digitization of books
Latest
Judge rules against authors in Google Books copyright infringement case
Google's Books project, which has indexed millions of titles and made them available online, hasn't always been on completely solid legal footing. After all, Books operates without the permission of authors, which has understandably drawn some ire from copyright holders, not to mention other web giants. Well, a federal ruling handed down today gives strong backing to Google's digitizing efforts: U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by an author group against Google. In his opinion, Chin ruled that showing excerpts of books in search results falls under fair use, and that Books "advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals." Of course, for writers hoping to get paid for access to their works, this decision will come as a disappointment. But considering how deeply ingrained the Google Books project is by now, the ruling is hardly surprising, either.
French government to digitize out-of-print 20th century works, plans ebook initiative
It's a case of having one's cake and eating it, too. Or, in this instance, digitizing the works of others and reselling them online for a 40 percent cut. According to Le Temps, a controversial new law recently passed by the French government will see out-of-print books from the 20th century converted into ebook format for preservation and an eventual commercial release. The effort, backed by a 30 million Euro subsidy and curated by the Bibliothèque nationale, encompasses some 500,000 to 700,000 books and has caused a number of the country's writers to raise their baguettes and pens in protest. Indeed, the legislation dives into murky IP territory, granting rights holders a measly six month window to opt-out of the initiative. It's safe to say, La France is taking a page directly out of Google's book. We just hope they read the end to that particular story.[Image credit via Britannica.com]
British Library and Google Books partner up to digitize 250,000 out-of-copyright works
Oh paper, ye olde guardian of human wisdom, culture, and history, why must you be so fragile and voluminous? Not a question we ask ourselves every day, admittedly, but when you're talking about the British Library's extensive collection of tomes from the 18th and 19th century, those books, pamphlets and periodicals do stack up pretty quickly. Thankfully, Google's book digitization project has come to the rescue of bewildered researchers, with a new partnership with the British Library that will result in the availability of digital copies of works from that period -- spanning the time of the French and Industrial Revolutions, the Crimean War, the invention of the telegraph, and the end of slavery. In total, some 250,000 such items, all of them long out of copyright, will find a home on Google Books and the British Library's website, and Google has even been nice enough to bear the full cost of transforming them into web-accessible gems of knowledge. Jump past the break for the similarly digital press release.
