Googlebooks News - French Court Objects

A French Court has declared Google's goal of creating an online library by digitizing all the world's books and posting them online is illegal under French copyright law. Presumably unless they pay to play. From MSNBC.com

eBook Update...

Always keeping an eye on the evolving eBook market (even during NaNoWriMo!) Sony says your books belong to you. Sony exec says: "Our commitment is that you bought it, you own it," Haber said. "Our hope is to see this as ubiquitous. Buy on any device, read on any device. ... We're obligated to have DRM but we don't pull content back." via BoingBoing Meanwhile, GoogleBooks is trying to thread the needle of copyright law. Anti-trust investigations and myriad lawsuits levied against its deal with the Author's Guild. Resolves some concerns about access and restrictions that will be placed upon materials in their collection that are still covered under US Copyright law. Key also was the handling of funds belonging to 'orphan works' whose authors could not be located. via Yahoo! News & Reuters Independent Booksellers in the digital frontier. IndieBound has launched version 2.0 of their ebook app for the iPhone (and presumably for the Droid as soon as it occurs to them that people are buying the things...) You can get your eBooks and support the independent bookstores in one go. via IndieBound

Google Books Update

The parties involved in the Google Books settlement are cracking it open to see if they can fix it to the satisfaction of all parties and the regulators that are making anti-trust noises.

"Lawyers for The Authors Guild and other plaintiffs said in court papers filed Tuesday that they plan to have settlement talks with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve complaints about a $125 million deal that the Justice Department said probably violates antitrust law." -MSNBC

Read the whole story at the link above. Here's hoping they can get it right this time... stay tuned.

Booknews Roundup

This week the Pirate Bay sale threatened to run aground after the buyers were accused of being on the take and de-listed on the Swedish stock exchange. Allegories abound and metaphors were sighted off the port bow. I wonder if Johnny Depp will get a role in the eventual movie. (via WIRED magazine) Speaking of movies and metaphors, the challenges faced by an award-winning and beloved childrens book that's only about ten sentences long shouldn't surprise us, but it does. This transition from pre-adolescent fantasy to post-modern film is brought to you by the letter N, Y and T. But this tale of a childrens book's coming of age wouldn't be complete without this compelling illustration edition. That Gap ad is magical. (Five words I never thought I'd write.) (via NewYorkTimes and Geektyrant) Tuesday is the big day and the District of Columbia grits its teeth and braces for the onslaught of conspriacy buffs as it makes preparations "to be Dan Browned" on Tuesday (I prefer my cities medium-rare, thanks). Meanwhile, the Publishing Industry prays to be Dan Browned. Makes me wonder where I left my decoder ring. (via MSNBC, AFP, the L'il Orphan Annie show and the makers of rich, chocolaty Ovaltine) Of course there isn't a publisher or bookseller who doesn't wish Dan Brown could take a leaf from James Patterson's playbook. Patterson writes a couple books a day, I think and gets by with a little help from his friends. To his credit, Patterson's a heckuva nice guy and it reportedly very generous to his co-authors. As a writer, it must be odd to be the CEO of "Your Name Here" Inc. (Speaking of the Beatles, do you think there's much hope we'll see an author's edition of "Rockband" that comes with a typewriter and a bottle of Scotch? Maybe not.) (via Reuters, .CNET, Paul, John, George and Ringo) And in other news: This article on flexible screen makes me wonder if my pondering about dancing text isnt so far off, and the melee of authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians and lawyers currently centered on Googlebooks is giving me a headache. If you can summarize it or make it funny, more power to you. (via WIRED magazine, Yahoo/Reuters, ALA, and NewYorkTimes).

Custos Librarium

By now you know that I'm a big fan of librarians. The are the guardians at the gates of our world culture, they fight for the inclusion of all and the exclusion of none. Librarians will (and have) go to court and even jail to protect the privacy of their patrons. When the USA PATRIOT Act extended the writ of the federal government's surveillance efforts into the nation's libraries, the librarians and the ALA fought (semi-successfully) the legislation in the name of their library patrons. Internet search providers have a long and troubled history when it comes to privacy concerns. This is most notable in China where dissidents have been turned-over or exposed by their internet email providers. They have proven time and again their focus isn't on the privacy of their users, but on the aggregation and sale of their site-views. These are businesses and must pursue profit. Libraries are not businesses, they are a public service where free public access to information is protected. This morning, NPR asked: If Google is allowed to become the world's librarian, how will they match up to the librarians they will be replacing? (listen) (read)

Google Books Un-Settlement

If you're not following this story, you should be... it has become so much more than an argument about digitization and copyright law. It's becoming a national debate (soon to become worldwide debate) about the future of information retrieval and access to research materials on the internet. Last week, the American Library Association and Association of Research Libraries got together to issue a stern "Shhhhhh!" to those noisy folks over at the Google table. (Just kidding, librarians, you know I love you.) Actually, they filed an amicus brief (opens in .PDF) in US District Court. If you're not a librarian or if you don't know any, let me give you some background. The publishing industry has been consolidating quite a bit in the past decade. This you are no doubt aware of since you are reading a blog about books and publishing. What you may not know is that the publishers of academic and professional journals have consolidated even more than the publishers you are familiar with. To the point where the publication of these important research materials is so concentrated in a few hands that the prices libraries pay to obtain them has gotten quite exorbitant. Additionally, many of the print editions have gone by the wayside to be replaced by electronic editions at not very much cost savings for the end-users. Libraries foot this bill in a time of ever-shrinking budgets. Academic libraries must additionally weigh the demands of various deans and professors for content immediately relevent to their classes with little or now additional help in their budget to offset the increases. This is simply a fact of life in terms of library budget management. Tack on the fact that the Google settlement does not in any way indicate what they will be charging libraries and institutions for this new electronic database to which their patrons and students will be demanding access. This is another straw on the camel. Additionally, the ALA and the ARL do more to safeguard our free access to information and the privacy of their clients than we'll ever know. If the access point to all (or even almost all) digital content is concentrated in the hands of a company that has shown themselves to be inconsistent in their protection of their users from interference by the state (censorship in China, but going to bat for user privacy in the US). Whilst librarians have, can, do, will go to jail to protect the Constitutional rights of library patrons. Will the people at Google be willing to do the same?

"The associations asserted that although the settlement has the potential to provide public access to millions of books, many of the features of the settlement, including the absence of competition for the new services, could compromise fundamental library values including equity of access to information, patron privacy and intellectual freedom. The court can mitigate these possible negative effects by regulating the conduct of Google and the Book Rights Registry the settlement establishes." - From the American Library Association press release

I wish them the best and I see their point. I'm just not sure their faith in the ability and willingness of the government to exercise oversight on something as complex and nuanced as global information access is well-placed. Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that state Attorneys General are taking a look at the Google Books settlement with an eye toward doing something about it. What, exactly, remains to be seen. After the state-by-state battles waged by Microsoft in their antitrust suits (not to mention country-by-country since the Internet's global) this thing isn't going to be resolved anytime soon.

Walk softly and carry...

The Justice Dept has announced that it will be looking into the Google Books deal that they struck as a settlement with the Author's Guild. I'm not sure who this is good or bad news for, but it bears watching. Keep in mind that WIRED Magazine reports that this appears to be one front of the ongoing war between Google and Microsoft's lobbyist armies. Read from the Associated Press and Yahoo Newsfeed. Someone Google "Proxy War" for me...

Google -v- Microsoft (Round XXVII)

This just in from Wired Magazine... The much ballyhooed and groundbreaking (etc. etc.) Google Books copyright settlement hits a snag that looks suspiciously like a butterfly. eBooks is the new front in the Google-Microsoft wars? Great. Because what the transition from print to electronic books really needs is more chaos...