Google Book Search Database Halved By Removing Most Foreign Texts; Library Journal, 11/16/09

Norman Oder, Library Journal; Google Book Search Database Halved By Removing Most Foreign Texts:

• "Only Anglo-American works included
• Issues of pricing, comprehensiveness
• EFF: nothing new on reader privacy
• Department of Justice still concerned

The Wall Street Journal added some crucial context to discussion of the revised Google Book Search Settlement announced late Friday: it "would cut the number of works covered by the settlement by at least half by removing millions of foreign works." (Only works from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada would be included.)

Librarian and consultant Karen Coyle commented, "This greatly changes the value of the institutional subscription for higher education, as well as the value of the 'research corpus' (essentially a database of the OCR'd texts that researchers can use for computational research)... As it is, too many Americans are unaware of the world outside of those Anglo-American borders. This will just exacerbate that problem.

"What about the DOJ?
LJ suggested Saturday that the relatively minor changes on the issue of orphan works—in-copyright but out of print—might draw continued interest from the Department of Justice (DOJ); the Wall Street Journal reported that "the Justice Department remains concerned that the fact the settlement gives Google immunity from lawsuits related to orphan works may be anticompetitive."

Privacy concerns remain
Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote, "Unfortunately, the parties did not add any reader privacy protections. The only nominal change was that they formally confirmed a position they had long taken privately that information will not be freely shared between Google and the Registry."

Timetable: resolution in February?
The proposed timetable sets January 28, 2010 as the deadline for opting out and filing objections or amicus briefs; February 4 for the DOJ response; and February 18 for the final fairness hearing"

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6707253.html

Google Books Is Not a Library; Huffington Post, 10/13/09

Pamela Samuelson, Huffington Post; Google Books Is Not a Library:

"Sergey Brin published an op-ed in the New York Times last Friday likening the Google Book initiative to the famous ancient library of Alexandria. Brin suggested that Google Books would be "a library to last forever," unlike its Alexandrian counterpart that was ravaged by fire...

Unlike the Alexandria library or modern public libraries, the Google Book Search (GBS) initiative is a commercial venture that aims to monetize millions of out-of-print books, many of which are "orphans," that is, books whose rights holders cannot readily be found after a diligent search...

If Google Books was just a library, as Brin claims, library associations would not have submitted briefs expressing reservations about the GBS settlement to the federal judge who will be deciding whether to approve the deal. Libraries everywhere are terrified that Google will engage in price-gouging when setting prices for institutional subscriptions to GBS contents. Google is obliged to set prices in conjunction with a newly created Registry that will represent commercial publishers and authors. Prices for these subscriptions are to be set based on the number of books in the corpus, the services available, and prices of comparable products and services (of which there are none). Given that major research libraries today often pay in excess of $4 million a year for access to several thousand journals, they have good reason to be concerned that Google will eventually seek annual fees in excess of this for subscriptions to millions of GBS books. This is because Google will have a de facto monopoly on out-of-print books. The DOJ has raised concerns that price-setting terms of the GBS deal are anti-competitive.

Besides, Google can sell the GBS corpus to anyone without anyone's consent at any time once the settlement is approved...

Brin and Google's CEO Eric Schmidt have also been saying publicly that anyone can do what Google did--scanning millions of books to make a corpus of digitized books. They perceive Google to have just been bolder and more forward-looking than its rivals in this respect. But this claim is preposterous: By settling a lawsuit about whether scanning books to index them is copyright infringement or fair use, Google is putting at risk the next guy's fair use defense for doing the same...

Brin forgot to mention another significant difference between GBS and traditional libraries: their policies on patron privacy. The proposed settlement agreement contains numerous provisions that anticipate monitoring of uses of GBS content; so far, though, Google has been unwilling to make meaningful commitments to protect user privacy. Traditional libraries, by contrast, have been important guardians of patron privacy...

Anyone aspiring to create a modern equivalent of the Alexandrian library would not have designed it to transform research libraries into shopping malls, but that is just what Google will be doing if the GBS deal is approved as is."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-samuelson/google-books-is-not-a-lib_b_317518.html

I'm booking a seat for Google's battle to buy our literary heritage; Observer, 9/6/09

John Naughton via Observer; I'm booking a seat for Google's battle to buy our literary heritage:

"On the one hand, Google clearly has the capacity to make available everything that's ever been published in print - so that anyone with an internet connection can, in principle (and sometimes for a fee), read books otherwise buried in the collections of elite university libraries. And there's clearly a social benefit in that.

On the other hand, think of the downsides. A single commercial company will control much of our cultural heritage. Because it's a settlement based on a class action suit, it will give Google a uniquely privileged position in relation to "orphan" works - ie, those which are still in copyright but for which no owner can be located - which will not be enjoyed by anyone else. And thirdly, it will hand the power to determine access fees to a pair of unaccountable monopolies - Google and the digital rights registry. So it's deeply anti-competitive.

There is a simple remedy for much of this: a change in the law to reverse the fact that copyright infringement carries strict liability, which means that there is effectively no limit on damages. This is why so many orphan works remain effectively unavailable: people are too scared to make them available.

But changing copyright law takes aeons and Judge Chin has to decide now. I bet he has an interesting inbox. But I wouldn't want his job for all the IP in China."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/06/google-digital-books-chin