Google's Sergey Brin lashes out at critics of $125m book deal; Guardian, 10/9/09

Bobbie Johnson, Guardian; Google's Sergey Brin lashes out at critics of $125m book deal:

"Google co-founder Sergey Brin has hit out at critics who derailed the company's $125m deal with American publishers to give it the right to digitise millions of books...

In a column published in the New York Times, Brin - who founded the internet giant with Larry Page in 1998 - hit out at those objectors, called many of their accusations "myths" while dismissing other concerns as fantasy...

Brin's comments come a day after he came in for fierce criticism from Brewster Kahle, the founder of the non-profit Internet Archive, which has been working to secure a change in copyright law to help digitisation projects. In particular, the archive has been working to clarify the status of so-called "orphan" works - books whose copyright holder remains unknown - by pushing new legislation through the US Congress.

Under Google's proposal, the Californian internet company would have gained the exclusive right to sell advertising or access to orphan works - something Kahle felt was inappropriate.

"Many of us are objecting because we have been working together for years on the mass scanning of out-of-print books – and have worked to get books online for far longer than Google – and Google's 'settlement' could hurt our efforts," he wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "A major part of our efforts have concentrated on changing the law so everyone would benefit."

"There is an alternative, and they know it — orphan works legislation — that up until the last session of Congress had been working its way through the house and senate. It was not perfect, but was getting close to what we need. Best yet, it passed one house — at least until Google effectively sideswiped the process with their settlement proposal."

In his editorial, Brin admitted that Google would have exclusive rights over such material, at least in the short term - but then suggested that Google's deal would actually help attempts to force through a legislative change.

"While new projects will not immediately have the same rights to orphan works, the agreement will be a beacon of compromise in case of a similar lawsuit, and it will serve as a precedent for orphan works legislation, which Google has always supported and will continue to support.""

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/09/google-books-brin

Judge delays Google books hearing; BBC News, 9/25/09

Maggie Shiels, BBC News; Judge delays Google books hearing:

""Clearly voices such as ours had an impact on Judge Chin," wrote consumer watchdog advocate John Simpson in an email to BBC News.

"There was no way the proposed settlement could go forward. We believe that the proper place to solve many of the case's thorniest problems, such as that of orphan books, is in Congress because it is important to build digital libraries."

Orphan books - of which there are thought to be five million - are titles where the authors cannot be found.

Judge Chin has called for a "status conference" to be held on 7 October - the original date for the hearing - to determine "how to proceed with the case as expeditiously as possible". "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8274115.stm

Google Books, Congress, and Orphan Works; Center for Democracy & Technology, 9/17/09

David Sohn, Center for Democracy & Technology; Google Books, Congress, and Orphan Works:

"As a practical matter, it is far from clear when or if Congress would be able to produce a legislative solution to the latter problem. The politics of copyright are notoriously difficult. One response to that reality is to say, fine — if Congress can’t agree on what action to take, that just means there isn’t enough consensus on an appropriate path through the legal thicket, so Google should not be allowed to proceed. But that approach doesn’t much serve copyright law’s underlying purpose of promoting the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Allowing the online equivalent of a comprehensive library could offer tremendous benefits both to the reading public and to the many rightsholders who would welcome the chance for their out-of-print works to be rediscovered (and to generate some new revenue to boot.) The proposed settlement, while not perfect, offers a way to achieve that broadly beneficial goal. And if the settlement were to prompt Congress to roll up its sleeves and develop a forward-thinking policy approach, so much the better.

In short, yes, Congress should have the last word. But in the meantime, the Google Books settlement offers the chance to expand public access and increase exposure for many millions of out-of-print works in ways that generally should benefit readers and authors alike. That’s why CDT supports the settlement, albeit with the significant caveat that reader privacy concerns must be addressed. CDT detailed those privacy considerations in a report earlier this summer and in an amicus brief filed with the court in early September; links to those documents can be found here."

http://blog.cdt.org/2009/09/17/google-books-congress-and-orphan-works/

An Open Workshop at Harvard Law School: 7/31/09; Alternative Approaches to Open Digital Libraries in the Shadow of the Google Book Search Settlement

An Open Workshop at Harvard Law School: 7/31/09; Alternative Approaches to Open Digital Libraries in the Shadow of the Google Book Search Settlement: Sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Harvard Law School Library, and Professors Charles Nesson, John Palfrey and Phil Malone:

"Scope and Goals

The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called “orphan works” that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. It need not have been this way.

This workshop seeks to bring a fresh, unique perspective to a complex and widely debated topic. It will focus not on the specific merits and demerits of the settlement itself, or the particular antitrust and privacy and other objections that have been raised. Instead, it will examine the idea of possible alternative universes and offer specific proposals for scenarios that may arise whether or not the settlement is approved. What can libraries, or universities, or non-profits, or Congress, do in the current landscape? And how might these possibilities help us to define a better world than the one that we have today and, more importantly, than the one that will exist if the Google settlement is approved in its current form? Regardless of what happens with respect to the Settlement, what alternative possibilities could lead to a richer, more open and better information ecosystem than the one we have today or might have tomorrow with the Settlement?

By exploring these alternatives, this workshop seeks, in the end, to help inform the debate over the Settlement and its terms and to illuminate some of the key policy considerations that are at stake. Its ultimate goal is to develop a series of options and proposals that could improve on the status quo in novel ways.

Proposed Topics

Here are some tentative topics for beginning discussion at the workshop. We welcome feedback on these suggestions and encourage you to contribute your own proposals. We'll choose several of the topics to be incorporated into our agenda...

What might truly open access to orphan works look like
What might a truly “open” digital collection created by major libraries look like
What might a truly “open” global library look like
What would a truly “open” digital library look like
What might truly open access to and use of an online digital library look like
What might online, digital publishing and access look like going forward
Are all of these the same? Within the open environment what is closed?
Intellectual Freedom = Unrestricted Access to Information + No Monitoring of Use (MarcEPIC)
Payment of processing (author) fees to publishers of journals and monographs
How could the proposed Google Books settlement change the landscape for alternative projects like the Internet Archive? How should such projects adapt so as to remain a viable alternative? "

Post-deadline Submissions

How can we ensure that digital libraries maintain the same privacy protections that non-digital libraries have worked hard to build and preserve?

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/googlebooks/Main_Page