Department of Justice opens antitrust inquiry into Google – finally!
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009In perhaps one of the best bits of book-world news that we’ve seen in awhile, the New York Times is reporting today that the US DOJ has finally opened an antitrust inquiry into Google’s book scanning project. For awhile, it was really looking as if Google was going to get away with breaking copyright law [...]
As deadline looms, opposition to Google’s book scanning mounts
Monday, April 20th, 2009The Internet Archive has thrown in its opposition to the Google book scanning settlement, requesting they be allowed the “same limitation of potential copyright liability as Google.” In fact, we think that if Google is given this broad indemnity against copyright infringement, every individual and institution in the US should be given the same. The [...]
Google book scanning settlement slowly becoming recognized as monopolistic
Saturday, April 4th, 2009It appears that people are slowly waking up to the realization that the Google book scanning settlement is a really, really bad thing. The head of Harvard’s library system is quoted as saying: “Google will be a monopoly.” We’ve blogged here a few times about the fundamental problems with allowing the Google scanning settlement to [...]
The Scanning Age; or, a primer on the Corporate State
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009A recent article in the New York Times talks about Google’s so-called “pursuit” of copyholders on the books they are digitizing. This is part of the settlement announce last October that effectively legalizes Google’s blatant trademark infringement. As part of the settlement, Google is given the green light to violate one’s trademark as an author, [...]