Challenge to Google Books Is Declined by Supreme Court; New York Times, 4/18/16

Adam Liptak, New York Times; Challenge to Google Books Is Declined by Supreme Court:

"The Supreme Court on Monday refused to revive a challenge to Google’s digital library of millions of books, turning down an appeal from authors who said the project amounted to copyright infringement on a mass scale.

The Supreme Court’s brief order left in place an appeals court decision that the project was a “fair use” of the authors’ work, ending a legal saga that had lasted more than a decade...

As is their custom, the justices gave no reasons for declining to hear the case, Authors Guild v. Google Inc., No. 15-849.

Last year, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that Google’s project was lawful and beneficial.

“The purpose of the copying is highly transformative, the public display of text is limited and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals,” Judge Pierre N. Leval, an authority on copyright law, wrote for the panel."

Orphan Works and Mass Digitization: A Report of the Register of Copyrights; U.S. Copyright Office, June 2015

U.S. Copyright Office; Orphan Works and Mass Digitization: A Report of the Register of Copyrights:

Does the Copyright Office Belong in a Library?; Library Journal, 7/2/15

Kevin L. Smith, Library Journal; Does the Copyright Office Belong in a Library? :

"It has been a busy time for those of us who watch the doings of the Copyright Office. In addition to releasing a massive report on Orphan Works and Mass Digitization, about which I have written here, the Copyright Office (CO) is the subject of a piece of legislation introduced as a discussion draft on June 3. The bill, if it were officially introduced and ultimately enacted, would remove the CO from the Library of Congress (LC) and establish it as an independent agency of the federal government, under the Executive Branch. Then, while we were still considering the ramifications of this idea, came the announcement on June 10 of the pending retirement of Dr. James Billington, who has been the Librarian of Congress for the past 29 years.

These events suggest long-term changes for the copyright and library communities, and it is worth taking a moment to consider, especially, the impact of the idea of making the Copyright Office an independent agency.

The first thing that strikes me about the “discussion draft” of the proposed law to establish the Copyright Office as an independent agency—called the Copyright Office for the Digital Economy (CODE) Act—is that it never says why it is needed...

In short, this bill seems like a solution in search of a problem, unless you accept that the problem is that music and movie companies are making less money than they would like. Rather than considering such an ill-advised bill, I hope that we will see, over the next year and a half or so, a new Librarian of Congress who will provide stronger leadership on many issues, but especially on the need to keep copyright policy, and the Copyright Office, firmly grounded in the needs and interests of all of the American public."

U.S. Copyright Office Outlines "Priorities and Special Projects"; Publishers Weekly, 10/26/11

Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly; U.S. Copyright Office Outlines "Priorities and Special Projects" :

"Orphan works, preservation for libraries, mass digitization, and fighting digital piracy are among the priorities set by the Register of Copyrights Maria A. Pallante this week in a paper outlining the U.S. Copyyright Office's "priorities and special projects" for the next two years. In all, the paper articulates 17 priorities in the areas of copyright policy and administrative practice, and 10 "new projects" designed to "improve the quality and efficiency" of the U.S. Copyright Office’s services in the 21st century. The paper also summarizes the state of global policy, including U.S. trade negotiations, anti-piracy efforts and international discussions of exceptions and limitations."

Free Our Libraries, Cry University Presidents - Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/2/08

Free Our Libraries, Cry University Presidents:

"At the Universal Access Digital Library Summit, held on September 24 and 25 at the Boston Public Library, Mark Huddleston, president of the University of New Hampshire, Peter Nicholls, provost of the University of Connecticut, and Jack Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts, called for new approaches to the digitization of library collections that will allow access for all. The presidents urged libraries to halt what they described as an assault on the public’s right to knowledge, done in the name of copyright."
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3362/free-our-libraries-cry-university-presidents?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Google to Re-Publish 244 Years of Newspaper Articles? - Editor & Publisher, 9/9/08

Google to Re-Publish 244 Years of Newspaper Articles?: "Google Inc. is trying to expand the newspaper section of its online library to include billions of articles published during the past 244 years...

Besides the [Quebec] Chronicle-Telegraph, other newspapers that have already agreed to allow Google to copy and host their archives include the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the St. Petersburg Times in Florida...

Google already has committed to spending tens of millions of dollars to make electronic copies of books and other material kept in dozens of libraries around the world. The book-copying program, launched in 2004, has triggered a lawsuit from group of authors and publishers that alleges it infringes on copyrights — a charge that Google is fighting."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003847066

OCLC Debuts Copyright Evidence Registry - OCLC Press Release, 8/25/08

OCLC pilots WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry: "OCLC is piloting a new service for libraries that encourages librarians and other interested parties to discover and share information about the copyright status of books.

The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry is a community working together to build a union catalog of copyright evidence based on WorldCat, which contains more than 100 million bibliographic records describing items held in thousands of libraries worldwide...

The goal of the Copyright Evidence Registry is to encourage a cooperative environment to discover, create and share copyright evidence through a collaboratively created and maintained database, using the WorldCat cooperative model to eliminate duplicate efforts...

Users can search the Copyright Evidence Registry to find information about a book, learn what others have said about its copyright status, and share what they know...

The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry Beta can be accessed at http://www.worldcat.org/copyrightevidence."