• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register

Publishers Lunch

The Publishing Industry's Daily Essential Read

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

Europe Objects

September 1, 2009
By Michael Cader

It’s a quiet week in most of book publishing but a busy one in the offices of Federal District Court Judge Denny Chin as Friday is the deadline for filing objections to the proposed Google Books settlement agreement. (September 4 is also the deadline for opting out of the settlement entirely.)

Until recently, despite the noisy public debate about the sweeping and complex settlement, very few objections of substance had been filed with the court. The most detailed legal objections, covered here previously, were raised by attorney and author Scott Gant in his August 20 filing, while support has come from a variety of organizations ranging from the American Association of People with Disabilities to the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities and, most recently, Google’s new BFF Sony. (Sony’s support is commercial rather than legal; they believe it could “have a profoundly positive impact on the market for e-book readers and related devices.”)

But yesterday saw a wave of similarly-reasoned filings from a variety of publishers and publishers’ associations in other parts of the world: Sweden’s Norstedts (with potentially 20,000 out of print titles), Studentlitteratur, and Leopard; Germany’s Harrassowitz; and South African holding company Media24 (with approximately 15,000 out of print titles) filed in opposition, as did the publishers’ associations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Sweden. Additionally, US attorneys for the Federal Republic of Germany filed a long challenge to the agreement, saying it “cannot adequately and fairly represent” German authors and publishers (neither of whom are allowed to join the Authors Guild or the AAP), and there was a separate filing made by a division of the Federal Ministry of Justice in Germany. (A group representing approximately 100 Japanese publishers objected earlier in the summer.)

Among the objections repeated by many of the filers from abroad are assertions of problems in providing notice to class members around the world; failures to translate the entire settlement into other languages and inadequate translation of key legal terms such as “work for hire” for countries where such legal terms of art do not exist; errors in the books database that have made it difficult for rightsholders to identify all of their works; undue burdens in the process of having to opt out for historical lines of thousands of titles; and broadly incorrect classification of works in other languages as commercially unavailable.

To survey and view filings in more, Justia.com has been maintaining an open site of most documents registered with the court–though their most recent additions are from August 28 and do not reflect the new filings cited in this story. The archive at The Public Index seems to be more up to date right now, including many of yesterday’s filings. (The more recent filings can all be viewed for a fee via the court’s PACER system.)
Public Index
Justia

Filed Under: eNews, Free

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login


Forgot password
Quick Pass users click here to log in
Get Full Access
The publishing industry's essential daily read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • Rupert Murdoch to Retire from News Corp and Fox Boards September 21, 2023 NYT
  • OpenAI's New DALL-E3 Lets Artists Opt-Out of Future Training; Rejects Request to Mimic the Style of Living Artists September 20, 2023 TechCrunch
  • Another Response to AI-Generated Books: KDP Lowers Limit On Number of Titles You Can Create, "To Help Protect Against Abuse" September 18, 2023 KDP Forum
  • TikTok (and Instagram) Stars Sell Cookbooks September 18, 2023 NYT
  • Actor and UK Harry Potter Audiobook Narrator Stephen Fry Demonstrates How His Voice Was Copied By AI Without Permission September 18, 2023 Deadline
  • Neal Sofman, Legend of Bay Area Independent Booksellers, dies at 75 September 15, 2023 SF Chronicle
  • Major Textbook Publishers Trying Suing Shadow Library LibGen Again September 15, 2023 Torrent Freak
  • Deesha Philyaw Has Seven-Figure Deal with Mariner for "The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman" in 2025 and "Girl, Look" September 14, 2023 AP
  • Copyright Office Doubles Down on Declining to Register Award-Winning Midjourney-Created AI Art September 12, 2023 Copyright Review Board document
  • Sarah Weinman on How Richard Osman Found His Way to Mysteries and Success: "The simple answer is that they are really good" September 12, 2023 Esquire
© 2023 Publishers Lunch. All Rights Reserved.