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Editorial: Let Google be a little evil
Google's lawyers visited the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last week for a polite conversation with three judges and attorneys from the Authors Guild. You remember -- the book-scanning thing? Yes, the case is 7 years old and still unresolved. The Circuit Court is just a way station in a longer journey -- at issue is whether the Authors Guild's class action suit should be broken apart, forcing authors and publishers to confront Google individually. Google is going to win this thing eventually. If that makes Google evil, it is a necessary evil. The bigger question is about the lawfulness of Google's digital library quest, and the legitimacy of the Guild's copyright charges and request for damages. There are points of similarity to the music industry's litigation saga. And major differences. Google is going to win this thing eventually. If that makes Google evil, it is a necessary evil.
Amazon to launch Netflix-style service for digital books?
Details are still sketchy here, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon's looking to launch a Netflix-like subscription service for digital books, much to the chagrin of some publishers. According to unnamed sources familiar with the matter, Amazon is currently "in talks" with several publishers about the program, which would provide access to an online library in exchange for an unspecified annual fee. The insiders also claim that the service would be available for Amazon Prime subscribers (who currently pay $79 per year for free shipping and access to shows and movies) and that the proposed library would feature primarily older works, with monthly restrictions on the number of books a subscriber could read for free. Publishers would reportedly pocket a "substantial fee" for signing on to the program, though some are reluctant to participate, for fear that doing so would "downgrade the value of the book business," according to one publishing exec. In fact, it remains unclear whether any publishers have thrown their hats in the ring, but we'll certainly be on the lookout for any developments.
Google's deal for book digitization rejected by judge, Books plans sent back to drawing board
It's taken a long, long time to fully consider Google's proposed $125 million settlement with publishers and authors of out-of-print works, but now the ruling has been handed down and it's not the one the Mountain View team wanted. Circuit Judge Chin, who had preliminarily approved the deal back in November 2009, has returned with the new conclusion that actually it goes "too far" in Google's favor. The origins of this settlement stem from a class action lawsuit filed against El Goog for a book digitization project it began back in 2004, and it's important to note that terms were agreed way back in 2008, before a bunch of external objections made them revise the document to its current state and refile it with the court in '09. Since then, the Department of Justice has had a look at antitrust concerns relating to Google potentially having a monopoly on orphan works (those whose author cannot be identified) and Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo have all piped up to say it's a bunk deal. Now, the one man standing between us and a whole ton of web-accessible reading materials has agreed with them. He does leave a pretty large door open for reconciliation, however, should Google be willing to accede to less favorable terms. Let's just hope whatever else transpires doesn't take another year and a half to do so.
Google helps scholars mine 1.7 million Victorian era book titles for clues to our historical attitudes
Whether we like, loathe, or never even considered the idea of it, quantitative literary analysis seems ready for its moment in the spotlight. Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs, a pair of historians of science over at George Mason University, have been playing around with the titles of some nearly 1.7 million books -- accounting for all the known volumes published in Britain during the 19th century -- in a search for enlightenment about the Victorian era's cultural trends and developments. By looking at how often certain words appear in text titles over time, they can find corroboration or perhaps even refutation for the commonly held theories about that time -- although they themselves warn that correlation isn't always indicative of causation. Their research has been made possible by Google's Books venture, which is busily digitizing just about every instance of the written word ever, and the next stage will be to try and mine the actual texts themselves for further clues about what our older selves thought about the world. Any bets on when the word "fail" was first used as a noun?
Stanford cuts down on clutter by removing 70,000 books from its Engineering Library
Guess this is one way to tighten your belt. Stanford University has opted to drastically reduce the catalog of physical volumes within its Engineering Library down from its original 80,000 to a svelte 10,000 copies. Before you cry foul and analogize between this and the prep school that threw out all its paper books, note that we're mostly talking about periodicals here, which tend to be used for quick references -- something that the newly digitized and searchable copies will probably make a lot easier. This action was prompted when the University noticed a large proportion of its leafy volumes hadn't left their shelves for over five years, and now the librarians are all aflutter with excitement about using the freed up space and resources for more productive causes. Such as educating us on the unappreciated benefits of indexing.
