Julian Assange issued a lengthy statement via WikiLeaks last night, saying that Canongate’s publication Thursday of the early draft of his book over his objections is “old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity — screwing people over to make a buck.” He says the house is “profiteering from an unfinished and erroneous draft.” Assange says the manuscript that became the basis of publication–which Canongate has acknowledged was a first draft–is rather “a narrative and literary interpretation of a conversation between the writer [Andrew O’Hagan] and me.” Assange says it was never submitted to the house at all; instead, he says O’Hagan’s researcher provided […]
Legal
Barnes & Noble Says Privacy Recommendations “Would Destroy the Value” of Borders IP Purchase
A battle is brewing in advance of the Thursday afternoon court hearing on Barnes & Noble’s $13.9 million bid to acquire most of Borders’ intellectual property, including their extensive customer databases. This dispute focuses on recommendations of consumer privacy ombudsman Michael St. Patrick Baxter, at Covington & Burling. Not only does BN say “implementing all of the recommendations contained in the report would destroy the value of the transaction from Barnes & Noble’s perspective,” but they accuse Borders of withholding those recommendations (as well as correspondence from the FTC and state Attorneys General) in advance of the auction. They write […]
Canongate Will Publish Assange Memoir Against His Wishes, While Knopf Cancels
The man who made countless national secrets transparent without permission now faces a bit of turnabout, as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s memoir is set to be published tomorrow, over the author’s apparent objection. Canongate will release the book in the UK, but will present it as “an unauthorized biography” since by their own account the author wanted to cancel the contract. Canongate says Assange “had already signed his advance over to his lawyers to settle his legal bills” and did not pay them back, so the house “decided to honour that contract and to publish. Once the advance has been […]
People, Etc.:
At this morning’s BISG annual meeting, the organization confirmed that vice chair Ken Michaels is now serving as co-chair of the organization’s board, alongside Dominique Raccah, who will step down from her position in a year. (Raccah took over as sole chair of the board last November when co-chair Andrew Weber left Random House.) Little, Brown, John Parsley has been promoted to executive editor. He joined the company in the fall of 2007. David Moldawer has joined Amazon Publishing as senior editor for the New York-based trade group, run by Larry Kirshbaum. Previously he was a senior editor at McGraw-Hill. At […]
Library Admits Flaws, Postpones Orphan Release–Yet Vows to Continue
The University of Michigan has taken the logical and appropriate step following the Authors Guild’s swift ability to show that the “due diligence” process for finding potential owners of supposed orphan works before treating those books as available for free distribution was fatally flawed. They said in a statement today, “The close and welcome scrutiny of the list of potential orphan works has revealed a number of errors, some of them serious. This tells us that our pilot process is flawed. “Having learned from our mistakes—we are, after all, an educational institution—we have already begun an examination of our procedures […]
Chin Approves Schedule for Discovery and Motions Moving to Google Books Trial
At today’s court hearing to update Judge Denny Chin, the parties to the Google Books case brought no dramatic reports of progress on a settlement (as widely expected), despite the judge’s warning the last time around to work out a deal or prepare to litigate. So Judge Chin followed through on his promise and scheduled a pathway to trial, albeit a slow one. Attorney Michael Boni, speaking for the Authors Guild only this time, said the authors organization remains in “active discussions” with Google about a settlement as part of a “parallel track” of preparing for litigation. Representatives of the […]