Library Stuff

“Google Inc has won the right to appeal the granting of class status to thousands of authors suing the search engine company over its ambitious plan to create the world’s largest digital books library. In a brief order, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York granted Google permission to challenge a May 31 decision by U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin letting authors sue as a group rather than individually.”

via Reuters

“Authors suing Google over the digitization of their books have asked a New York court to order the Internet company to pay $750 for each book it copied, distributed or displayed. The authors’ filing was lodged in federal court in the Southern District of New York last month, but was only made public on Friday. In the filing, the Authors Guild, whose president is novelist-lawyer Scott Thurow, urged the court to rule that Google’s digitization project does not constitute “fair use” under copyright law.”

via Reuters

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus brief today urging a federal court to find that the fair use doctrine shelters Google’s Book Search “snippet” project from copyright infringement claims from the Authors Guild. EFF was joined by three associations representing over 100,000 libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the American Library Association, and the Association of College and Research Libraries.”

via Electronic Frontier Foundation

“Google Inc retook the offensive against thousands of authors claiming it copied their works without permission, and urged the dismissal of a class-action lawsuit arising from its ambitious plan to build the world’s largest digital book library. Friday’s request by the world’s largest search engine company followed a federal judge’s March 2011 rejection of a sweeping $125 million settlement of the now seven-year-old case. Talks to revive an accord later broke down.”

via Reuters

The Justice Department’s antitrust settlement with Hachette BookGroup, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins has been greeted about as warmly as a skunk at a backyard barbecue. On Monday, the government filed its response to the comments it has received on the deal. Of the 868 public comments submitted as part of the statutory process for evaluating an antitrust settlement, fewer than 70 letter writers supported the deal, which calls for the publishers to end their alleged collusion with Apple (and everyone else) and subject future pricing agreements to Justice Department review. The other 800 comments, from several bookseller and author groups as well as Apple, opposed the settlement as misguided meddling that will end up hurting readers and the publishing industry.”

via Thomson Reuters

“In the first case of its kind, the American Civil Liberties Union is charging that the state of Michigan and a Detroit area school district have failed to adequately educate children, violating their “right to learn to read” under an obscure state law. The ACLU class-action lawsuit, to be filed Thursday, says hundreds of students in the Highland Park School District are functionally illiterate.”

via The Washington Post.

“Libraries’ ability to lend books could be severely impaired if the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t squelch a new interpretation of copyright law in next term’s Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, according to an amicus brief filed last week by groups that represent more than 100,000 U.S. libraries.”

via Alison Frankel

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has joined several national library associations in urging a federal court to find that the fair use doctrine permitted the creation of a valuable digital library.

via Electronic Frontier Foundation

“Today the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) joined the American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), who all work collectively as the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), to file an amicus curiae brief (PDF) with the Supreme Court of the United States in support of petitioner Supap Kirtsaeng in the case Kirtsaeng v. Wiley & Sons. On the eve of Independence Day, the LCA asks the Court to be true to the values of our country’s founders—people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who were both founders of libraries and great champions of library lending. Wiley, a publisher of textbooks and other materials, claims Kirtsaeng infringed its copyrights by re-selling in the US cheaper foreign editions of Wiley textbooks that his family lawfully purchased abroad. The LCA believes an adverse decision in this case could affect libraries’ right to lend books and other materials manufactured abroad.”

via Association of Research Libraries

“One of the world’s largest private libraries of Holocaust documents has resolved part of its lawsuit seeking payment for stolen historical documents, reaching an undisclosed settlement with New York-based bookseller Dan Wyman after alleging he knew at least nine documents he bought from a library intern had been stolen. The Mazal Holocaust Library filed suit against Wyman in 2011 along with former intern Mansal Denton, 21, accused of stealing thousands of priceless documents from the library and selling them online. The library’s 74-year-old founder, Harry Mazal, died eight months after Denton was charged with second-degree felony theft.”

via San Antonio Express-News