard disks and recordable CDs seem as quaint as 78 RPM records. These predicted PlanetLab innovations—with the potential to revolutionize home computing, e-commerce, and corporate information technology practices—can’t be incorporated into the existing Net; that would be too disruptive. Instead, the PlanetLab researchers, who hail from Princeton, MIT, the University of California, Berkeley, and more than 50 other institutions, are building their network on top of the Internet. But their new machines—called smart nodes—will vastly increase its processing power and data storage capability, an idea that has quickly gained support from the National Science Foundation and industry players such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Google.  http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/roush1003.asp

 VIDEO STREAMING SET TO TAKE OFF

Video streaming subscription services should take off in the next few years, reaching a market value of $4.5 billion in 2007, according to a new study by In-Stat/MDR. That figure is more than triple the estimated $991 million value of the current market. "The world of online content is undergoing a three-way metamorphosis, creating opportunities for major media companies and large service providers to finally get their fingers into the Internet revenue pie," says In-Stat/MDR analyst Gerry Kaufhold.

Leading the charge for subscription-based video services will be Asia, which will generate about $1.2 billion in 2007, followed by substantial sales in Europe, according to the study. Still, U.S. consumers are also warming to the idea of paying for online content—a recent report says spending for Internet content jumped 23% in the U.S. during the first half of 2003 from the previous year. (CNet News.com 24 Sep 2003)  NewsScan Daily, 24 September 2003 ("Above The Fold") http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5080987.html

 CONGRESSIONAL MEMBERS QUESTION DATABASE PROPOSAL

Members of two U.S. Congressional subcommittees expressed skepticism recently over a proposed database protection bill that may soon be introduced into the House of Representatives.  Opponents of the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriations Act question the need for the new law, noting that copyright and other laws already protect most databases.  BNA's Internet Law News (ILN) - 9/25/03 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0924congrquest.html

 NEW E-PAPER COULD SHOW MOVING IMAGES

Many people have touted e-paper and electronic ink as a way to display static images on a wafer-thin foldable screen, creating visions of a refreshable newspaper. Now scientists at Philips Research in the Netherlands say high-definition moving pictures may be possible as well. ''Using a process called electrowetting, the scientists claim to be able to manipulate colored oils in the pixels on the page with such speed and accuracy as to be able to generate clear and accurate video displays.'' The discovery could lead to applications such as motion picture screens sewn into clothes.  Corante - Tech News: September 25, 2003  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&ncid=738&e=3&u=/nm/20030924/tc_nm/science_paper_dc

 UMASS PRESS ALIVE AND KICKING, DESPITE LOSS OF SUBSIDY

To help close a massive budget shortfall, the University of Massachusetts has followed through on a plan to eliminate its $340,000 annual subsidy to the University of Massachusetts Press. As projected, UMass sustained a cut of $80 million, roughly 20 percent of its state appropriation for the current fiscal year. UMass Press Director Bruce Wilcox, however, remains upbeat about the press's future. Wilcox said that a three-year transitional plan, which includes a substantial amount of bridge funding from the university, will help the press through its current budget crisis. As part of the transitional plan, Wilcox noted, as of October 1, 2003, UMass Press will switch from in-house warehousing and order fulfillment to an external provider, Hopkins Fulfillment Service, a division of Johns Hopkins University Press. In addition, the press has been forced to cut five of its 13 full-time staff members through early retirements and layoffs. UMass Press is also actively soliciting financial support from various external sources. Founded in 1963, the press is regarded as one of the nation's finer small university presses. It has sold more than 1.8 million volumes and has over 900 titles in print and takes in over $1 million in revenue annually. The press publishes roughly 40 new titles annually in a variety of humanities and social sciences subjects. Wilcox said the press will make greater use of graduate student interns, and that he expects to continue publishing 30 to 40 books each year.  Library Journal Academic News Wire: September 25, 2003

 REPORT SUGGESTS THAT SMALL PUBLISHERS ARE BIG BUSINESS

A recently released survey suggests that aggregate sales from small publishers may actually be greater than the reported base for the entire mainstream publishing industry. According to the Publishers Marketing Association, a trade group representing smaller independent publishers, independent publishers have flourished in the last five years, posting estimated annual sales in the range of $29.4 to $34.3 billion. Sales for the mainstream publishing industry are generally estimated at $32 to $35 billion. The survey's conclusions mark a sharp 106 percent increase from a 1997 joint PMA and Book Industry Study Group (BISG) survey that put small, independent publishers' sales at roughly $14.3 billion. The 1997 survey was based on the more than 53,000 "independent, smaller book publishers" as gathered from the active ISBN database from R.R. Bowker. For the recent study, the number of active ISBNs from small publishers in the Bowker database swelled to over 73,000. The $29.4 billion revenue estimate is based on the 73,000 publishers listed by R.R. Bowker that offer between one and 10 active titles, with that estimate jumping to $34.3 billion if the next tier of publishers is included, those 11,887 entities with 11 to 199 active titles. Tom Woll, president of Cross River Publishing Consultants, which conducted the study for the PMA, told PUBLISHERS WEEKLY that the study shows that smaller publishers are not well represented in traditional industry statistics. He hopes the survey's findings will increase small publishers' clout within an industry that has become increasingly consolidated. The growth of the Internet was also clearly a key in the growth shown from the 1997 survey. The survey cites the primary difference between the 1997 and 2002 survey results is a larger reliance on the Internet as a distribution vehicle for publishers with up to 10 titles in print.  Library Journal Academic News Wire: September 25, 2003

 LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE

The presentations from the Oxford University retreat, Authors to Readers: Who Are We Serving? How? and How Well? (July 24-26, 2003) are now online. The retreat theme was, "What is the likely shape of the library of the future? And how do we build collections for it?"  Open Access News, 9/27/03  http://digital.casalini.it/retreat/retreat_2003.html

 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE v. PAT BROWN

Declan Butler, Open-access row leads paper to shed authors, Nature, 425, 334 (25 September 2003). Butler details the dispute between the New England Journal of Medicine and Public Library of Science co-founder and Stanford biochemist Pat Brown. NEJM refused to use the PLoS open-access license to publish an accepted paper co-authored by Brown. When Brown asked to have his name removed from the paper in protest, NEJM first refused to publish the paper at all and then reconsidered. In its public explanation, NEJM pretends that its responses to Brown were forced by copyright law.  Open Access News, 9/26/03 http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v425/n6956/full/425334a_fs.html

 BOOK INDUSTRY APPROVES 13-DIGIT ISBN

On September 18, members of the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) unanimously approved the Product Identification Policy Statement that endorses a 13-digit ISBN as proposed by the International Organization for Standardization, with an implementation date of January 2007. The statement also called for the Bookland EAN barcode to replace the price-point UPC where it is currently used on books and book-related products, effective January 1, 2005. Also, the Policy recommends that companies in the publishing industry become compliant with the Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN), which would allow trading partners to specify packaging information when placing electronic orders. As with other voluntary standards, the timing and specific details of implementing the new policy will be determined between and among trading partners. The complete policy statement is available online at http://www.bisg.org/docs/BISG_policy_001.pdf . Moving forward, BISG plans additional research related to mass merchandisers and other parties affected by the policy statement and will develop a road map for the purpose of educating the parties affected and implementing the policy.  http://news.bookweb.org/1847.html

 OPEN ACCESS INITIATIVE FROM THE COMPANY OF BIOLOGISTS
In response to the biological community’s drive for freedom of access to scientific research, The Company of Biologists will offer authors the choice to have their work published free of charge (in the usual way) or as an author-funded open access paper. Open access is a new mode of publishing, which removes the subscription barrier and allows all internet users completely free access to the material. Authors choosing to take advantage of the open access alternative will be charged a publication fee, which, as an introductory offer, will be heavily subsidized by the Company of Biologists. The Company of Biologists will offer this author-funded publication model for a trial period of one year. The traditional subscription model will operate in parallel as part of a hybrid publishing experiment. Authors will be asked to make the decision as to whether to take advantage of the open access offer when their papers are accepted. Those choosing the company’s traditional free publication alternative will still benefit from no page charges, no color charges, and free access to papers after 6 months. As a small not-for-profit publisher, The Company of Biologists relies on subscription revenue to cover its publishing costs.  However, this experiment with an open access publishing model is an important development, allowing authors increased flexibility and choice. The Company of Biologists is dedicated to its continuing financial support for the community through grants, traveling fellowships and sponsorship.  For further information visit www.biologists.com/web/openaccess.html  Open Access News 9/29/03

 CHINESE PUBLISHER REVISES CLINTON MEMOIR

The translation of Hillary Rodham Clinton's autobiography, one of China's hottest-selling books, has been censored and revised for mainland Chinese audiences to gloss over sensitive topics. The senator and former first lady said Wednesday she was "amazed and outraged." Clinton's memoir, "Living History," runs 466 pages in Chinese and contains at least 10 segments where politically charged topics have been changed or deleted. They include material on Harry Wu, a Chinese-American human rights activist, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. Such retooling is a common practice by Beijing's authoritarian communist government, which tightly controls all media and the Internet despite promises of growing openness in an increasingly free-market economy. Simon & Schuster's Web site posted a page flagging the changes in red.  "The Chinese edition of Hillary Clinton's `Living History' published by Yilin Press ... includes changes to the original text in various sections in the book," the site says. It provides English and Chinese versions of what was missing or altered. On its Web site, Simon & Schuster offered no editorial comment or assessment of the changes.  One section in the Chinese version says Wu had been detained and was awaiting sentencing for spying. The original version says Wu is a "human rights activist who had spent 19 years as a political prisoner in Chinese labor camps," according to the Web site.  Salon.com 9/29/03  http://www.salon.com/books/wire/2003/09/24/clinton/index.html

 THE SEMANTIC WEB'S EARLY ADOPTERS

The Semantic Web, which aims to link information stored in disparate formats intelligently using metadata tags, is on the brink of mainstream adoption, according to its proponents. Not convinced? Just look at blogging, says W3C Semantic Web Activity Leader Eric Miller, who says bloggers are some of the first end users enmeshed in the social network of the Semantic Web. "Some of the tools here are things like TrackBack and syndication," says Miller. "If you use any consistent blogging system, that system is available to RDF [Resource Description Framework], you can leverage RSS [Really Simple Syndication] tools and ask questions like 'show me all the people who are talking about grid technology.' What you get back is a more relevant response regardless of the data set. It's an interesting effect because it's typing those rants together in a cohesive way." You can also see Semantic Web influence in those automated phone systems that attempt to more efficiently steer callers through the maze of options. "They are moving from a series of prompt requests—'If you would like to do this press 1 or if you would like to do this press 2'—to making them more effective by setting up preferences and profiles to get more streamlined," says Miller, who adds that the bio-informatics and life sciences communities are also some of the early adopters of the Semantic Web linking technology because it allows researchers to reference documents more quickly. (Internetnews.com 12 Sep 2003) ShelfLife, No. 125 (September 25 2003)

http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/3076961/

 THINKING INSIDE THE BOX: LIBRARIES AS 'LIVING ROOMS'

Robert S. Martin, director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, is a strong proponent of comprehensive digital collections, but cautions that "we must not lose sight of the indispensable role of the library as a place, a place that builds social capital and supports a civil society; a place that is a vital and vibrant center of community life—whether your community is an isolated rural village, an impoverished city center, an affluent suburb, or a research university." He quotes with approval the plea of a Tacoma News Tribune columnist that the Tacoma community "think inside the box for a moment." Why? "Because it is inside those brick-and-mortar boxes where community lives. Tacoma's 10 libraries are the living (rooms) of 10 neighborhoods. They are places where latchkey kids can feel safe in the afternoons, where community groups have meetings, where seniors go to read papers and stay current, where people without Internet access at home go online, where parents give their children the gift of reading." ShelfLife, No. 125 (September 25 2003) (CLIR 3 Aug 2003) http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub119/pub119.pdf

 SPECULATION ON THOMSON/WOLTERS KLUWER

At an investor conference in New York, Thomson CEO Richard Harrington said that Europe will be the target for much of Thomson's growth and acquisitions in coming years.  He noted particularly that Thomson has ridden the waves of service industry growth and an expanding class of knowledge workers in North America, and that those same trends are taking root in Europe.  Analysts at Delta Lloyd Securities seized on that news to bump up their recommendation on Wolters Kluwer stock, on the belief that Harrington's announcement signals an increased likelihood that Thomson will make a bid for Wolters Kluwer.  Wolters Kluwer's share price is down more than 30 percent since a year ago after a weak first half, while Thomson's is up 20 percent, making potential acquisition funding more favorable for Thomson.  Over 50 percent of Wolters Kluwer's revenues are from Europe vs. only 18 percent for Thomson, so an acquisition would achieve the goal of expanding Thomson's European presence.  However, the regulatory issues around such an acquisition would be huge.  There would likely be an uproar in the buying community and strong attempts to block any such transaction as anti-competitive.  Outsell's e-briefs, September 26, 2003

 P2P GROUP OFFERS CODE OF CONDUCT

A trade group representing six makers of peer-to-peer technology says they will abide by a code of conduct governing how their networks are used. Members of P2P United—Lime Wire, Grokster, Blubster, BearShare, Morpheus, and eDonkey 2000—pledged to encourage users to understand copyright laws, cooperate with law enforcement to track down people who trade child pornography, and work with the recording industry to find appropriate means to compensate artists for files copied by P2P users. The code of conduct also prohibits installing any software on computers without users' informed consent. Notably absent from the group is Kazaa, the most widely used P2P network. The Recording Industry Association of America, which said it has reached copyright settlements with 64 individuals since it filed lawsuits against 261 alleged violators, offered a guarded response. In a statement, the group said P2P United's actions were "refreshing" but that "they need to do a whole lot more before they can claim to be legitimate businesses." Reuters, 29 September 2003 Edupage, September 29, 2003 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3526711

 MIT FOR FREE, VIRTUALLY

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is making its course materials available to the world for free download. One year after the launch of its pilot program, MIT on Monday quietly published everything from class syllabuses to lecture videos for 500 courses through its OpenCourseWare initiative, an ambitious project it hopes will spark a Web-based revolution in the way universities share information. The program aims to distribute its course materials as a way to help teachers and students around the world gain access to the MIT faculty's methods and information. The institute doesn't expect to publish materials for its full complement of classes until 2007, when it expects to have between 1,800 and 2,000 offerings. The project may be free to users, but it has cost millions to implement. The pilot program, which officially began in April 2001 and expires this year, was supported by two $5.5 million grants, one from the Hewlett Foundation and the other from the Mellon Foundation. MIT is now applying for second-round funding and has budgeted $20 million to the project over the next 20 years.

OpenCourseWare has required its planners to sort through thorny intellectual property issues, and it has had to overcome its share of technical hurdles. To help integrate a wide array of media types and other sources, the project is using Microsoft's Content Management System 2002.  http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5083840.html

  The scholarly communications are also on line at http://www.library.uiuc.edu/administration/subscribe_instructions.htm