Politics and Law

Google, the company best equipped and most motivated to digitize the world's books, wants to offer the world an online Library of Alexandria. The decisions of the Justice Department, authors, book publishers, a federal judge, and Google itself likely will determine whether the company actually does.

Nobody in recent years has accused Google of lacking ambition, but its Google Book Search project is certainly among the company's top projects when it comes to chutzpah. That's not just because of the technical and financial hurdles of scanning, indexing, and displaying online millions of books, it's also because of the tangled intellectual property and legal concerns involved in the controversial project.

After revealing the book-search project in 2003, Google drew copyright infringement lawsuits from the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in 2005, but an October 2008 proposed settlement, now under review by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, has converted those groups from adversaries to allies.

The settlement, if approved, could neatly cut a Gordian knot of copyright entanglements though setting Google back $125 million. That's because it would enable Google not only to display books that are out of copyright and those that are in print by cooperating publishers, as it does today, but also those from the vast collection of in-copyright brooks that are out of print--even when those holding rights to those books didn't specifically agree to Google's plan.

The complicated proposed settlement invoked the wrath of some authors concerned it would grant Google monopolistic power over online publishing, and the court extended the deadline for authors to choose whether to opt out of the settlement from May to September. Then the other shoe dropped this month: the Justice Department signaled serious antitrust scrutiny by issuing subpoena-like civil investigative demands, or CIDs, to check into the matter.

AIG and General Motors apparently are too big to fail. But the way the opposition to Google Book Search is shaping up, it looks like some believe Google is too big to succeed.

Three groups representing hundreds of libraries lodged a long series of concerns about a proposed settlement of lawsuits over Google Book Search on Monday--but refrained from objecting overall.

Specifically, the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries expressed some affinity for Google's mission of sharing books with the public, but raised concerns in a legal filing that the settlement would concentrate power in Google's hands and poses pricing and privacy concerns.

Google has patented technology for scanning books.

(Credit: U.S. PTO)

Google is scanning millions of books, presenting their contents online at the Google Book Search site and blending some information into its regular search results, but the move triggered lawsuits by the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild. A proposed settlement of the class-action suit would permit Google to share some contents of books online--not just those that are in the public domain and those still being sold with which Google has agreements with publishers, but also those that are still in copyright but out of print.

The settlement terms are of high interest to the library world. Under the proposed settlement, Google would offer a free computer terminal in U.S. libraries that would permit people to read books online and a subscription service that would permit paying customers, such as larger libraries, to offer more computer terminals. In cases where readers or institutions pay for access to online books, funds would be divided between Google and a proposed independent non-profit group, the Book Rights Registry, set up to handle payments, find authors and other rights holders, and let them include or exclude their works from the project.

"The library associations do not oppose approval of the settlement. The settlement has the potential to provide unprecedented public access to a digital library containing millions of books," the groups said in their filing. "However, the digital library enabled by the settlement will be under the control of Google and the Book Rights Registry. Moreover, the cost of creating such a library and Google's significant lead-time advantage suggest that no other entity will create a competing digital library for the foreseeable future."

That power could put libraries at a disadvantage, they argue.

"We are concerned that the cost of an institutional subscription may skyrocket, as academic journal subscriptions have over the past two decades," said Erika Linke, president of Association of College and Research Libraries, in a statement.

Added Jim Rettig, president of the American Library Association, the proposed settlement "offers no assurances that the privacy of what the public accessed will be protected, which is in stark contrast to the long-standing patron privacy rights libraries champion on behalf of the public."

In its response, Google looked on the sunny side but didn't address pricing or privacy details: "We're pleased that the thousands of librarians and libraries represented by the ALA recognize the promise of our groundbreaking agreement, and we appreciate that the Library Associations do not oppose approval of the settlement. Google is proud to partner with dozens of libraries around the world as part of our Book Search efforts, and we have consistently maintained that, if approved by the court, our settlement agreement stands to unlock access to millions of books for users in the U.S."

But the library groups struck a more sober tone in their filing. Take, for example, this section on the power Google would get by virtue of obtaining online publishing rights through the class action settlement:

The settlement of copyright class action litigation might well have been the only feasible way this research tool could have been created. A class action settlement provided perhaps the most efficient mechanism for cutting the Gordian knot of the huge transactions costs of clearing the rights of millions of works whose ownership often is obscure. However, the class representatives and Google structured the settlement in such a manner as to give them enormous control over this essential facility. This is not surprising, given their economic interests. Indeed, precisely because of their economic interests, it is unlikely that they would have agreed to a structure that did not grant them such control.

To be sure, nothing in the Settlement prevents another entity from undertaking a mass digitization effort similar to Google's. But given the enormous cost of such an effort, and Google's significant lead time advantage (Google has been digitizing in-copyright books since 2004), no other entity is likely to so in the near future. Hence, there is no foreseeable threat to the control Google and the Registry have over this essential research facility.

Sometimes overlooked in the Sturm und Drang about Google Book Search is any consideration of the mechanics of economically scanning the books in the first place, but a patent awarded to Google gives insight into how the search behemoth accomplishes the task.

In short, Google has come up with a system that uses two cameras and infrared light to automatically correct for the curvature of pages in a book. By constructing a 3D model of each page and then "de-warping" it afterward, Google can present flat-looking pages online without having to slice books up or mash them onto a flatbed scanner.

This diagram shows patented Google technology for correcting for curved pages while scanning books.

(Credit: Google)

The Justice Department is examining antitrust issues regarding a proposed settlement of Google Book Search lawsuits with the search giant, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.

It's unclear what might come of the reported talks, but the Justice Department is not to be treated lightly. The department leads enforcement of antitrust law, and Google backed down from its threatened antitrust lawsuit against it in 2008 regarding a search-ad partnership with Yahoo.

The proposed settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, announced in October, would among other things give Google the right to show content from books online that are still in copyright but that are no longer in print. In addition, those copyright holders could be paid for online sales of their books.

Authors and publishers may opt out of the proposed settlement, but if they do nothing, they're considered part of it. That includes authors who can't be located.

Google has book-search agreements in place with numerous publishers, but the company hopes that the settlement will permit it to bring many more books to into its service. But in a tactical victory on Tuesday for settlement opponents, a judge gave authors four more months to decide whether to participate.

Antitrust issues have arisen in the Book Search case. One notable voice is Harvard University's head librarian, Robert Darnton, who in a February article in the New York Review of Books worried about the control Google would get through the settlement.

"The class-action character of the settlement makes Google invulnerable to competition," he said. "Most book authors and publishers who own U.S. copyrights are automatically covered by the settlement. They can opt out of it; but whatever they do, no new digitizing enterprise can get off the ground without winning their assent one by one, a practical impossibility, or without becoming mired down in another class action suit. If approved by the court--a process that could take as much as two years--the settlement will give Google control over the digitizing of virtually all books covered by copyright in the United States."

However, Paul Courant, though, dean of libraries at the University of Michigan--a Google Book Search Partner and fan of the proposed settlement--objected to Darnton's view. "His view of the world that will likely emerge as a result of Google's scanning of copyrighted works is a dystopian fantasy," Courant said.

Google and the Justice Department didn't immediately comment on the report.

This post was updated at 5:53 p.m. PDT with details about an extension request of the May 5 deadline filed by seven authors.

Google said Monday it's seeking 60 more days to find authors and persuade them of what it believes are the merits of a settlement involving its online Book Search service.

The proposed settlement of the 2005 case filed by the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers involves Google's right to show information from books online--in particular "orphan" works that are still covered in copyright but that are in limbo, for example being out of print or written by authors who can't be located. Currently, authors must respond by a May 5 deadline to opt out, otherwise authors will be included in the settlement.

"The settlement is highly detailed, and we want to make sure rightsholders everywhere have enough time to think about it and make sure it's right for them. That's why we've asked the court for permission to extend the opt-out deadline for an extra 60 days," said Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel for products and intellectual property, in a blog post Monday.

"It's pretty easy for credit card companies to contact their cardholders--they send bills to them all the time. The world's authors, publishers and their heirs are much more difficult to find," Macgillivray said. "So, as the New York Times recently reported, the plaintiffs hired notice campaign specialists Kinsella Media Group to tell them about this exciting settlement, and Google has devoted millions of dollars to fund this notice campaign. Kinsella started by launching a website for authors and publishers and a direct-mail effort. Beginning in January, Kinsella published ads in newspapers and other publications all over the world from Fiji to the Cook Islands to Greenland. And of course, they also placed ads right here at home in the U.S., in publications as diverse as Writer's Digest and USA Today."

Google is facing resistance to the settlement.

Seven authors last week requested a four-month extension (PDF) of the May 5 deadline due to the complexity of the proposed settlement, among other reasons.

"First, two months' time is insufficient to understand the implications of a settlement of this scope," the appeal letter reads. "Second, substantial defects in notice of the settlement undermine authors' ability to assess their rights; and third, more time is required simply to understand the complex terms of the agreement."

Typing your name into a search engine is a great way to find out what the Internet thinks of you--at least until the first page of results shines a spotlight on that embarrassing episode from your misspent youth. Now Google, though, is offering people who share their profile information with the search giant more control over how they appear in its results.

Google has a complicated algorithm for determining which Web sites show at the top of its search results, presenting the top 10 picks on its results page. But in what amounts to an admission that this doesn't fully satisfy all the needs of people searching for a specific name, Google now will show a separate 11th result--a special "onebox" that presents links to people with a particular name and links to their Google profiles.

Google "is giving people more of an opportunity to have greater presence and to surface the most relevant content about themselves in a way they have some say about," said Joe Kraus, director of product management in Google's apps group.

Google now can show special results when you search for people.

(Credit: Google)

To illustrate the utility of the feature, Kraus brings up the example of Brian Jones. If you happen to share the name of the Rolling Stone's deceased founding guitarist, you don't have much opportunity to show up high on Google's search results for that name. That changes with the new people-search feature, he said, though it doesn't affect the regular search results above.

There's a quid pro quo, though. To appear in Google's special people-search results you must set up a Google profile. The more information you include on your profile, the better your odds that your profile will appear among the four names that can appear in the special result, Kraus said.

At least for now, Google profiles are a collection of information you are willing to share publicly--photos, interests, Web sites about yourself. Through integration with your Gmail contacts, which lets you identify people you trust and share contact information with them, Google's profiles are gradually becoming a deeper reflection of ties called the social graph.

Kraus wouldn't comment on how the profile page fits into Google's social strategy, though he did say in general that Google's strategy in general focuses "not on how you make any one site more social, but how you make the entire Web more social."

One thing is sure, though: spotlighting profiles this directly in search results, given Google's immense search clout and people's concern about their self-image, extends much greater power to the profiles site.

To lend even more prominence, Google is beginning a "Google Me" promotion in which people who search for "me" will get an opportunity to see their profile or sign up for one.

Ever wonder just how anonymous your online searches from a public library were? Ask Richard Leon Goyette, arrested Tuesday on federal charges involving 64 threatening letters with white powder and one bomb threat that were mailed October 17.

Goyette, 47, was arrested in an Albuquerque, N.M., airport after an investigation that involved the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service regarding the case. The letters, sent to JP Morgan Chase offices, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) from Amarillo, Texas, contained unidentified white powder and a threat that the person breathing it would die within 10 days. Tests showed the powder to be harmless--not like the fatal letters with anthrax powder sent in 2001--but threats are enough to trigger criminal charges.

It's no surprise that authorities can piece together digital information to pursue perpetrators. But it is revealing to see just how it was done in this case.

Goyette apparently gave investigators a head start by allegedly sending angry e-mails, according to investigation details released in a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas.

Upset about losing $63,525 in stock value during the closing of Washington Mutual Bank, a person using the Yahoo Mail address richgoyet@yahoo.com and including Goyette's name and address sent messages on September 26 to the FDIC and the OTS, according to the complaint, which details the FBI investigation in an arrest warrant affidavit. In September, the OTS had placed WaMu into receivership; the FDIC took over the bank then sold the assets to JP Morgan Chase.

"I told myself I was not going to accept any more losses due to the reasons I mentioned. I have pursued a path of doing things right, but unfortunately I've paid a terrible price for those who will do whatever it takes to defraud, steal, manipulate, and screw over average stockholders. This seizure was the final straw and I will now pursue any path to get the return of my investment. Since legal means are apparently useless, I will have to consider any viable method applicable to rightfully reclaim my stolen funds," another e-mail sent September 29 to the OTS said, according to the affidavit.

And in an October 7 letter to an attorney handling WaMu investor inquiries, Goyette said he would "most likely have to employ the same type of tactics used to cheat WaMu shareholders to recover stolen assets if all meaningful efforts to rectify this situation don't come to fruition," the affidavit said.

Next comes the search evidence.

Records obtained from Yahoo through a federal search warrant showed the FDIC and OTS letters were sent from a computer at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque, the affidavit said. Five days later, a computer at the college also was used to search for the location of Chase branch offices. Six days after that, the affidavit said, a library computer at the University of New Mexico's Albuquerque campus was used to search for nearly all the Chase Bank branch locations that received the threatening letters; "The Chase branch locator services from the UNM computer were the only searches conducted in the months leading up to the mailings which covered that many victim branches," the affidavit said.

Scottrade account records also showed Goyette used computers at the Central New Mexico Community College and University of New Mexico, the affidavit said.

Formatting on the envelopes matched that on the Web sites, including one case in which the word "freeway" was bumped from the end of the first line of the address to the beginning of the second, the affidavit said.

Then comes a detour from the virtual world to the real world.

The Goyette address in the e-mails was for a post office box in Tijeras, N.M, near Albuquerque, but the physical address on its application form wasn't Goyette's. On December 7, a surveillance team saw Goyette pick up his mail from the P.O. box and drive away; the license plate showed his truck registered to Michael Jurek of Albuquerque. The driver's license photos showed Goyette and Jurek to be the same person, the affidavit said.

Then we have the credit card charge.

Citibank records showed that Michael Jurek used a credit card at Enterprise Rent-a-Car on October 17, the affidavit said. Using his driver's license with the Jurek name, Goyette rented a car and obtained permission to drive to Texas. He drove 618 miles; and the U.S. Attorney's Office points out it's 284 miles from Albuquerque to Amarillo.

The letters began arriving October 20.

Regardless of whether Goyette is guilty--and it should be noted that people charged with crimes are presumed innocent until convicted--the case shows just how many digital fingerprints people leave as they go about their daily lives.

Tracking people through digital records will only become more important to law enforcement as more people live their lives online through e-mail accounts, Web site comment posts, Yahoo Search Pad research, and other activity. And, of course, it will become more important to others as well, such as private investigators, hiring managers, nosy parents, and former and future boyfriends.

Itzhak Perlman? Isabel Toledo? Simple Gifts? Huh?

During Tuesday's inauguration of President Barack Obama, people curious about unfamiliar references used Google to supply the footnotes for the ceremony. The phenomenon was visible on Google Trends, a service that shows which search terms are rapidly rising in use.

Inauguration-related searches were hot on Tuesday, according to Google Trends.

(Credit: Google)

According to the U.S. results, Toledo, who designed First Lady Michelle Obama's dress, bubbled up to fifth place on the list earlier in the day. Once the ceremony began, up came violinist Perlman (ninth place), cellist Yo-Yo Ma (12th place), composer John Williams (26th place), and the variation on the Simple Gifts melody (14th place) that he wrote and the musicians played. Aretha Franklin rose up to third place for a time, too, and even "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" ranked 21st at one point.

People were curious about politicians, too--Sen. Dianne Feinstein made it as high as eighth place, and "Dick Cheney wheelchair" was 91st place.

More interesting, perhaps, is that in aggregate, every single one of the top 100 Google Trends searches were related to the inauguration on Tuesday. Many had to do with people's evident desire to find news about it or a place to watch a streaming video.

Update 7:39 a.m. PST January 21: See this Google blog post for some more details about the phenomenon. For instance, there was a lull in regular search in the United States while people watched the inauguration, and 12 percent of inauguration-related search queries came from outside the country.

All of the top 100 searches on Google Trends were related to the inauguration. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Google)

Google has elevated the profile of its attempt to make videos searchable through speech recognition technology, a move that portends a potentially more financially successful YouTube division.

The speech recognition technology was used in an online application that let people search political speeches launched in July, and now the Gaudi (Google Audio Indexing) project has an official interface at Google Labs.

Google Audio Indexing (Gaudi) lets people use a text search of some YouTube videos. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Google)

The site's search box has instructions: "Search what the politicians are saying." The search results are presented next to a YouTube video player, and clicking each result sets the player to show the part of the video where the words were spoken. It doesn't just show speeches--a search for "bridge to nowhere" also returned the "Real Mavericks" ad from the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign.

Extracting words from videos could make it easier for Google to determine what content is in the video and therefore what ads are most appropriate to show next to them. Making money from YouTube is a top priority this year.

Speech-to-text conversion also could help Google blend relevant videos into search results. Currently, the best way to understand what's in a video is by examining the accompanying metadata, such as titles and captions, but that's often much narrower than what's spoken.

And with Google's translation work, it's possible that the company could transcribe videos' text into other languages.

Clearly, Google has big ambitions for the audio recognition technology. "The aim of Google Audio Indexing on Google Labs is broader (than that of the and the Google Elections Video Search gadget), and the U.S. election is just a first step. We see it as an experiment platform where we can learn what features make the best user experience for people looking for spoken content on the Web," the company said in a frequently-asked-questions page about the Google Audio Indexing project.

Google is beginning with political information because it's trying to become a prominent part of the democratic process and because political speeches receive a lot of attention, the company said. Also, presumably because politicians generally don't mumble as much as the rest of us, the speech recognition technology performs better, Google said.

(Via Google Operating System.)