Author Archives: Frank Richter

Shadow Libraries

iRights.info is carrying a very interesting interview (in German) with Balázs Bodó on the size of and the motivation behind the large scientific electronic shadow libraries that have sprung from earlier efforts to disseminate scientific papers and books in Russia. … Continue reading

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The old Model

One of the established publishers has been taking harsher steps lately against losing control over the dissemination of papers published in their journals: Elsevier started to send takedown notices to sites where they find papers whose copyright they own. There’s … Continue reading

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Textbook Prices Again

The Huffington Post was running an article in which they noted that the textbook price hike since 1978 by far outperforms the increase in consumer prices: Whereas the former stands at 812 percent, the consumer price index increased about 250 … Continue reading

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Access to publicly funded scientific papers

Already last October, the German Federal Council (Bundesrat) decided to agree to a modification of the Urheberrechtsgesetz. According to the new addition to the relevant law (§38 Absatz 2a UrhG), authors of publicly funded scientific articles always retain the right … Continue reading

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