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Google Files Motion to Dismiss Lawsuits
As expected, on Thursday Google filed a motion to dismiss the Authors Guild as an associational plaintiff from the long-running book-scanning case, and also moved to sever the American Society of Media Photographers from its related suit against Google.
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SOPA Mark-Up Session Delayed Until Next Year; An Opening for OPEN?
With Congress embroiled in a fight over extending the payroll tax cut, House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Kim Smith confirmed that Wednesday's scheduled Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) hearing has been delayed. Smith said the committee expected the bill to be taken up again "early next year."
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SOPA Will Be Taken Up Again Wednesday
According to a tweet from House member Darrell Issa (R-CA) the House mark-up of SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) is scheduled to resume on Wednesday, Dec. 21, at 9 a.m., after an unexpected delay stopped the bill from coming to a vote in the judiciary committee last Friday.
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Register of Copyrights Addresses Legislative Efforts
At a Copyright Clearance Center panel held December 12 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Maria Pallante, the register of copyrights, expressed support for the broad strokes of two copyright bills now before Congress—the Senate’s PROTECT IP bill and the recently introduced companion bill in the House, SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act). “Copyright is a tremendous factor in our economy,”
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SOPA Stalled: House Committee Adjourns Without Vote
A House Judiciary Committee adjourned Friday afternoon without voting on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), with no date set for a new vote, essentially stalling the bill despite what seemed like a fast track to approval. The delay comes as opposition mounts, including a scathing analysis this week from constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe who deemed the bill as written unconstitutional.
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Google Will Move to Dismiss Authors Guild Suit
Is the long-running legal drama over Google’s scan plan drawing down? In a scheduling order filed last week, Judge Denny Chin acknowledged that attorneys for Google indicated they would be asking for dismissal of both the Authors Guild and publishers’ suit, as well as the related visual artists case.
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HathiTrust Answers Authors Guild Lawsuit; Trial Schedule Set
Lawyers for the HathiTrust, the digitization initiative of some 40 university libraries, filed its answer to the Authors Guild lawsuit, asking the suit be dismissed for a variety of reasons and suggests it possible defenses.
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Monograph Wars
Back in 2000, at a meeting at netLibrary’s headquarters in Boulder, CO, then-CEO Nancy Talmey told a group of assembled university press publishers that one “medium-sized” university press had recently pocketed two sizable checks for its previous months’ e-book usage with netLibrary. One check exceeded $100,000. Could academic monographs really be so profitable? If it seemed too good to be true, it was. Within a few years, netLibrary was reduced from a campus in Colorado, to a few cubicles at OCLC.
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Use It, or Lose It
When it comes to copyright, the discussion today invariably focuses on piracy. For today’s large copyright-based industries, almost any unauthorized use of their content is considered stealing. But the real question may be what such a restrictive reading of copyright steals from the public. In Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (Univ. of Chicago, 2011) authors Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi look at the impact of today’s copyright policies on creativity and argue that fair use—that long-embedded if often misunderstood core principle of copyright—can help creators cut through the static of today’s confusing, contentious copyright environment.
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In Fight with Amazon, Libraries Caught in the Crossfire
When Penguin announced last week that it was disabling library e-book lending on the Kindle and pulling its latest e-book titles from all library lending platforms, libraries and readers took the hit, but to some observers they were collateral damage in a fight between publishers and Amazon about the control of publishers’ titles.
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Controversial Copyright Bill Goes Before Congress
The Association of American Publishers has thrown its weight behind a bill that critics say would dramatically scale back the “safe harbor” provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. On November 16, Congress heard testimony on SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), a bill that broadly targets foreign-based “rogue” Internet sites by going after companies that allegedly “engage in, enable, or facilitate” infringement. It is a companion of the controversial PROTECT IP act, which passed a Senate committee earlier this year.
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Wiley Goes After Bit Torrent Pirates
John Wiley & Sons filed a copyright infringement suit last week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York involving 27 “John Does” who the publisher said are illegally copying and distributing its For Dummies books through the use of Bit Torrent file sharing software.
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U.S. Copyright Office Outlines "Priorities and Special Projects"
Orphan works, preservation for libraries, mass digitization, and fighting digital piracy are among the priorities set by the Register of Copyrights Maria A. Pallante this week in a paper outlining the U.S. Copyright Office's "priorities and special projects" for the next two years.
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Authors Guild Files File Amended Complaint Against Libraries
The Authors Guild has filed an amended complaint that expands its suit against university libraries over a book-scanning collaborative known as HathiTrust.
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S&S Signs with Attributor
Simon & Schuster has signed with anti-piracy firm Attributor to help the publisher protect the copyright of its titles online.
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Michael Healy Joining Copyright Clearance Center
With the Google Book Settlement all but dead, another sign that the market is moving on: This morning, the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) confirmed that Michael Healy, former executive director (designate) for the Google Settlement's proposed Book Rights Registry, is joining CCC.
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Peter Brantley: Collective Licensing and Orphan Works in Europe
Olav Stokkmo, president of IFFRO (the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations) suggests that a recent Memorandum of Understanding in the EU could solve the problem of orphan works through collective licensing. But is collective licensing really a solution to the orphan works issue? Peter Brantley weighs in.
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Authors Guild Suit Against Libraries Not Related (Enough) to Keep its Judge
In yet another twist, judge Denny Chin, who is still sitting by designation in the Google Book case, has declined to take the Authors Guild’s recent suit filed against a group of research libraries. The case was referred to Chin as “possibly related,” as the case revolves around fair use and Google’s library book scanning project.
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Google Settlement Parties Pursue Separate Deals
After nearly three years stumping together to get the Google Book Settlement approved, the parties in the scuttled deal are headed for litigation. At a September 15 status conference, attorneys told Judge Chin that talks were progressing raising the likelihood that the authors’ and publishers’ cases would soon be split.
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Authors Guild Sues Libraries
With the Google Book Search Settlement in tatters, its fragile alliance splintering, and the parties now on a pretrial schedule, the Authors Guild last week expanded its infringement claims by suing a consortium of university libraries over a digital library initiative.
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