How Google Stole the Work of Millions of Authors; Wall Street Journal, 2/7/16

Roxana Robinson, Wall Street Journal; How Google Stole the Work of Millions of Authors:

"Last week publishers, copyright experts and other supporters filed amicus briefs petitioning the Supreme Court to hear the copyright-infringement case against Google brought by the Authors Guild."

Judge Allows Class-Action Suit Over Google’s Book Scanning; New York Times, 5/31/12

Julie Bosman, New York Times; Judge Allows Class-Action Suit Over Google’s Book Scanning:

"A federal judge in Manhattan granted class-action status on Thursday to authors suing Google over the company’s ambitious book-scanning project, allowing the long-stalled case to move forward...

James Grimmelmann, a professor at New York Law School who has studied the legal aspects of the case, said the judge’s decision “makes it very likely that we’re going to have a very high-stakes decision about Google’s book-scanning project.”"

Google, Author’s Guild Clash Over Class Action and Standing; LibraryJournal.com, 15/10/12

Meredith Schwartz, LibraryJournal.com; Google, Author’s Guild Clash Over Class Action and Standing:

"Judge Chin heard oral argument in the Google Books case on May 4 and ultimately reserved decision. The parties will go ahead with their summary judgment motions, with oral argument scheduled for September."

Google Cake Doodle Marks 12th Birthday: A Look Back; PC World, 9/27/10

Ian Paul, PC World; Google Cake Doodle Marks 12th Birthday: A Look Back: Google celebrated its 12th birthday with a 'doodle' of a cake featured on its homepage. Here is a tour of past birthday doodles:

"2005: Happy 7th Birthday

Perhaps making up for going without cake the year previous, Google went all out for its seventh birthday on September 27. The search giant's doodle included 7 pieces of cake and the "L" became a 7. This was a big year for Google, with notable launches including Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Scholar, personalized home pages (later to be called iGoogle), Google Talk, and Google Reader. Google also experienced its first headaches with Google Book Search when a group of 8000 writers opposed the search giant's plans to scan and index the libraries at Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, and Oxford universities, according to The Boston Globe."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/206246/google_cake_doodle_marks_12th_birthday_a_look_back.html?tk=hp_new

Google: 129 Million Different Books Have Been Published; PC World, 8/6/10

Joab Jackson, PC World; Google: 129 Million Different Books Have Been Published:

"For those who have ever wondered how many different books are out there in the world, Google has an answer for you: 129,864,880, according to Leonid Taycher, a Google software engineer who works on the Google Books project.

Estimating the number of books in the world is more than an exercise in curiosity for the search giant: It also provides a roadmap of some of the work still left to be done in meeting the company's ambitious goal of organizing all the world's information...

As of June, the company has scanned 12 million books, according to a presentation given by Google Books engineering manager Jon Orwant at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference in Boston. These books have been written in about 480 languages (including 3 books in the Star Trek-originated Klingon language) .

The company plans to complete the scanning of existing books within a decade. The resulting virtual collection will consist of four billion pages and two trillion words, Orwant said.

About 20 percent of the world's books are in the public domain, Orwant explained. About 10 to 15 percent of these books are in print. The remaining books -- the vast majority of all titles -- are still under copyright but out of print. Google is in the process of borrowing copies of these books in order to digitize them, from about 40 large libraries worldwide.

It's this act of scanning in books that are out-of-print but still covered by copyright that has been met with some resistance by the publishing industry.

The company is now waiting for a judgement from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, on whether it can scan these books. "

http://www.pcworld.com/article/202803/google_129_million_different_books_have_been_published.html

GBS: Chin Is In; James Grimmelmann's Laboratorium Blog, 4/22/10

James Grimmelmann's Laboratorium Blog; GBS: Chin Is In:

"Denny Chin was unanimously confirmed by the Senate this morning for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Congratulations to Judge Chin.

I don’t know what this means for the Google Books case, and would rather just wait to see than speculate."

http://laboratorium.net/archive/2010/04/22/chin_is_in

HathiTrust Launching Full-Text Library of Books; Information Today, 10/22/09

Barbara Quint, Information Today; HathiTrust Launching Full-Text Library of Books:

"With all the controversy still swirling around Google Books and its post-settlement offerings, an alternative route to the millions of digitized books and journals supplied by leading Google Book Search library partners has arrived. The HathiTrust (www.hathitrust.org) is a collaboration of 25 research libraries already participating in Google Book Search to produce a shared digital repository for preservation and access to a curated collection. By mid-November, the HathiTrust Digital Library will have a full-featured, full-text search service for 4.3-5 million items. The searches will retrieve bibliographic citations and page references, including those for in-copyright books. Content will extend beyond the digitized copies of books returned to early library partners by Google. HathiTrust is pushing to acquire other digitized special collections from its members, as well as making arrangements for opening access to university press books.

Begun in October 2008, HathiTrust members currently include the 10 University of California system libraries, plus the California Digital Library, Indiana University, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, The Ohio State University, Penn State University, Purdue University, The University of Chicago, University of Illinois, University of Illinois at Chicago, The University of Iowa, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Virginia. The depository currently includes digitized volumes from the University of Michigan, University of California, Indiana University, and the University of Wisconsin."

http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/HathiTrust-Launching-FullText-Library-of-Books-57575.asp

Privacy Missing From Google Books Settlement; PC World, 8/28/09

Robert McMillan via PC World; Privacy Missing From Google Books Settlement:

"If Google digitizes the world's books, how will it keep track of what you read?

That's one of the unanswered questions that librarians and privacy experts are grappling with as Google attempts to settle a long-running lawsuit by publishers and copyright holders and move ahead with its effort to digitize millions of books, known as the Google Books Library Project.

For librarians, many of whom are working with Google to digitize their collections of books, it's a thorny question. That's because librarians and the online world have different standards for dealing with user information. Many libraries routinely delete borrower information, and organizations such as the American Library Association have fought hard to preserve the privacy of their patrons in the face of laws such as the U.S. Patriot Act.

But now, as more and more titles become available in Google Book Search, it's not clear whether digital readers will enjoy the same privacy protections they have at the library. "Which way are we going to go?" said Michael Zimmer, a professor from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. "Is this service going to be an extension of the library, or an extension of Web searching?""

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/171089/privacy_missing_from_google_books_settlement.html

Europe Seeks to Ease Rules for Putting Books Online ; New York Times, 8/28/09

James Kanter via New York Times; Europe Seeks to Ease Rules for Putting Books Online:

"The European Commission on Friday will propose drafting rules that would make it easier to put many books and manuscripts online. The move is a part of the commission’s effort to bolster access to information and to encourage online businesses.

The changes would be aimed at allowing Internet users to access out-of-print works and so-called orphan works for which it is impossible or very difficult to trace the rights holders, said Viviane Reding, the European Union commissioner who oversees the Internet.

Any new rules eventually proposed by Ms. Reding could also make it easier to acquire a single digital copyright covering the European Union, rather than having to deal with agencies in each of its member states....

Ms. Reding is stepping up her campaign to modify the European Union’s copyright rules to suit a new era and to enable citizens to locate content on public sites like Europeana, a digital library of Europe’s cultural heritage, as well as on private sites.

A hearing will be held next month in Brussels on Google’s efforts to digitize major collections of books and the company’s proposed settlement with book publishers in the United States.
Ms. Reding said Europeans should “look very closely at the discussions in the U.S. to see how the experience made there could best be used for finding a European solution.”

On Thursday, European officials highlighted the role that private companies like Google could play in helping financially struggling public authorities carry out the expensive task of digitizing materials like books.

Ms. Reding’s suggestions — which are open to public comment until mid-November — broadly mirror aspects of United States copyright law and echo the proposed Google settlement by creating a central registry for the works."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/technology/internet/28books.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=europe%20books&st=cse

Life in a Google Book Search World; Inside Higher Ed, 8/12/09

Inside Higher Ed; Life in a Google Book Search World:

While the settlement gives lawyers and scholars fodder for debating the intricacies of often arcane antitrust law provisions, its real-world implications for university research libraries are already apparent, according to Jonathan Band, legal counsel for the Library Copyright Alliance, which represents thousands of libraries in three major associations. Speaking at a panel on the Google settlement at the National Press Club here Tuesday, Band said it is obvious that any library that hopes to remain competitive will be forced to purchase an institutional subscription from Google Book Search.

“[The university’s] faculty will insist upon it,” he said. “Its students will insist upon it.”

“There’s a product they have to have, and in essence there’s one supplier,” Band added.

The cost of institutional subscriptions, which will last for a limited period before renewal is necessary, will differ across institutions based in part on enrollment numbers, according to the settlement. Libraries that purchase subscription services will gain access to the full text of Google’s entire library, which now contains more than 7 million books. The search engine’s immodest goal from the outset, however, has been to eventually put the world’s written history at the public’s fingertips.

For all the concerns that Google’s Book Search provokes, there seems little argument that the basic concept -- broad-based access to knowledge -- serves an inherent good. Researchers are unsurprisingly excited by the possibilities presented by a searchable full-text database of obscure, forgotten works. But it is Google’s potential hold on those obscure works that most worries James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at New York Law School.

Grimmelmann is particularly concerned about the Google settlement’s treatment of so-called “orphan” works, a term used to describe books for whom the copyright owner may be unknown or nonexistent. Since copyright endures for 70 years beyond an author’s death, it's possible that an author’s grandchild or other relative may unknowingly hold a copyright, making it practically impossible to track him or her down.

Under the settlement, Google is permitted to presume it has the consent of any as-yet-undiscovered copyright owner -- insulating the company from costly legal challenges that another would-be book digitizer might invoke when scanning orphan works.
In the context of competition, the orphan works are “the thing [Google has] that no competitor could hope to match,” Grimmelmann said.

Grimmelmann’s concerns about orphan works are misguided and overblown, according to David Balto, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “Orphan” status is only bestowed upon books for which publishers see no viable market, and whose “parents” are “indifferent,” he said. Essentially, such works have little value, and therefore hardly give Google an advantage, Balto said.

While Grimmelmann readily praised the potential benefit of Google’s digitization project, he said the project’s social good does not erase his concerns about Google’s unfair advantage.

“We wouldn’t say a monopolist should be excused of particular acts of monopoly because it does other good things,” he said."

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/12/google

Disability Group Boosts Google Book Search; Wired's Epicenter, 8/7/09

Ryan Singel via Wired's Epicenter; Disability Group Boosts Google Book Search:

"Google’s Book Search program will help the blind and wheelchair-bound read more, a disability group told a federal judge Wednesday, giving Google some much needed support in its attempt to create the online library and bookstore of the future.

The American Association of People with Disabilities told federal court judge Denny Chin that “vast numbers of books will be opened up for many people for the first time ever,” citing the fact that Google Book Search will digitize books into formats that can be used by specialized readers. The nonprofit group asked the court to approve the controversial copyright settlement that Google struck in 2007 to settle a class action lawsuit filed by authors and publishers.

That’s good news for the search and advertising giant, given the settlement is under investigation by the Justice Department and is facing stiff opposition from rights groups and some authors."

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/disability-group-boosts-google-book-search/

Legal advocates push for Google Books privacy; CNet News, 7/23/09

Elinor Mills via CNet News; Legal advocates push for Google Books privacy:

"Google should promise to protect the privacy of consumers with its Book Search service, the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Samuelson Law Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley Law said in a letter to the search giant on Thursday.

"Under its current design, Google Book Search keeps track of what books readers search for and browse, what books they read, and even what they 'write' down in the margins," the groups wrote in a letter (PDF) to Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.

"Given the long and troubling history of government and third-party efforts to compel libraries and booksellers to turn over records about readers, it is essential that Google Books incorporate strong privacy protections in both the architecture and policies of Google Book Search," the letter said. "Without these, Google Books could become a one-stop shop for government and civil-litigant fishing expeditions into the private lives of Americans.""

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10294519-93.html

Japanese e-library project could lose out to Google Book Search without government flex; Mainichi Daily News, 7/24/09

Op-Ed: Mainichi Daily News; Japanese e-library project could lose out to Google Book Search without government flex:

"Imagine being able to read and search all the books in the world on the Internet. Such convenience has taken a step closer to reality, thanks to U.S. search engine giant Google's new Book Search service. However, it may be too early to rejoice over the feat without reservation.

Under the U.S. copyright law's fair use provision, literary and other works can be used without right-holders' permission for public purposes, and Google's electronic library project is based on this provision. And, while it may serve the public good to allow people to use literary documents amassed at conventional libraries, U.S. publishers have opposed the publication of books on the Internet without their permission and brought the case into the court.

The lawsuit ended up in a settlement and, if the U.S. court approves the settlement, Google will be entitled to launch an e-library project for a fee for books the company deems out of print or unavailable in exchange for a royalty. The settlement, however, applies outside the U.S. as well, under international copyright protection conventions.

The case has wreaked havoc on book publishers worldwide since right-holders will be automatically incorporated into the settlement unless they specifically opt out.

In the meantime, Japan's National Diet Library (NDL) is also accelerating the digitization of its book collection. The move follows a recent revision to Japan's Copyright Law, allowing the NDL to digitize books without right-holders' permission, as well as a large budget increase for digitization of books under the supplementary budget.

However, one needs to obtain permission from individual right-holders before publicizing digitized books online in Japan. If things are left as is, Google is certain to become dominant in the e-library project.

There's also a concern from a cultural perspective. Since Google Book Search mainly deals with book collections at libraries in the U.S., search results would inevitably tend to show more books published in the U.S. It would not only help expand the influence of the English language but could also prompt further prevalence of American ways of thinking and interpretation around the world.

Digitization of books and their distribution on the Web is an issue that relates to the concept of soft power, with which countries aspire to gain a greater voice in the international community through attaining support for their unique culture and values.

Online distribution for a fee has already become common in the music industry. It is hoped that the Japanese government will flexibly proceed with legal revisions so as to facilitate online distribution of books' content in Japan, including the e-library project."

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/editorial/news/20090723p2a00m0na015000c.html

[University of Texas] Libraries and Google Amend Book Search Agreement; University of Texas at Austin, 7/9/09

University of Texas at Austin; [University of Texas] Libraries and Google Amend Book Search Agreement:

The University of Texas Libraries announces an amendment of its agreement with Google Inc. to create digital copies of books from the Libraries' collections.

The original agreement—which assures discovery, preservation and access to extraordinary resources at The University of Texas at Austin—has been amended to reflect changes made possible by Google's pending settlement with authors and publishers groups.

"The new agreement between the University of Texas Libraries and Google insures that our participation in the project will fulfill our initial primary goals of discovery, preservation and access," says Vice Provost and Libraries Director Fred Heath. "Additional provisions will enhance local access while allowing for the introduction of rich materials from our collections to a broad audience."

The Libraries' partnership with Google is part of the Google Books Library Project, started in December 2004, to digitize volumes drawn from the collections of respected institutions around the globe, including the University of Michigan, Stanford University, Oxford University, the New York Public Library and more. Through this historic collaboration, millions of books from the collections of the University of Texas Libraries and other partner institutions will be discoverable online.

"As the university's Commission of 125 has noted, the citizens of Texas expect our flagship university to 'actively address pressing public problems of Texas, the nation, and the world,'" says Heath. "In this age of rapidly expanding information resources, it is essential that the university leverage the reach of the Internet to make its collections more readily available to students, faculty and citizens—regardless of their location."

Particular materials from collections at the Libraries—especially items from the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection—are now available in varying amounts, depending on copyright status, through Google Book Search. Under the settlement, public domain works will still be available in their full text and millions of in-copyright, out-of-print works will be available to be previewed and accessed online by readers. The subscription program proposed by the settlement will provide for subscriber institutions to allow their students and patrons to access the full texts of all the works included in the subscription database.

For more information, visit the University of Texas Libraries-Google Digitization Program online."

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2009/07/09/libraries_google_search/

Science moves from the stacks to the Web; print too pricey; Ars Technica, 7/6/09

John Timmer via Ars Technica; Science moves from the stacks to the Web; print too pricey: If information isn't online, it may as well not exist. In the latest sign that the world of traditional print has become a world of hurt, the American Chemical Society is reported to be planning to switch to an online-only publishing model for its journals:

"A recent decision by a prominent academic publisher to switch to digital-only distribution was apparently motivated by simple economics: print no longer made financial sense.

The publisher in question is the American Chemical Society, which, in addition to being a professional society, produces a few dozen journals...

With online content, literature searches can be squeezed in among the frequent but short breaks that occur within experiments. If anything, avoiding a trip to the library allows people to work harder.

And, in many ways, online content is simply better. Instead of the one-size-fits-all constraints on images imposed by print, visual data can be shown in high quality online, allowing interested parties the opportunity to get more detail in those cases that are important to them. The rise of supplemental data—related information that can't be squeezed into the word limits enforced by most journals—has also made online reading essential. Supplemental data started out as a way to include video (which doesn't translate to print) or peripheral data that was once omitted entirely via the phrase "data not shown." Now, supplemental data are often longer than the actual publication and contain information that is essential to its interpretation.

Finally, online publications are easier to integrate with everything else we do online: look for definitions of terms, search for related content, brush up on background, etc.

That's not to say nothing is lost in the transition away from print. Print makes it easier to stay up on the latest news and editorial material that many journals include, and it probably does a better job of enabling the (occasional) serendipitous identification of relevant information.

Still, the scientific community as a whole has embraced online publishing, and other fields are likely to do the same. A number of publishers have responded by creating online-only editions of their properties, or moving individual journals away from print. A couple of publishers—the Public Library of Science and Biomed Central—have also made online, open access publishing central to their strategy from the start. But, to my knowledge, this is the first time that a major academic publisher has chosen to transition away from print so completely."

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/07/academic-publisher-reportedly-going-online-only.ars

U.S. Presses Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Book Settlement; New York Times, 6/10/09

Miguel Helft via New York Times; U.S. Presses Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Book Settlement:

"In a sign that the government has stepped up its antitrust investigation of a class-action settlement between Google and groups representing authors and publishers, the Justice Department has issued formal requests for information to several of the parties involved.

The Justice Department has sent the requests, called civil investigative demands, to various parties, including Google, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and individual publishers, said Michael J. Boni, a partner at Boni & Zack, who represented the Authors Guild in negotiations with Google.

“They are asking for a lot of information,” Mr. Boni said. “It signals that they are serious about the antitrust implications of the settlement.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/technology/companies/10book.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=google%20book&st=cse

Critics: Google Book Deal a Monopoly, Privacy Debacle; Wired.com, 6/2/09

Ryan Singel via Wired.com; Critics: Google Book Deal a Monopoly, Privacy Debacle:

"Google set out to digitize the world’s books in 2003, got sued for its trouble in 2005 by publishers and authors wanting to make money from the efforts, and in 2007 came to a proposed settlement that gives Google the rights to scan, index, display and even sell millions of books that are in copyright. So far its Google Book Search program has digitized around 10 million books from the some of the nation’s most prestigious university libraries, but only small portions of most in-copyright books are shown online currently.

(Learn more with Wired.com’s Google Book Search Settlement FAQ.)

Even the deal’s critics — such as New York University professor James Grimmelmann — admit that the deal sounds great: Books in copyright but out-of-print become available for viewing and purchase by the public, and researchers and students at universities will get access to the full technology.

But Grimmelmann, whose Google Book Search research has been funded by Microsoft, says that the Google deal gives it exclusive rights to books that are in copyright whose authors can’t be found — so-called orphan works — and that any competitor who wants to try the same project could get sued for huge sums of money.

That makes a monopoly, Grimmelmann told conference goers at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Washington, D.C. Tuesday."

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/google_books/

UMich Gets Better Deal in Google’s Library of the Future Project; Wired.com, 5/21/09

Ryan Singel via Wired.com; UMich Gets Better Deal in Google’s Library of the Future Project:

"The new Google-UM agreement (.pdf) gives the university a digital copy of every book on its shelves, regardless of whether Google scanned its copy or another library’s. The school gets more rights to distribute its copies of the digitized works, and, most importantly for Google public relations, a way for the school to protest the pricing scheme of full-text institutional subscriptions to the millions of digitized books.

University of Michigan is one of the largest of the 29 libraries who have been digitizing public-domain and in-copyright books in conjunction with Google Book Search."

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/umich-gets-better-deal-in-googles-library-of-the-future-project/

Google Book-Scanning Pact to Give Libraries Input on Price; New York Times, 5/20/9

Miguel Helft via New York Times; Google Book-Scanning Pact to Give Libraries Input on Price:

"The new agreement, which Google hopes other libraries will endorse, lets the University of Michigan object if it thinks the prices Google charges libraries for access to its digital collection are too high, a major concern of some librarians. Any pricing dispute would be resolved through arbitration.

Only the institutions that lend books to Google for scanning — now 21 libraries in the United States — would be allowed to object to pricing.

The new agreement also gives the university, and any library that signs a similar agreement, a discount on its subscription proportional to the number of books it contributes to Google’s mass digitization project. Since Michigan is lending a large number of books, it will receive Google’s service free for 25 years...

The new agreement does not address other criticism, including the complaints over orphan works and worries that the agreement does not protect the privacy of readers of Google’s digital library."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/technology/companies/21google.html?hpw

A Book Author Wonders How to Fight Piracy; New York Times Bits Blog, 5/14/09

Via New York Times Bits Blog; A Book Author Wonders How to Fight Piracy:

By Peter Wayner: "The specter of piracy of my books materialized for me several weeks ago when I typed the four words “wayner data compression textbook” into Google. Five of the top 10 links pointed to sites distributing pirated copies. (And now, it’s six.)"

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/a-pirates-victim-wonders-how-to-fight-back/?scp=3&sq=fair%20use&st=cse