It’s a full-on attack on the settlement; Amazon’s theory is that the future-claims issue is such a fundamental flaw in the settlement that there is no way Judge Chin could ultimately approve it.

[Snip]

Thus, Amazon argues, Judge Chin should save time and resources, reject this settlement, and give the parties another 30-45 days to negotiate a settlement that includes only releases relating to past claims.

Access the Complete Post

Source: The Laboratorium

See Also: Judge Gives Preliminary Approval to Google Deal, Sets Feb. 18 for Final Hearing

Until the next major event and our next press review, we will continue to post Settlement 2.0 news and analysis with a focus on stories, analysis, and opinion that has a library angle to it.

We begin with this analysis of competition by Fred von Lohmann at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It includes an entire section dealing with institutional subscriptions titled, “Monopoly Pricing of the Institutional Subscription Database?”

One of the commercial services that Google is authorized to provide under the proposed settlement is the “Institutional Subscription Database” (aka “ISD”), which will provide “all-you-can-eat” access to the corpus of scanned books. The chief customers for the ISD are likely to be universities (the same folks who are providing Google with the books to be scanned), for whom instant digital access to every word in every book in Google’s collection is likely to be very compelling.

The big question is whether, over time, the ISD will become the one database that no university can do without, and the one database with no market substitute (again, because Google will be the only company who can provide a comprehensive corpus without fear of copyright liability, for the reasons explained above). This, of course, is a recipe for monopolistic price gouging, as a group of academic authors led by Prof. Pam Samuelson have pointed out. Over time, universities could face spiraling prices as Google and the Registry conspire to maximize their revenues on the ISD product.

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation

The 14 “Tour Stops” are:

+ Real-Time Search

+ Weather/Event Results

+ Bing Local

+ Enhanced Results

+ Videos

+ Enhanced Hover

+ Bing for Mobile

+ Bing Travel

+ Bing Health

+ Bing Shopping

+ Visual Search

+ Reference

+ Wolfram|Alpha

+ Search Sharing

By the way, are most favorite Bing feature is not listed. Check out the incredible “bird’s eye” imagery that Bing provides for many locations around the world. Here’s an example. The Coliseum in Rome. On the left side of the image look for a + (plus sign). Click it and zoom-in. Wow!

Btw, the new look is great but we do hope the “District Dispatch” powers that be bring back the mobile-friendly version of District Dispatch that we posted about last month. We just checked with a mobile browser and we are seeing the “regular” version of DD.

Source: DD

Working together with the National Archives and Allen County Library, Footnote.com has created a unique collection that will help people discover new details about Native American history.

The Footnote Interactive Native American Collection features original historical documents including:

+ Ratified Indian Treaties – dating back to 1722

+ Indian Census Rolls – featuring personal information including age, place of residence and degree of Indian blood

+ The Guion Miller Roll – perhaps the most important source of Cherokee genealogical research

+ Dawes Packets – containing original applications for tribal enrollments

+ And other documents relating to the Five Civilized Tribes

Footnote’s Native American microsite creates an interactive environment where members can search, annotate and add comments to the original documents. Additionally, visitors can view pages for many of the Native American tribes that include historical events on a timeline and map, a photo gallery, stories and comments added by the community.

Source: Footnote

See Also: National Archives and Footnote.com Announce New Digital Holocaust Collection

See Also: Footnote.com and the National Archives Launch an Interactive Vietnam War Memorial

See Also: More Digitized U.S. Government Documents via Footnote.com Now Online

Judge Denny Chin has given his preliminary approval to the Google Book Search settlement agreement and established a timeline to move the agreement toward a final resolution. A final settlement/fairness hearing has been set for February 18 at which Judge Chin will hear arguments to determine whether the agreement is “fair, reasonable, adequate;” consider whether to certify the class for purposes of the settlement; and to make a determination whether to approve the agreement.

Prior to the hearing, the judge has ordered that supplemental notices about the amended agreement be sent beginning December 14, and he set a January 28 deadline for objections to be filed with the court.

[Snip]

As part of the amended settlement, companies from outside of the U.S. were to be added as plaintiffs. The order notes that new plaintiffs include Harlequin, Melbourne University Publishing Ltd., and The Text Publishing Company.

Source: Publisher’s Weekly

Art & Architecture Index and Art & Architecture Complete, EBSCO provides definitive research databases for the study of art and architecture. Designed for use by a diverse audience, Art & Architecture Index and Art & Architecture Complete will appeal to art scholars, artists, designers, college students and general researchers.

These new art & architecture resources include cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 620 academic journals, magazines and trade publications as well as over 140 books. Selective coverage is also provided for more than 135 additional publications.

Art & Architecture Complete also contains full-text coverage of more than 230 art & architecture-specific periodicals and more than 100 books. These databases are available via the EBSCOhost platform.

Source: EBSCO

It allows the user to upload an image, enter an image URL, draw a picture (cool!), or keyword search a database of the GazoPa database and then find SIMILAR images based on the image that was upload or keyword search. You can also combine an image (what they call a “key image”) with keyword(s). A Firefox addon, a bookmarklet, and an iPhone app are also available. GazoPa is not exactly new (their blog goes back to September, 2008) but it’s new to us. So, why not share. Their colorful logo might remind some of other search engines with colorful logos. (-:

The home page also claims the database is large, more that 60 million images. We need to confirm this but the way we read the final page of the FAQ is that the 60 million images were crawled by GazoPa. They also have a page for webmasters about their crawler, GazoPabot. In other words, they’re not buying their image collection by stringing together other image databases they’ve been given access to for free or a fee.

Results pages offer four types of results:

+ Images
+ Videos (it appears that most of the results come from YouTube)
+ News Images (it appears to be a GazoPa crawl)
+ Flickr (Is the Flickr database included in the 60 million images total?)

Worth mentioning, GozaPa is a venture project of the Hitachi Corporation (note the copyright info at the bottom of the home page).

So, go forward and demo. We’ll do the same and report back in a week or so.

See Also: GazoPa Blog

See Also: GazoPa Twitter Feed

See Also: A little over a week ago we posted about a reverse image search named Tin Eye. tool has users upload an image and then the Tin Eye technology goes out on the web to see if others are using your content.

From the Article:

Stanford doctoral students will now be able to post their dissertations on Google as the university replaces the traditional bound volumes of acid-free paper with e-files of scholarly work.

[Snip]

The key to the effort is the university’s partnership with Google, which will allow anyone with a computer to access the work of Stanford doctoral students.

“We have way north of 35,000 bound dissertations on our shelves,” said university Librarian Michael Keller, who has been pushing for the digital dissertations. “Many of them just stay on the shelf, forgotten and invisible, or scholars have to pay enormous sums to come to Stanford to read them.”

[Snip]

While other universities already allow electronic submissions, “we’re the only one we know of that’s going the whole route, with approval online and then sending it down the electronic pipe,” Keller said.

[Snip]

But using the company costs money, which meant that students would end up paying as much as $221 in fees when they filed their dissertations with the registrar’s office. Stanford’s electronic filing system will be free, although students still can pay to have their dissertations listed on ProQuest, an online subscription service for dissertations and other academic publications.

[Snip]

Science students are used to having their papers published quickly as journal articles,” he said. “But the ‘tenure book’ is very important in the humanities, and students were worried that making their work instantly accessible might affect publishers’ decisions later on.”

The problem was solved by allowing the graduate students to embargo their work for up to five years, to give them time to get it published. They also will be allowed to decide whether to release either 20 or 100 percent of their dissertation to Google.

Source: SF Chronicle

Hat Tip: Library Stuff

From the Blog Post:

+ Google Translate offers 51 languages, representing over 98% of Internet users today.

+ Can Translate 2550 Language Pairs

+ New Layout

+ Google Translate now translates your text right as you type. (Cool!)

Want to say “Today is a good day” in Chinese, but can’t read Han characters? Click “Show romanization” to read the text written phonetically in English. Right now, this works for all non-Roman languages except for Hebrew, Arabic and Persian.

+ New input transliteration feature for Arabic, Persian or Hindi.

+ Text -to-Speech: When translating into English, you can now also hear translations in spoken form by clicking the Speaker Icon. (Something that those in the ESL world might find useful.

+ Here’s an Overview Video

Access Google Translate

Source: Google Blog
Hat Tip: Library Stuff

The Twitter HQ photo tour can be accessed here.

Source: Venture Beat

The OCLC Board of Trustees has elected two new members: Bernadette Gray-Little, Chancellor of the University of Kansas, and John R. Patrick, President of Attitude LLC and former Vice President of Internet Technology at IBM Corporation. The two new members replace board members whose terms have expired.

Dr. Gray-Little replaces Ralph Frasier, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary (retired), The Huntington National Bank. Mr. Patrick replaces Jane Ryland, President Emerita of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. The terms of Mr. Frasier and Ms. Ryland expired this year.

[Snip]

“I would like to thank Ralph Frasier and Jane Ryland for their years of dedicated service on the OCLC Board of Trustees,” said Larry Alford, Chair, OCLC Board of Trustees and Dean of University Libraries, Temple University. “Their insight, judgment and experience have helped guide and shape OCLC in the pursuit of its public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. They have been forceful advocates for OCLC’s members during the decade they served on the Board. The OCLC cooperative owes them a deep debt of gratitude.”

The OCLC Board of Trustees is made up of 15 members. Six trustees are elected by OCLC Global Council. Eight trustees are elected by the Board itself. The President of OCLC also serves on the Board. Nine of the 15 trustees currently serving on the OCLC Board of Trustees are librarians.

You can find biographies of Bernadette Gray-Little and John R. Patrick here.

Source: OCLC

She Writes:

When Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia in 2001, it was just an experiment. Nobody imagined Wikipedia would really succeed — least of all, probably, Jimmy. He just thought it would be interesting to try.

But now, fewer than 10 years later, the number of people who use Wikipedia has grown to 330 million. Students, teachers, tourists, entrepreneurs, parents, job-hunters, retired people, doctors, artists, engineers — everywhere around the world. We use Wikipedia because it’s free, it’s convenient, and it gives us the information we’re looking for. It’s always there when we want it.

Gardner says this year’s fundraising goal is $7.5 million.

The 2009 slogan is “Wikipedia Forever.” You’ll see it at the top of every Wikipedia entry. Clicking on it takes you to this page with a picture of Jimmy Wales, an FAQ, and a box to make your donation. The mobile version has a box bar at the top of every page asking you to text the word WIKI to a number and make a $10 donation.

Source: Wikipedia Blog

From the News Release:

Wikipedia has become more than just a website,” said Jimmy Wales, founder of the free online encyclopedia, which is now one of the five most popular websites in the

world according to comScore. “For millions of people, it’s become an indispensable part of their daily lives.”

Funds raised by the campaign will be used to defray normal operating costs such as the cost of bandwidth and servers, as well as to support projects aimed at making Wikipedia easier to use, encouraging more people to contribute, and increasing the availability of free knowledge for more people, in more languages, in more parts of the world. Wikipedia currently offers 13 million articles in over 250 languages, and is used by 330 million people around the world.

See Also: Listen Online: BBC Radio Interview: Jimmy Wales Wants to Make Wikipedia More “Worldly”

See Also: Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Sits Down for an Exclusive Interview with Silicon.com

See Also: Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales Interviewed by Yale Daily News

From Google and Others Involved:

+ Modifications to the Google Books Settlement (via Google Public Policy Blog, Dan Clancy)

The changes we’ve made in our amended agreement address many of the concerns we’ve heard (particularly in limiting its international scope), while at the same time preserving the core benefits of the original agreement: opening access to millions of books while providing rightsholders with ways to sell and control their work online.

The blog post also links to a settlement modifications overview (3 pages) and a Revised Settlement FAQ (2 pages).

Are libraries mentioned in these documents? Yes. As you’ll read not much is different in terms of access except that the amended agreement allows the Registry to increase the amount of terminals in a public library.

On Page 2 of the Overview it States:

The amended settlement does not change the primary access models outlined in the original agreement, including enabling readers to preview and purchase books, selling institutional subscriptions to the whole database, and giving libraries free access at designated terminals. Under the revised agreement, possible additional access models to which Google and the Registry might agree in the future have been reduced and are now limited to: print-on-demand*, file download, and consumer subscription. The amended agreement also enables the Registry to increase the number of terminals at a public library building…

* The Amended Settlement limits POD, if approved, to Books that are not Commercially Available.

There is no mention of the words library or libraries in the FAQ.

There is a third document, a Supplemental Notice (an actual court filing; 6 pages; PDF),  listing all of the changes to the settlement.  #17 talks about the terminals in public libraries that we mentioned a moment ago.

Here are a few more changes (via the supplemental notice) that might be of special interest:

+ #16:

The Amended Settlement provides that the Registry will facilitate Rightsholders’ wishes to allow their works to be made available through alternative licenses for Consumer Purchase, including through a Creative Commons license…The Amended Settlement also clarifies that Rightsholders are free to set the Consumer Purchase price of their Books at zero.

+ #18:

The Amended Settlement no longer includes children’s book illustrations in the definition of Inserts. (ASA Section 1.75) The Amended Settlement, however, does not change the inclusion of pictorial works, such as graphic novels and children’s picture books, in the definition of Books and provides that the Amended Settlement only authorizes Google to display the pictorial images in such Books if a U.S. copyright owner of the pictorial image also is a Rightsholder of the Book. The Amended Settlement also clarifies that comic books are considered to be Periodicals and that Periodicals (as well as compilations of Periodicals) are not included in the definition of “Books,” and thus are not in the Amended Settlement.

Finally, if you would like to read the complete Amended Settlement Agreement, here’s the 173 page PDF file.

+ Amended Google/AAP Settlement (via Coyle’s InFormation, Karen Coyle)
An excellent overview of Settlement 2.0 from librarian Karen Coyle. She brings up several library related issues including the removal of an OCLC “exception”; download formats and course packs; and much more. This is must read material.

+ Is the Google Books Settlement Worth the Wait?

The Open Book Alliance–SLA and The New York Library Association–are two of its members has posted their views after a preliminary reading of the revised settlement. Here are a few snippets.

Open Book Alliance co-chair Peter Brantley said, “Our initial review of the new proposal tells us that Google and its partners are performing a sleight of hand; fundamentally, this settlement remains a set-piece designed to serve the private commercial interests of Google and its partners. None of the proposed changes appear to address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest.

[Snip]

Most critically, the settlement proposal must not grant Google an exclusive set of rights (de facto or otherwise) or result in any one entity gaining control over access to and distribution of the world’s largest digital database of books. It is clear that Google has failed to meet these requirements.

UPDATE: 11/17 The Monopoly Continues (Source: Open Book Alliance)

UPDATE: 11/17 Proposed Changes Fail to Address Fundamental Flaws, Says Open Book Alliance Co-Chair (via Open Book Alliance)

+ Revised Google Book Settlement Filed & Live Blogging The Press Call (via Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan)

Danny took the time to live blog the conference call that took place early Saturday morning, east coast time. On the call were:

+ Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the American Association of Publishers

+ Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild

+ Daniel Clancy, engineering director for Google Books

Here’s how they responded to the Open Book Alliance comments that are posted and linked to above this item.

So the response to that? Clancy stepped up, saying there were lots of discussions on how to change things. Adjustments were made to address class member concerns (the people involved in the lawsuit, rather the the Open Book Alliance, which is not a party to the suit). “I understand Amazon, Microsoft and the Internet Archive don’t want to increase access to these books,” he said, or very close to that. That was a zinger, stressing that the Open Book Alliance just happens to be backed by major Google competitors. Not that Google minds. Clancy said they welcome the competition and feel the settlement addresses concerns.

Aiken: “These are substantial changes.” He added that yes, the core settlement was largely protected but that it had to be, as it was in general seen correct.

Sarnoff: Said he assumed the OBA hadn’t read the settlement. That was probably true enough. The press conference itself appears to have started about 1/2 hour after the settlement was out. Some reporters on the call mentioned they hadn’t even read it.

+ The Authors Guild Has a Review of the MaJor Changes on their Site

+ Google Book Search Settlement Revised: No Reader Privacy Added (From the Electronic Frontier Foundation)

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. Our partners at the ACLU of Northern California have a blog post describing the changes we, and the authors we represent, have demanded and continuing the call for readers everywhere to let Google CEO Eric Schmidt know that reader privacy should not be left behind as books move into the digital age.

+ Amended Google Book Settlement: Doesn’t Deal with Privacy Problems (ACLU of Northern California)

One of our core privacy concerns with the Settlement has been that reading records are not properly protected from disclosure to the government and third parties. Readers should be able to use Google Book Search without worrying that the government or a third party is reading over their shoulder. No Settlement should be approved that allows reading records to be disclosed without a properly-issued warrant from law enforcement and court orders from third parties.

The Amended Settlement does not resolve this concern, with its only new privacy provision being the following:

“The revised agreement includes language that specifies that Google will not share any private information with the Registry without valid legal process.”

Much More After a Click

Legal Analysis

Professor James Grimmelmann, from the New York Law School, has been following and analyzing the GBS case since the beginning in 2005. We think his analysis is though provoking and fair. On his Laboratorium site, he’s posted several documents and along with a “instant analysis” of the revised settlement.

Here’s a brief portion (read the whole entry):

Settlement 1.0 allowed Google to use and sell them on an opt-out basis, and Settlement 2.0 does the same. That gave Google exclusive access to a market segment that no one else can enter, and thus raised antitrust concerns; the DOJ hit this barriers-to-entry point hard in its Statement of Interest.

Settlement 2.0 has a very interesting response. The Unclaimed Works Fiduciary (or “UWF”) is given extensive powers to set terms on their behalf. Most of this, while good for protecting the interests of orphan owners, is irrelevant to the antitrust issue. It doesn’t matter whether the UWF can object to the pricing bins if no one besides Google is able to sell these books at any price. But there’s one, very important, very enigmatic exception, spelled out in section 6.2(b)(i):

General. The Registry will be organized on a basis that allows the Registry, among other things, to (i) represent the interests of Rightsholders in connection with this Amended Settlement Agreement, (ii) respond in a timely manner to requests by Google, Fully Participating Libraries and Cooperating Libraries, and (iii) to the extent permitted by law, license Rightsholders’ U.S. copyrights to third parties (in the case of unclaimed Books and Inserts, the Unclaimed Works Fiduciary may license to third parties the Copyright Interests of Rightsholders of unclaimed Books and Inserts to the extent permitted by law).

Grimmelmann concludes:

I’m sure there will be much more to say about the amended settlement in the days, weeks, and months to come. My instant reaction is that it makes a number of meaningful, if modest, improvements, but leaves unaddressed the central issue that led me to worry about the settlement in the first place.

UPDATE: Professor Grimmelmann has posted a proposed schedule of legal events beginning on December 14, 2009.

The Press

+ Terms of Digital Book Deal With Google Revised (via NY Times; Brad Stone and Miguel Helft)

The revisions to the settlement primarily address the handling of so-called orphan works, the millions of books whose rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. The changes call for the appointment of an independent fiduciary, or trustee, who will be solely responsible for decisions regarding orphan works. The trustee, with Congressional approval, can grant licenses to other companies who also want to sell these books, and will oversee the pool of unclaimed funds that they generate. If the money goes unclaimed for 10 years, according to the revised settlement, it will go to philanthropy and to an effort to locate rights holders.

The changes also restrict the Google catalog to books published in the United States, Britain, Australia or Canada.

[Snip]

The revised settlement could make it easier for other companies to compete with Google in offering their own digitized versions of older library books because it drops a provision that was widely interpreted as ensuring that no other company could get a better deal with authors and publishers than the one Google had struck.

+ Google Books settlement sets geographic, business limits (via cnet News, Elinor Mills)

The revised settlement limits Google’s future business models from the works to individual subscriptions, print-on-demand, and digital downloads. The company will need to get approval from the Registry’s board and provide notice to all claiming copyright holders before implementing any of the business models.

[Snip]

The revised settlement makes it clear that Google will not display any content by default from works that are for sale as new internationally, which are considered commercially available. In addition, it includes language that specifies that Google will not share any private information with the Registry without valid legal process.

+ Revised Google Settlement Offers Minor Changes on Antitrust Issue, No Response on Library Pricing (Library Journal, Norman Oder)

“Ninety-five percent of foreign languages works are out” of the agreement, Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken said, according to Publishers Lunch. That means “the lion’s share of the potential unclaimed works are now out of the settlement.”

[Snip]

University of Michigan Library dean Paul Courant, a settlement supporter, had recently expressed support for “a revised settlement (as suggested by the U.S. Department of Justice) that provided competitors with the ability to use the orphan works on the same terms as Google, or legislation with similar consequence.”

That didn’t happen. “The DOJ all but invited Google and the plaintiffs to empower the Registry to license Google’s competitors; they declined that all-but-invitation,” Grimmelmann commented. “They’re going to try to tough this one out; the DOJ will have to decide whether to back down or to fight, as this amended settlement doesn’t give it one of the central changes it asked for.”

+ Google Settlement Filed (via Publisher’s Weekly)

The amended agreement makes some changes to the access models to the database of scanned works. While keeping the primary access models the same, future access models have been limited to print-on-demand, file download and subscription.

Google makes concessions on digital book deal (via AP; Michael Liedtke)

Among other things, the modified agreement provides more flexibility to offer discounts on electronics books and promises to make it easier for others to resell access to a digital index of books covered in the settlement.

Copyright holders also would have be given more explicit permission to sell digital book copies if another version is being sold anywhere else in the world.

+ Google, Authors, Publishers Offer Revised Book Pact (via WSJ, by Jessica E. Vascellaro, Scott Morrison, and Jeffrey Trachtenberg)

Whether the changes will prevent the U.S. Justice Department from taking further steps to oppose it – and how the agreement will be viewed by U.S. District Court judge Denny Chin, who is responsible for approving it — remains unclear. Judge Chin is now expected to set a deadline for groups to object to the modifications and a date for a fairness hearing.

People familiar with the matter say Justice Department representatives and the parties expect to continue discussions about some of the issues not addressed in the revised settlement. The agency is expected to file reactions to the modifications around the end of this year or early 2010, based on the timetable established by the court.

+ Google, Authors try to answer book deal concerns (via Reuters, Diane Bartz)

“We’ve had numerous discussions and quite a lot of dialogue with the Justice Department and feel we’ve addressed their key concerns,” said Richard Sarnoff, president of Bertelsmann Digital Media.

The agreement is designed to settle a 2005 class action lawsuit filed against Google by authors and publishers who had accused the search engine giant of copyright infringement for scanning libraries full of books.

+ Google narrows scope of book-scanning project (via The Telegraph, UK)

It is proposed that unclaimed proceeds from orphan works be used to try to locate absent rights holders and be held for at least 10 years before being distributed to literacy-based charities in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.

Google submits revised digital book settlement (AFP)

The revised settlement narrows the definition of books covered under the settlement to those registered with the US Copyright Office by January 5 or published in Australia, Britain, Canada or the United States.

It also sets up an independent body, or fiduciary, which will be responsible for the interests of the rightsholders “orphan works.”

+ Google, Content Groups Sign New Google Books Deal (via PC Magazine, Mark Hachman

Works covered under the Books Rights Registry will generally fall into one of three categories, Sarnoff said. Those categories include out-of-print works, unclaimed out-of-print works, and truly “orphaned” works, whos authorship it not even known.

“Data analysis shows that the actual number of orphans is small,” Dan Clancy, Google Books’ engineering director said during the call.

+ Google, Authors Limit Reach of Online Book Settlement (via Bloomberg)

“We’re holding to our core principles: lots of access to out-of-print books for readers, students and scholars; compensation and control for authors and publishers,” Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said in a note posted on the group’s Web site.

+ Google, Plaintiffs Submit Revised Book Search Settlement (IDG News Service, Elizabeth Heichler)

“By performing surgical nip and tuck, Google, the AAP, and the AG are attempting to distract people from their continued efforts to establish a monopoly over digital content access and distribution; usurp Congress’s role in setting copyright policy; lock writers into their unsought registry, stripping them of their individual contract rights; put library budgets and patron privacy at risk; and establish a dangerous precedent by abusing the class action process,” Open Book Alliance co-chair Peter Brantley said in the statement

+ Google backtracks on putting world’s books online (via The Times of London)

The Publishers Association [UK], whose members include Macmillan and Hachette, welcomed the changes. Simon Juden, chief executive of the PA, said: “I’m confident that the revisions we were able to negotiate on condition of our support are beneficial for all UK publishers who choose to remain in the settlement. The alternative, which would have been to withhold our support and have UK works excluded from the scope of the settlement, would have deprived UK rightsholders of control over how their works are exploited.”

See Also: Google Book Settlement: PA negotiates a better deal for UK publishers (via Publishers Association)

See Also: The Amended Settlement Agreement: what’s new? (via Publishers Association) (2 pages; PDF)

+ Google relents with revised digital books settlement (via Washington Post

“The book settlement is a perfect example of where there is clearly potential good for the public in this but there is also potential for them to have market power to dominate a particular activity on the Web.” — Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America.

UPDATE: 11/16: Assessing Competition Issues in the Amended Google Book Search Settlement (via SSRN; by Randal Picker, U of Chicago Law School; 17 pages-PDF)

UPDATE: 11/16: Google’s Mission: To Digitize the World’s Books and Make Them Universally Monetizable by Google (via AllThingsD)

UPDATE 11/16: Amended Google Books settlement does little to address privacy risks (via Center for Democracy and Technology

UPDATE 11/16: CC and the Google Book Settlement (via Creative Commons Blog, Mike Linksvayer)

The revised Google Books settlement submitted for Court approval late on Friday still does very little to protect reader privacy. When the settlement was withdrawn for revisions last month, CDT and other advocates proposed that Google use the opportunity to more fully address the privacy risks we had identified in the original settlement—and effectively take privacy concerns off the table. While the amended settlement does include one positive revision on the privacy front, it appears Google for the most part did not take our advice. Reader privacy remains very much on the table.

+ Update: 11/16 New Google Book Pact Unlikely to End Flap (via WSJ)

The revised pact submitted late Friday would allow Google to distribute millions of digital books online, but would cut the number of works covered by the settlement by at least half by removing millions of foreign works.

Yet the issue of whether it is fair for the settlement to let Google distribute books whose legal rights owners haven’t been identified—known as orphan works—is still drawing criticism.

People familiar with the matter say the Justice Department remains concerned that the fact the settlement gives Google immunity from lawsuits related to orphan works may be anticompetitive. The department is expected to file its reaction to the modified agreement by early next year.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said the department is reviewing the revised agreement and its investigation into the settlement is “ongoing.”

Update: 11/16 Two cheers for Google Books (via CNET)
by Larry Downes, a nonresident fellow at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society.

The real problem, which no one has the guts to face directly, is the sad state of copyright law. Copyright grants authors and their publisher the exclusive right to make copies of their work in order to encourage the growth of intellectual life, from novels to research papers to songs to cookbooks.

Update: 11/17 Berkeley’s Samuelson Still Not Satisfied with Google Books Settlement, Will Urge Judge Not to Approve (via Bay Newser)
Comments made by Samuelson at a Commonwealth Club event with a response by Dan Clancy from Google.

Update: 11/17 The Google-Books Settlement: A Lawsuit Ripe for . . . Congress? (via WSJ)

Update: 11/17: Google Backs Out Of NewsHour Debate With Open Book Alliance, And I Don’t Blame Them (via TechCrunch)

Update: 11/17 GBS 2.0: The New Google Books (Proposed) Settlement (via Columbia University Libraries, Copyright Advisory Service)

GBS 2.0 is a double whammy for libraries. First, the ISD’s scope is slashed. No longer “worldwide,” the settlement is now only about books registered with the U.S. Copyright Office (which will be dominantly U.S. books), and books originating from the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Gone are all other books from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and other regions. Because the settlement is now tightly limited, so will be the ISD. The big and (probably) expensive database is no longer so exciting. Many of the books under GSB 2.0 are likely already available to many libraries.

The second whammy is legal. Because the settlement does not cover all books, liabilities surrounding some large portion of the books already shipped by libraries and scanned by Google are not released. Copyright owners from France, Argentina, New Zealand, and China retain the right to commence yet another lawsuit against Google, conceivably drawing libraries into the melee. Why the libraries? Rightsholders could claim that libraries are “contributory infringers” by making the books available. Moreover, many libraries and Hathi Trust, continue to hold book scans received from Google that are now outside the settlement.

Update: 11/17 New Google Book Settlement Aims Only to Placate Governments (via Huffington Post)
A new opinion piece from UC Berkeley Law Professor, Pamela Samuelson.

What stands out after my initial review of GBS 2.0 is that changes were overwhelmingly made to placate the governments of France and Germany, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

Google is apparently hoping that if it can get these governments off its back, GBS 2.0 will be approved. Hundreds of authors, publishers and other interested parties raised dozens of objections to GBS 1.0, but their concerns were almost completely ignored. GBS 2.0, for example, does not address issues raised by academic authors about the risks of price gouging, lack of user privacy protections and restrictions on various uses that can be made of GBS books, even though most of the books in the GBS corpus are academic-authored books.

Update: 11/17: Google Books Settlement 2.0: Evaluating Access (via EFF, Fred Von Lohmann)
See Also: Google Books Settlement 2.0: Evaluating the Pros and Cons (EFF, Fred Von Lohmann)

Here’s a list of some of the topics covered. Access the full text to get all of the details.

Ingest

HathiTrust ingested a record 553,963 volumes in October. These included nearly 5,000 volumes from Penn State and initial loads of volumes from the University of California’s Santa Cruz and San Diego campuses. Ingest of volumes from Penn State will continue in November. Subsequent shipments of metadata for up to 600,000 additional volumes from UC campuses are expected in November. Ingest of these volumes will begin shortly thereafter.

HathiTrust participates in grant from Mellon Foundation

Google Summit and Internet Archive Ingest

Large-scale Search

Staff at the University of Michigan successfully indexed all volumes in HathiTrust using the newly acquired hardware. However, the official launch of the large-scale search application was postponed in order to acquire additional hardware to accommodate new index growth.

HathiTrust/OCLC Catalog

After finalizing metadata requirements for the version 1 catalog in September, the HathiTrust/OCLC Catalog team turned its attention in October to interface requirements. The team is currently finalizing interface requirements for version 1 of the catalog and has agreed to engage in collaborative usability testing during the first quarter of 2010. Meanwhile, OCLC’s e-content synchronization work for HathiTrust remains on schedule, and is expected to be completed by the end of the calendar year.

New Growth: Number of Volumes Added
Indiana University
64,614 volumes added in October, 84,132 Total
Penn State University
4,675 volumes added in October, 4,675 Total
University of California
264,710 volumes added in October, 786,414 Total
University of Michigan
206,283 volumes added in October, 3,417,264 Total
University of Wisconsin
20,430 volumes added in October, 242,705 Total
Totals
553,963 volumes added in October, 4,535,190 Total

Source: Hathi Trust

From Today’s Announcement:

…the innovative research tool ‘Reflect’, winner of Elsevier’s Grand Challenge 2009, will be piloted on the research articles in the November 12th issue of Cell. The ‘Reflect’ tool identifies the proteins, genes and small molecules mentioned in the Cell articles, and generates pop-up windows containing relevant contextual information, with additional links, about those entities.

The Cell-Reflect pilot is the next step in Elsevier’s ongoing Content Innovation effort with the scientific community to determine how a scientific article is best presented online. This follows Elsevier’s recent launch of an initial ’External link Article of the Future’ prototype with Cell, where the traditional linear journal article is displayed in a much more useful format for life scientists.

[Snip]

Inside an article, ‘Reflect’ tags and colors gene, protein, or small molecule names on any web page, usually within seconds, without affecting the article itself or its web page layout. Clicking on a tagged or colored item opens a popup, showing a concise summary of contextually important features, such as sequence (for proteins) or 2D structure (for small molecules).

You can view articles from Cell that utilize “Reflect” here.

In July, 2009, Elsevier released two prototypes as part of its “Article of the Future” (AOTF) program.

Source: Elsevier

Bing Maps UK Features Include:

Aerial and “Bird’s Eye” Imagery. Here’s a “Bird’s Eye” of Big Ben and of the home of BBC Monitoring (you can zoom-in on this image)

When you hover over the Road (maps link) you’ll see in addition to the Road map options for London Street Map and Ordnance Survey Map, plus thumbnails of each.

Default search queries to location instead of business. So, put in a location and you’ll be directed accordingly.

The popular and well know A-to-Z style maps are now available via Collins Bartholomew. The A-to-Z style maps provide a high level of detail in a very readable format. These are great for getting to know you way around London.

Ordnance Survey Maps-Maps for the outdoorsman (or outdoorswoman).

Symbols representing the different types of public transit are now clearly marked on the map. We no longer have clashing or overlapping symbols – they are just nicely arranged next to each other. You can hover over a station symbol to identify what the station name is. Also, each symbol is clickable to give you information about the station such as name, the lines that cross it and a link to the Transportation for London web site for planning your trip.

Tube Maps, Nearby Stations (try a postcode), and “What’s Nearby.” (Look in the left panel, click and the results are mapped.

London congestion info, walking directions, and several other features listed in the blog post.

Source: Bing Blog

See Also: Bing! Bing! Bing! A Busy Week at Bing and It’s Only Wednesday

If you’ve never seen it, it’s one cool database and eReader. It allows users to search and/or browse newspaper and magazine content (over a thousand newspapers on their publication day) and then read the material online In addition, users see the content the same way it’s presented in the paper. Same fonts, same pictures (color) and always of use charts and graphs. Other features include interactive tables of content, full graphics and text views, foreign language translation, text to speech audio, and many other features.

PressDisplay has several pricing plans including one (for personal use) that’s free and allows you to view two articles each day and unlimited access to the front page of over 1000+ newspapers and magazines. Institutional customers can choose corporate or professional plans. To learn more, take a look at this multimedia tutorial. It provides a good overview of many features and this list of the papers printed on-demand (another part of NewsPaperDirect or online).

But there is more. Two days ago, NewspaperDirect/PressDisplay introduced an iPhone/iTouch app along with a Blackberry app.

According to CNET:

+ The iPhone/iToucj app is free to download
+ Includes speech to text. Have the paper read to you

For the month of November, developer PressDisplay is offering seven free editions of any paper–basically, a chance to give the app a test-drive (test-read?).

After that, each paper will cost you 99 cents–about what you’d pay if you picked it up off the newsstand.

[Snip]

If you’re a voracious reader, you can sign up for one of two PressDisplay subscriptions: $9.95 monthly for 31 credits (one credit equals one issue, in most cases), or $29.95 monthly for unlimited content.

Those are the same subscription rates as the online version. We need to find out if subscribing to one service (iPhone) also gives you access to the other (online). My hunch is no, you would need to have two subscriptions.

That’s it. I’m off to download the app.

See Also: PressDisplay Blog Post

See Also: While The Apps are New PressDisplay Has Been Available for the iPhone Capable (via the Safari Browser) Since 2007

From the Announcement:

We’ve taken into account all of the relevant data in reaching this decision, including the number of Open Access articles published in 2008,” said David Hoole, Head of Content Licensing, NPG. “This change reflects the recent growth in the amount of Open Access content in both journals and the corresponding partial coverage of publication costs by author charges.”

For the 2010 subscription year, there will be a 9% reduction on the 2009 site licence list price. This reduction is net of an annual inflationary price increase. Print and personal subscription prices are unaffected.

[Snip]

For the 2011 subscription year onwards, both the site licence price and author fees will be considered in an effort to achieve equitable distribution of the costs of publication. This evaluation will involve an in-depth review of all factors relevant to the publication process, including the proportion of Open Access content and authors’ ability to pay for Open Access and other publication-related costs.

NPG publishes and EMBO reports on behalf of EMBO. An Open Access option on both journals was introduced in January 2007. NPG has implemented hybrid models across many of its academic journals, and expects those titles to show price reductions in due course, as the volume of open access increases.

Source: Nature Publishing Group

Photo Tagger [via Face.com], which launched to a limited group of users in July, scans a user’s photo albums on the social-networking site, then lets him tag faces it identifies. It groups multiple shots of each person, making it easy to tag large albums, and users can also adjust or remove incorrectly tagged pictures.

Once a member has been identified, the app prompts him or her to approve the tag — a crucial privacy step, since he or she may not want to be labeled in a photo. It also works with a member’s current photo-privacy settings on Facebook.

[Snip]

Face.com is also introducing a new Photo Tagger feature, dubbed Face Alerts, along with the launch. It allows members to be notified through Facebook or email when new public photos are uploaded of them or their friends. “It’s a Google Alerts for faces,” Mr. Hirsch said, and a way for members to gain more control over where their image appears.

[Snip]

Photo Tagger is free, though he said Face.com is considering fee-based services that it could provide over the system. He declined to say what they might be.

Source: Digits, Wall Street Journal

Note: Not mentioned in the WSJ article is another service (it’s a private alpha release at the moment) from Face.com named Photo Finder.

Here’s how the service describes itself, “A powerful app for finding lost photos of you and your friends on Facebook.” On another page it offers a clearer view of what Photo Finder does, ” Photo Finder scans facebook photos looking for untagged faces of you and friends.” As we said, it’s a private alpha release but you can register for a logon/password here.

Although Photo Tagger has undergone months of testing and more testing it will worth watching to see if it can handle the massive number of Facebook users who will likely use the service for the first time in the next few days.