From Inside Higher Ed
Another deadline has passed for filing commentary on the pending settlement between Google and major associations of American authors and publishers over Google Book Search, the controversial project that aims to scan millions of books into a searchable electronic database.
And while the majority of higher education groups that have commented publicly on the agreement have agreed that it will be good for scholarship, a group of 80 professors from around the country this week wrote a letter to the court, raising new concerns regarding the fate of unclaimed “orphan works” under revisions made to the proposed settlement in recent months.
Penned by Pamela Samuelson, a law [and information] professor at the University of California at Berkeley, the letter says its signatories have the same goal that a number of advocacy groups and institutions argued for when they filed briefs supporting the settlement in September: They want the millions of books in Google’s database to be as available as possible....