GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH FAIR USE, JUDGE CHIN HOLDS
We have been following the ups and downs of The Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc., the long-running copyright dispute over Google’s plan to digitize all the world’s libraries, since the inception of this blog. After the parties’ grand bargain, which had the potential to create a unique on-line repository of virtually all the world’s…
Read MoreGOOGLE LIBRARY CLASS DECERTIFIED
When last we checked in with The Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc., the long-running copyright dispute over Google’s plan to digitize all the world’s libraries, Judge Denny Chin had certified the case as a class action on behalf of all “persons residing in the United States who hold a United States copyright interest in…
Read MoreGOOD PORTENTS FOR GOOGLE LIBRARY?
We were waiting and watching for what promised to be a landmark fair use decision from Judge Denny Chin in the Google Library litigation when the case was stayed while its certification as a class action was appealed. In the meantime, a companion case before Judge Harold Baer, The Authors Guild v. Hathitrust, involving a consortium of universities…
Read MoreWITH AMICI LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS HOSTIS?
Could a university chemistry department routinely scan copyrighted scientific journals in their entirety to create an electronic, searchable database that puts their contents at the fingertips of professors and students, so they could use the data compiled by others in perfectly appropriate ways in their own scholarship? I think the answer is clearly “no.” As a result, most…
Read MoreGOOGLE LIBRARY PROJECT CASE NOW A REAL LAWSUIT
It has been seven years since The Authors Guild and some of its individual members first filed suit against Google, charging that its Library Project—to the extent it posted “snippets” of works still in copyright—constituted a massive copyright infringement. Initially, Google welcomed the class action as a vehicle for negotiating a global settlement of such claims that would have,…
Read MoreSWITCHED-ON SEARCH
I should, and will, be posting on Google’s mounting antitrust problems and on the status of its attempt to corner the book search market, but today I am utterly transfixed by the functional Moog Synthesizer that Google has placed on its home page, in honor of what would have been Robert Moog’s 78th birthday. (What’s so special about…
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