“Remarkably, the Maryland Act subjects publishers to civil and criminal liability for attempting to exercise their exclusive rights in the very manner envisioned by the federal statute.” – Complaint in AAP v. Attorney General of the State of Maryland. It is inherent to the exclusive rights of the Copyright Act that authors may decide the manner in which their works ...
Recently, the New York and Maryland state legislatures passed nearly identical eBook licensing bills (and Rhode Island had a sister bill in the works) responding to complaints of inequity by various library associations. Couched in the rhetoric of seeking “reasonable terms” on behalf of readers, and claiming to be neither anti-publisher nor anti-author, what the libraries have in fact advocated ...
