From BayNewser
Internet Archive Director: Don't Jump at the Google Books Settlement
By E.B. Boyd
Researchers shouldn't jump at the Google Books Settlement, just because it offers unprecedented access to a vast trove of books, Peter Brantley, director of access of the Internet Archive and organizer of a coalition that includes Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon to share resources to oppose the settlement....
UC Berkeley Librarian Wants Google Books to Nail Down Privacy Commitments
By E.B. Boyd
The University Librarian of the University of California at Berkeley says he believes Google when it says the Google Books product will protect users' privacy, especially in light of other privacy policies Google already has, "but I would like to believe them more."...
By E.B. Boyd
Part of the reason it seems so difficult to nail down what Google's rights and responsibilities should be under its settlement with authors and publishers regarding the millions of books it scanned from university libraries is that the company seems slippery about what the real-world analogy is for what it's doing.
Paul Duguid, an adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information and a research fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, made that point today....
The Single Best Question Asked at the Google Books Settlement Conference
By E.B. Boyd
The thing that few people realize about the Google Books Settlement is that it never actually resolved the complaint that started the class action lawsuit.
To recap, when Google started scanning in jillions of books from university libraries, it also started indexing them and posting snippets online, as part of its quest to make the world's information as accessible as possible. So, for example, if you searched for "whaling", your results might have included a snippet of Moby Dick and a citation as to which book it came from....