author's guild

PARK CITY, UTAH--The most arresting moment in "Google and the World Brain," Ben Lewis' thoughtful new documentary about the search giant's effort to scan all the world's books, takes place not in Mountain View or a courtroom but rather a monastery high above Catalonia in Spain.

The film's globetrotting crew is interviewing Father Damiá Roure, who runs the library at the Benedictine abbey of Montserrat, about what happened when Google came to digitize the library's collection. Roure speaks happily of the Googlers' visit, explaining that their efforts allowed the monks to bring their … Read more

Google is trying to convince the courts to throw out a book-scanning lawsuit filed against it by the Authors Guild.

In a brief submitted to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals last Friday, Google argued that a suit filed on behalf of all authors whose books have been scanned shouldn't be allowed because most authors support the scanning.

Backing up its claim, the company yet again cited a survey that found 58 percent of the authors polled approved of Google scanning their books so the content could be searched online. A full 45 percent said they had … Read more

The Authors Guild is ready to take on Google Books after its book-scanning lawsuit "cleared a major hurdle," Authors Guild President Scott Turow wrote in a blog post published today.

"We're one big step closer to justice being done for U.S. authors," Turow wrote.

U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin yesterday gave the guild the green light to sue Google as a class of authors, allowing the organization to represent in the suit other writers and their heirs with a copyright interest in books that were scanned by Google as part of their … Read more

A judge filed a ruling today that gives authors, photographers, and illustrators the green light to sue Google.

The ruling allows the drawn-out court case -- over Google Books' practice of scanning book out of print and copyrighted content for Web searches -- to move forward. The suit will now determine if Google's argument that it has a fair-use defense has any merit.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin, from the Southern District of New York, said the Authors Guild and another group has a right to pursue the suit on behalf of other authors. … Read more

The Authors Guild agreed to a controversial settlement with Google because it feared repeating the mistakes that the music industry has made in dealing with digital works, it said Friday.

Google and the Authors Guild have struggled to get final approval of a settlement granting Google the right to continue a six-year book-scanning project than has digitized 12 million titles. Objections to that settlement from authors and academics have been heated, and despite revisions, the U.S. Department of Justice continued to object in principle to the settlement on Thursday, saying "the (revised agreement) purports to grant legal rights … Read more

The Justice Department appears to be stepping up its antitrust probe of Google's settlement last year of a class-action lawsuit filed by groups representing authors and publishers, according to reports in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

The Justice Department has sent formal requests for information, called civil investigative demands, or CIDs, to publishers involved in the settlement, according to the reports. The increased scrutiny may signal the Justice Department's opposition to the settlement, which still requires court approval.

Under the proposed $125 million settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, … Read more

Update at 3:11 p.m. PDT: This story now includes a comment from Consumer Watchdog.

A federal judge has granted authors worldwide four more months to decide whether to participate in a settlement involving Google's online Book Search service.

Absent the ruling, made by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, authors would have had until May 5 to decide whether to join the settlement or opt out.

But according to a law clerk in Chin's court, as well as one of the lawyers in the case, the … Read more

Seeing how the cyborg is real and the mutants are not, I think the cyborg will win this. Yes the cyborg is real. He's a filmmaker with only one eye so he figured he'd put a camera in the empty socket. For now it's only a red LED, but soon it will be a camera. Also Apple gets sued over touch tech and Africa gets fiber cables to it's shores.

Apple sued over touchscreen http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123920026450801313.html

Costing Africa’s new cable ties http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7987812.stm … Read more

The controversy regarding the text-to-speech function offered by Amazon.com's Kindle 2 digital book reader appears to be heating up again.

Groups advocating for the blind and reading disabled on Tuesday held a protest at the Manhattan offices of the Authors Guild. The guild was very vocal in opposing the text-to-speech technology in the Kindle. The group, which represents 4,000 authors, argued that the Kindle infringes on copyright and could hurt audio book sales.

The whole debate seemed to be over in February when Amazon appeared to give in. The Web's largest retailer said it had decided … Read more