Digitization of public-domain works is a good thing, right? Most literature fans would be quick to agree. However, Glyn Moody writes on Techdirt that some of the new public digitization projects have terms and conditions that seem to be right out of the dark ages. The Cambridge University’s Digital Library, for example, places strict limits on what users can do with the books—non-commercial use only, no modification, no passing it on to third parties, and so on. A number of the works in Cambridge’s library date from well before the 1710 Statute of Anne invented modern copyright, suggesting that...

Ars Technica has a look at the current filings and legal strategies in the Google Books case. There are three current cases against Google—two 2005 cases involving publishers and authors, which are the ones involved in the settlement that failed after four years of work, and one in 2010 from photographers and illustrators. Google appears close to a separate settlement in the publishers’ case. But Google is likely to carry on its battle with the authors, photographers, and other individual copyright holders. Some authors consider the fight a matter of principle. And even if Google convinced...

From The Bookseller: Google Books and the French online publication ActuaLitté have launched a digital library of out-of-copyright books that have been scanned by the US firm. All the titles in the Google Books catalogue will be available through actualitte.com/bibliotheque for free downloading in PDF or ePub format. The library is fully integrated into the website, and is accessible from the homepage with a custom interface developed specially to enhance visibility. ...

Google has just added offline reading to its Google Books app for the Chrome web browser. They tout this as offering the ability to read e-books on a plane, or when the Internet has gone down for some reason. To read your Google eBooks offline, you’ll need to install the Google Books app from our Chrome Web Store and ensure your Google eBooks are available to read offline. Please see this article in our Help Center and follow the simple step-by-step process to enable offline reading for your ebooks. Of course, it only takes...

From Good E-reader Blog: Google Books officially hit Canada last month and finally allows us to purchase best sellers and millions of free books. This really makes e-readers like the iRiver Story HD relevant because it used to be USA only and now can be used as a viable alternative to many of the other stores out there. The one drawback of the Canadian version of the store is the lack of selection. The American version of Google Books has millions of paid offerings while the Canadian version only has a few thousand. This is set to dramatically increase now that...

Google is not the only party in the Google Books lawsuits who is attempting to move forward with litigation. Publishers Weekly reports that the Authors Guild is filing to request class certification in its lawsuit against Google Books. The guild argues the class should be approved because individual claimants “could not as a practical matter effectively assert alone against Google” such claims of infringement, and that “those claims are presented far more fairly and efficiently than they would be in individual actions, which would require the same issues to be litigated multiple times.” ...

Apparently Google has gotten fed up over the failure of the settlement talks in the copyright lawsuits over Google Books, because it has begun to move toward actually litigating the case. An article in TechWorld notes Google has notified Judge Denny Chin that it plans to file a motion to ask that parts of the 2005 copyright infringement lawsuit and a related 2010 lawsuit be dismissed. [Judge Chin] set a deadline of Dec. 23 for Google to file the dismissal motions. The plaintiffs will have until Jan. 23 to respond to the motions, and Google...

From the Inside Google Books Blog: Starting today, you’ll also be able to break out the colored highlighters and pens with Google eBooks in the Web Reader. To start adding notes, first open your web browser and find your Google eBooks in yourMy eBooks bookshelf (make sure you are signed into your account at the top right hand corner of your screen). If you don’t have any ebooks yet, you can start your collection with a free classic from Best of the Free bookshelf, or purchase an ebook from oureBookstore. Then, click on the book to open it in the Web Reader. You should be...

The article looks at Professor Geoffery Nunberg’s 2009 comments about the poor quality of Google Books metadata and includes new comments by Nunberg about what he sees today. From Times Higher Education: In response to Professor Nunberg’s critique, Google offered to correct any errors that were brought to its attention. But while this process has ironed out specific glitches in the intervening years, Professor Nunberg does not believe it has made a fundamental difference. “The changes are a drop in a greatly enlarged ocean,” he said, adding that the flaws in Google’s metadata remain “a big systematic structural problem”. In the course of his research alone,...

From the Google Books blog (blockquotes omitted): Today, Google eBooks has landed in Australia, and whether you're a bookworm or casual reader, you're invited to stop by and stock up on some great reads for summer. We've got hundreds of thousands of titles to choose from, including plenty of best sellers, and more than two million free eBooks on top of that. It's easy to find great Australian authors like Kate Grenville, Thomas Keneally, Geraldine Brooks and Christos Tsiolkas. Google eBooks is all about choice: we're offering more titles and more ways...

From the Inside Google Books: Starting this week, you can set up a Google Alert for books and receive email notices when new books that match your interests become available. To create an alert for books, go to Google Alerts, type in the keywords you are interested in about a book, (whether it’s title, author name, or topic) and choose “Books” from the Type drop-down button, and create. You can also preview the email you’ll be sent on the right side panel. Once you create the alert, you will automatically begin receiving notification emails about new, recently published books in Google Books. Google’s...

Lest we think that the lawsuit against Google that has been spinning its wheels for six years and gone precisely nowhere was the extent of the Authors Guilds efforts to fight the Google Books scanning projects, the Guild has struck again with a lawsuit against the universities that partnered with Google in the project, and the cooperative organization, HathiTrust, set up to manage those works. The Authors Guild, its counterparts from various Commonwealth countries, and a group of authors have filed suit to block the use of unauthorized scans of copyrighted works from the universities libraries as part...