Here's an excerpt:

In a public-private partnership with Google, the Austrian National Library is digitising its historical book holdings. Some 600,000 volumes from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries will be digitised and made available free of charge. The project demonstrates that public-private partnerships can be successful in enabling our heritage institutions to provide large-scale access to their holdings, provided that such partnerships are not exclusive and free access is ensured. The article outlines the preparatory phase and work flows established in the project.

| Google Books Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Here's the announcement:

The Copyright Office has published a Preliminary Analysis and Discussion Document that addresses the issues raised by the intersection between copyright law and the mass digitization of books. The purpose of the Analysis is to facilitate further discussions among the affected parties and the public discussions that may encompass a number of possible approaches, including voluntary initiatives, legislative options, or both. The Analysis also identifies questions to consider in determining an appropriate policy for the mass digitization of books.

Public discourse on mass digitization is particularly timely. On March 22, 2011, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected a proposed settlement in the copyright infringement litigation regarding Google's mass book digitization project. The court found that the settlement would have redefined the relationship between copyright law and new technology, and it would have encroached upon Congress's ability to set copyright policy with respect to orphan works. Since then, a group of authors has filed a lawsuit against five university libraries that participated in Google's mass digitization project. These developments have sparked a public debate on the risks and opportunities that mass book digitization may create for authors, publishers, libraries, technology companies, and the general public. The Office's Analysis will serve as a basis for further policy discussions on this issue.

| Google Books Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt:

The British Library recently announced to much fanfare a deal with Google to make available online a quarter of a million books no longer restricted by copyright, thus in the public domain.

The deal is presented as a win-win situation, where Google pays for the costs of scanning the books, which will be available on both Google and BL's websites. This sounds very philanthropic from Google, however the catch is in the detail:

"Once digitised, these unique items will be available for full text search, download and reading through Google Books, as well as being searchable through the Library's website and stored in perpetuity within the Library's digital archive."

In order to find out what this really means we asked the British Library for a copy of the agreement with Google, which was not uploaded to their transparency website with other similar contracts, as it didn't involve monetary exchange.

| Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt:

The road to class-wide settlement—even to a much more modest settlement that covers only scanning and searching—now appears to be barred. What is more, in light of the freelancers' case and the Supreme Court's recent Wal-Mart case, the road to class-wide litigation also looks to be extraordinarily difficult. Google will raise many of the same adequacy of representation arguments in its opposition to class certification. It might still be more feasible for a few copyright owners holding large number of copyrights to litigate on an individual basis—but the major publishers, who best fit that bill, have all more or less made their peace with Google through its Partner Program. The odds of the authors being able to see this one through to the end have just dropped precipitously. Google is holding all the cards now, and they're all full houses.

| New: Google Books Bibliography, Version 7 | Digital Scholarship |

The following recent Digital Scholarship publications may also be of interest:

• Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010. Presents over 500 English-language works.
• Institutional Repository Bibliography, Version 4. Presents over 500 English-language works.
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010. Presents over 3,800 English-language works.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Here's an excerpt:

Our law and economics analysis of the Book Search Project suggests that—from a copyright perspective—the proposed settlement may be beneficial to right holders, consumers, and Google. For instance, it may provide a solution to the still unsolved dilemma of orphan works. From a competition policy perspective, we stress the important aspect that Google’s pricing algorithm for orphan and unclaimed works effectively replicates a competitive Nash-Bertrand market outcome under post-settlement, third-party oversight.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |Google Books Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt:

This consent order presents a unique opportunity to shape best practices in reader privacy for a major online service provider. The marketplaces for e-books and for book search are both in formative stages, and the standards adopted by Google can be highly influential for other market participants. We urge the Commission to confirm that reader privacy deserves the same respect in the online world that it has long demanded in the physical world by insisting on strong protections for reader privacy in the comprehensive privacy program.

Read more about it at "In Comments to FTC, ARL Suggests Privacy Oversight for Google Books."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Google Books Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt:

In the aftermath of Judge Chin's rejection of the proposed Google Book settlement, it is time to consider legislative alternatives. This article explores a number of component parts of a legislative package that might accomplish many of the good things that the proposed settlement promised without the downsides that would have attended judicial approval of it. It gives particular attention to the idea of an extended collective licensing regime as a way to make out-of-print but in-copyright books more widely available to the public. But it also considers several other measures, such as one aimed at allowing orphan works to be made available and some new privileges that would allow digitization for preservation purposes and nonconsumptive research uses of a digital library of books from the collections of major research libraries.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Google Books Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This guide is the latest in a series prepared by LCA legal counsel Jonathan Band to help inform the library community about this landmark legal dispute.

In the Guide Part IV, Band explains why the Court rejected the proposed class action settlement, which would have allowed Google to engage in a wide variety of activities using scanned books.

As stated in the Guide, "The court concluded that the settlement was unfair because a substantial number of class members [i.e., authors and publishers] voiced significant concerns with the settlement.… However, the validity of the objections seemed less important to the court than the fact that many class members raised them."

As for the impact of the decision on libraries, Band writes that while it is too early to say what the parties will do next, "it appears that both the challenges and the opportunities presented to libraries by the settlement when it was announced in the fall of 2008 are growing narrower and more distant."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt from the ruling:

Before the Court is plaintiffs' motion pursuant to Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for final approval of the proposed settlement of this class action on the terms set forth in the Amended Settlement Agreement (the "ASA"). The question presented is whether the ASA is fair, adequate, and reasonable. I conclude that it is not.

While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the ASA would simply go too far. It would permit this class action—which was brought against defendant Google Inc. ("Google") to challenge its scanning of books and display of "snippets" for on-line searching—to implement a forward-looking business arrangement that would grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners. Indeed, the ASA would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.

Accordingly, and for the reasons more fully discussed below, the motion for final approval of the ASA is denied. The accompanying motion for attorneys' fees and costs is denied, without prejudice.

Read more about it at "After Rejection, a Rocky Road for Google Settlement"; "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement"; "Google Books Settlement: Copyright, Congress, and Information Monopolies"; "Google Settlement Is Rejected"; "Inside Judge Chin's Opinion"; "Please Refine Your Search Terms"; and "Publishers Remain Committed to Expanding Online Access to Books and Upholding Copyright Despite Court Decision."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Here are the papers:

• "D Is for Digitize: An Introduction," James Grimmelmann
• "Google Book Settlement and the Fair Use Counterfactual," Matthew Sag
• "Fulfulling the Copyright Social Justice Promise: Digitized Textual Information," Lateef Mtima & Steven D. Jamar
• "Orphan Works and the Google Book Search Settlement: An International Perspective," Bernard Lang
• "H Is for Harmonization: The Google Book Search Settlement and Orphan Works Legislation in the European Union," Katharina de la Durantaye
• "Continued DOJ Oversight of the Google Book Search Settlement: Defending Our Public Values and Protecting Competition," Christopher A. Suarez
• "Digitial + Library: Mass Book Digitization as Collection Inquiry," Mary Murrell
• "The Why in DIY Book Scanning," Daniel Reetz

| Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement :

We've given awards to 12 projects led by 23 researchers at 15 universities:

• Steven Abney and Terry Szymanski, University of Michigan. Automatic Identification and Extraction of Structured Linguistic Passages in Texts.
• Elton Barker, The Open University, Eric C. Kansa, University of California-Berkeley, Leif Isaksen, University of Southampton, United Kingdom. Google Ancient Places (GAP): Discovering historic geographical entities in the Google Books corpus.
• Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs, George Mason University. Reframing the Victorians.
• Gregory R. Crane, Tufts University. Classics in Google Books.
• Miles Efron, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois. Meeting the Challenge of Language Change in Text Retrieval with Machine Translation Techniques.
• Brian Geiger, University of California-Riverside, Benjamin Pauley, Eastern Connecticut State University. Early Modern Books Metadata in Google Books.
• David Mimno and David Blei, Princeton University. The Open Encyclopedia of Classical Sites.
• Alfonso Moreno, Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Bibliotheca Academica Translationum: link to Google Books.
• Todd Presner, David Shepard, Chris Johanson, James Lee, University of California-Los Angeles. Hypercities Geo-Scribe.
• Amelia del Rosario Sanz-Cabrerizo and José Luis Sierra-Rodríguez, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Collaborative Annotation of Digitalized Literary Texts.
• Andrew Stauffer, University of Virginia. JUXTA Collation Tool for the Web.
• Timothy R. Tangherlini, University of California-Los Angeles, Peter Leonard, University of Washington. Northern Insights: Tools & Techniques for Automated Literary Analysis, Based on the Scandinavian Corpus in Google Books.

Here's an excerpt from the panel announcement:

The ALA Washington Office is hosting the ALA ad hoc Google Task Forces' breakout session titled "Panel Discussion on Life after the Google Book Search Settlement (GBS)" which will explore the possible court rulings – approval, denial or permutation there in – and how libraries would be impacted.. . .

Jonathan Band, intellectual property attorney and counsel for the ALA, will lead the discussion and pose questions to an expert group of panelists. Invited panelists include a representative from Google (Johanna Shelton-confirmed), a professor from the New York University Law School (James Grimmelmann-confirmed), a representative from the U.S. Copyright Office and a librarian from a GBS participating library.

Here's an excerpt from "YouTube Wins Summary Judgment in Viacom DMCA Lawsuit" by EFF's Kurt Opsahl:

The wealth of legislative history and precedent visible in this opinion shows just how uncontroversial the decision is. An online host is only liable if it doesn't take down specific instances of infringement it actually knows about. That's been well established, as have the principles that the host doesn't have a duty to actively monitor everything on the site, or that the online service can do more than merely store works. If the parties involved here had been a small video blogger and a local bulletin board, this case would have attracted almost no media attention, because it's not breaking any new legal ground. The amount of attention—the reason this is a big deal—is really due to the size of the companies and the numbers at stake. The only new ground that could have been broken would have been if the judge had deviated from the history of the statute and the ever-lengthening line of precedent that reaches just the same conclusion.

Read more about it at "Google Defeats Viacom's $1 Billion YouTube Suit," "How the YouTube-Viacom Ruling Will Set the Web Free," and "Judge Sides with Google in Viacom Video Suit."

Here's an excerpt:

The proposed amended settlement in the Google Book case has been the focus of numerous comments and critiques. This "perspective" reviews the compatibility of the proposed settlement with the TRIPS Agreement and relevant provisions of the Berne Convention that were incorporated into TRIPS, in particular the no-formality rule, the most-favored nation (MFN) clause, national treatment obligations, and the so-called three-step test, which constrains the ability of WTO Members to provide new exceptions and limitations to copyright rights.