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Google Launches Tool Showing Government Information and Takedown Requests
Privacy and free speech advocates this week are lauding Google for the launch of a new feature listing "government requests to remove content from our services," or to "provide information about users of our services and products." The feature is shown in the form of a map, and illustrates "the number of government requests received to remove content, and the percentage of those requests complied with" on a country-by-country basis. "At a time when increasing numbers of governments are trying to regulate the free flow of information on the Internet, we hope this tool will shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests to censor information or obtain user data around the globe," Google officials noted. "We welcome external debates about these issues that we grapple with internally on a daily basis."
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Supreme Court Hands Down Major Free Speech Ruling
In what's being called a resounding victory for free speech, the U.S. Supreme Court in an 8-1 ruling overturned the conviction of a Virginia man who was sentenced to three years in prison for creating several videos that included scenes of dog fighting. Robert Stevens was found guilty under a federal statute that prohibits the creation, sale or possession of "a depictor of animal cruelty" with "the intention of placing the depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain." The court, however, struck down the law, saying it "created a criminal prohibition of alarming breadth."
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Artists and Photographers Sue Over Google Book Search
In the latest twist in the Google Book Search settlement saga, graphic artists and photographers today filed a class action suit in a federal court in New York claiming Google's book-scanning and display infringes the copyrights of artists and photographers. The suit, which seeks "monetary, injunctive, and declaratory relief," comes weeks after a contentious, daylong fairness hearing on the Google settlement, and months after Judge Denny Chin, now deciding the fate of that settlement, denied a request by the artists to join the $125 million class action settlement as a party.
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The Objector
Since 2005, Muchnick has been the lead objector to a proposed settlement stemming from the central rights dispute of the digital age-Tasini v. New York Times-the landmark case in which members of the National Writers' Union sued the newspaper and some electronic aggregators for, well, piracy.
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Deal or No Deal: Part II
On February 18, the Google Settlement is scheduled to have its long-awaited final fairness hearing in a Manhattan courtroom, although, court-watchers agree, it is unlikely that this next chapter, will be the last.
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Richard Sarnoff: PW's Publishing Person of the Year
As a revised agreement now winds its way toward a scheduled February 18 fairness hearing—a hearing twice postponed in 2009—the controversial Google settlement's ultimate fate is still unclear. What has become increasingly clear, however, is that the historic debate the settlement has generated, as contentious as it has been, has already benefited the publishing industry.
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