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We are starting to see objections to the Google Book Search SettlementL2 this month in advance of the May 5th deadline set up by the court. The firstL3 comes from the consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog (foundL4 by way of the American Libraries news feed). They have submitted a letter to the U.S. Justice Department asking the antitrust division to delay the settlement until the "'most favored nation' clause favoring Google is removed and the deal's 'orphan works' provision is extended to cover all who might digitize books, not only Google." The letter in PDFL5 is available on the Consumer Watchdog website. The objections revolve around the provision that require the Books Rights Registry to give Google the same terms as anyone else who enters into agreements with the Registry (noting that more favorable terms might be required by a new party in order to compete with Google) as well as the fact that the copyright infringement protection for digitizing orphan works only extends to Google.

The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called "orphan works" that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. It need not have been this way.

The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called "orphan works" that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. It need not have been this way.

Alex explains that the goal of Google Books was to make books easier to find. He references an article in the New York Times in which librarians lamented that people were only searching online materials, not printed books. He references a story in which a research assistant was asked by Larry Lessig to come back with "everything Senator X said about topic Y" and returned only with results after 1996… which is to say, only results from the web.

In 2005, the Authors Guild filed a lawsuit against Google arising from the Google Books project. In October 2008, the parties announced a proposed settlement. Academics and rightsholders have criticized the Settlement terms on grounds ranging from antitrust to privacy. The Settlement sets forth non-privacy terms, including provisions regarding royalties and book advertising, in great detail. However, it does not contain meaningful privacy protections for readers or authors. Various entities and individuals have filed comments, objections, and amicus curiae briefs concerning the proposed settlement.

I am putting my letter of objections to the Google Book Search Settlement on SCRIBD as an encouragement to the many authors who are directly hit by this Settlement and don't like it, to also object formally - even though the Settlement is very complex and if they possibly have scarce familiarity with law - like me. Because this is precisely one of the many problems of this Settlement. For explanations on how to object, see FAQ "24. How can I object to the Settlement?" on www.googlebooksettlement.com , the site of the Settlement.

Everybody is talking about "illegal copying" (most often in propagandist terms like "stealing" or "piracy"), but nobody of the opposite: Taking a work in public domain and slapping your copyright-notice over it; something which very much borders on plagiarism. And of course asserting to have a copyright on something which you are not entitled to is also a violation of copyright. The very funny thing is, there is a repository of thousands of books whose copyright is violated this way. It's books.google.com. Nowhere else, such a mass of works wrongly tagged "copyrighted material" can be found.

How can we navigate through the information landscape that is only beginning to come into view? The question is more urgent than ever following the recent settlement between Google and the authors and publishers who were suing it for alleged breach of copyright.

Welcome to the Public Index, a site to study and discuss the proposed Google Book Search settlement. Here, you can browse and annotate the proposed settlement, section-by-section. Just use the table of contents or the search box at the right to get started. In addition, you can: * Study our reading room of lawsuit documents * Join the conversation in our forums * Draft an amicus brief to the court on the wiki

When it comes to digitizing books and offering readers and writers a business model, Google has planted the wheat, harvested it, threshed it, ground it, and baked it. Now Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo think they each deserve a big slice of bread. They are taking the hen to court in order to get it. The effort, led by attorney Gary Reback, to challenge Google's deals with writers and publishers for digitizing "orphaned works" that are copyrighted but no longer published is less lawsuit than business by another name.

This column argues that the proposed settlement of this lawsuit is a privately negotiated compulsory license primarily designed to monetize millions of orphan works. It will benefit Google and certain authors and publishers, but it is questionable whether the authors of most books in the corpus (the "dead souls" to which the title refers) would agree that the settling authors and publishers will truly represent their interests when setting terms for access to the Book Search corpus.

Giornali in crisi. Sempre più giornalisti perdono il lavoro, nessuna prospettiva per i giovani. Si scende in piazza per chiedere libertà di informazione. E gli editori se la prendono con Google, che indirizza i lettori sui loro siti.

# Free and open source software under GPLv3 # Multi-platform: runs on Windows, Linux and Mac # Full Unicode support: everything you see in Sigil is in UTF-16 # Full EPUB spec support # WYSIWYG editing # Multiple Views: Book View, Code View and Split View ...

"Kaj Sand-Jensen, un professore danese di ecologia, ha scritto un articolo intitolato "How to write consistently boring scientific literature" dove enuncia un decalogo di regole per scrivere articoli scientifici veramente noiosi. In maniera ironica e divertente mostra come una scrittura spersonalizzata possa servire alla fin fine a mascherare un contenuto modesto. Nella conclusione, osserva che ci sono movimenti di scienziati e anche editori che tendono a recuperare il valore di una scrittura più personale e viva. Sostiene inoltre che, sebbene l'articolo scientifico così come lo conosciamo rimarrà il veicolo principale della comunicazione scientifica, è auspicabile che gli scienziati si impegnino maggiormente in una comunicazione più ampia e speculativa, che possa eventualmente anche contemplare humour e poesia. Una comunicazione in grado di far circolare maggiormente le idee fra campi diversi e di attrarre più facilmente i giovani allo studio delle scienze. È un paradosso, ma è vero che la letteratura scientifica predominante, bulimica, ridondante, assolutamente grigia, selezionata con un processo di peer review sempre più affrettato e sommario, costituisce non l'unica ma una notevole causa di scarsa innovazione dando la preferenza ai maggiori e più consolidati filoni di ricerca. Lascio qui sotto l'opportunità di leggere il paper di Kaj Sand-Jensen, ne vale la pena. View this document on Scribd - [1] More about Fisica e filosofia "Ricordo delle discussioni con Bohr che si prolungarono per molte ore fino a notte piena e che ci condussero quasi ad uno stato di disperazione; e quando al termine della discussione me ne andavo solo a fare una passeggiata nel parco vicino continuavo sempre a ripropormi il problema: è possibile che la natura sia così assurda come ci appariva negli esperimenti atomici?" Werner Heisenberg in Fisica e Filosofia, Il Saggiatore, 1961, p. 55) * Share this: * Stampa * Email * Facebook *