The Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors, the Union Des Écrivaines et des Écrivains Québécois (UNEQ) along with 8 individual authors (including Fay Weldon) has sued the university consortium HathiTrust over its plans to allow internal institutional access to book scans that HathiTrust members received from Google which HathiTrust believes to be orphaned works. As usual, MeFi's own James Grimmelmann has the best analysis of the suit.
posted by Toekneesan on Sep 13, 2011 - 10 comments

Only weeks after Judge Denny Chin extended the filing deadline, and presumably a final decision, and reflecting the Department of Justice’s own opinion, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the landmark class-action lawsuit settlement between the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google. And offers some advice for a revised resubmission.
posted by Toekneesan on Mar 22, 2011 - 22 comments

The Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab is an organization dedicated to enriching the public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media. You may know them from such projects as How to build a fake Google Street View car, public domain donor stickers, internet famous class, the first rap video to end with a download source code link, or their numerous firefox add-ons (such as China Channel, Tourettes Machine, or Back to the future). FAT members have been hard at work standardizing various open source graffiti-related software packages, including Graffiti Analysis, Laser Tag, Fat Tag Deluxe and EyeWriter [previously] to be GML (Graffiti Markup Language) compliant. Fuck Google. Fuck Twitter. FuckFlickr. Fuck SXSW. Fuck 3D. FAT Lab is Kanye shades for the open source movement.
posted by finite on Mar 13, 2010 - 8 comments

Google shuts down music blogs without warning for "violating terms of service". In what critics are calling "musicblogocide 2010", Google has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google's Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet.
posted by meadowlark lime on Feb 11, 2010 - 96 comments

Google makes public domain books available for instant custom printing. Show up anywhere that has one of the book printing machines. Select one of the millions of public domain titles in Google Books digital library. Pay around the price of a mass market paperback. The machine then prints a copy of your desired book* in a few minutes, as demonstrated in this lovingly narrated video. [more inside]
posted by voltairemodern on Sep 17, 2009 - 50 comments

"It would be naïve to identify the Internet with the Enlightenment. It has the potential to diffuse knowledge beyond anything imagined by Jefferson; but while it was being constructed, link by hyperlink, commercial interests did not sit idly on the sidelines. They want to control the game, to take it over, to own it. They compete among themselves, of course, but so ferociously that they kill each other off. Their struggle for survival is leading toward an oligopoly; and whoever may win, the victory could mean a defeat for the public good. ...We could have created a National Digital Library—the twenty-first-century equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. It is too late now. Not only have we failed to realize that possibility, but, even worse, we are allowing a question of public policy—the control of access to information—to be determined by private lawsuit."—Robert Darnton on what the proposed Google Book Settlement could mean for the pursuit of knowledge—Google and the Future of Books
posted by Toekneesan on Jan 23, 2009 - 44 comments

"The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google today announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search."
posted by Knappster on Oct 28, 2008 - 35 comments

Copyright, copywrong, copyleft, copyWHAT?! Peter Hirtle is no stranger to the questions surrounding copyright and the use of public domain materials. He has been thoroughl in researching and referencing other's work in this area. Peter's handy little chart could not have been more timely; it was really long overdue. But it really just gets overwhelming sometimes ... I blame it all on that d*m**d mouse! [more inside]
posted by aldus_manutius on Jul 16, 2008 - 16 comments

Google has announced plans to implement a filter for copyrighted works on youTube. They have been receiving criticism from all sides. [more inside]
posted by Arbac on Nov 6, 2007 - 51 comments

Google buys YouTube. $1.65 billion dollars is enough for Google to buy the number one video streaming site on the net.
posted by andreaazure on Oct 9, 2006 - 118 comments

"We are losing much of the history of the twentieth century because the copyright industries are more litigious than ever." A cogent "primer for reporters [and others] who find themselves lost in the copyright jungle" in the age of Google and the DMCA.
posted by OmieWise on Sep 27, 2006 - 40 comments

Last week US District Court Judge A. Howard Matz ruled against Google and found them to be in copyright violation for thumbnailing images from the soft core magazine/site Perfect10 (NSFW)... more inside
posted by cedar on Feb 27, 2006 - 36 comments

Google runs into Copyright Dispute... Does the Church of Scientology have a leg to stand on in suiing Google for linking to church documents? Be sure to check out Operation Clambake, the site in question who claims all documentation on their site is ", is allowable under the "fair use" provisions of internationally recognized copyright law". If it is truly a question of copyright, shouldn't the Scientologists be suing the site in question and not Google???? When Google removed the link, it outraged the technology community - can Google win in this case??? Check out what Don Marti has to say about the issue...
posted by gloege on Apr 22, 2002 - 1 comment