Several groups opposed to Google's Book Search settlement filed court briefs outlining their concerns on Tuesday, the last day such briefs would be accepted.
As expected, lawyers for Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a coalition called the Open Book Alliance blasted the deal as anticompetitive and detrimental to consumers. The Open Book Alliance's brief compares Google's Book Search settlement to a modern-day version of the cartel involving John Rockerfeller's Standard Oil and the railroad industry, which eventually led to the Sherman Act's antitrust laws.
Google is trying to get final approval of its settlement with book publishers and authors granting it the right to digitize certain out-of-print books. In October, Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York will consider arguments for and against the settlement, which has inspired hundreds of pages of reading material for Chin to consider before the hearing.
Gary Reback, who helped prosecute Microsoft in the 1990s for anticompetitive behavior, authored the Open Book Alliance's brief. "Google and the plaintiff publishers secretly negotiated for 29 months to produce a horizontal price fixing combination, effected and reinforced by a digital book distribution monopoly. Their guile has cleared much of the field in digital book distribution, shielding Google from meaningful competition."
Microsoft, now finding itself on the same side of the issue as Reback, argued in a brief that Google should not have obtained clearance to scan copyright protected books through a class-action settlement. "The proposed settlement goes well beyond the legitimate role of a copyright lawsuit--resolving claims for infringement--and imposes a slew of provisions that would restructure the rights and remedies of absent copyright owners throughout the world," Microsoft said in its brief.
Google argues that anyone who wants to digitize books can cut deals with the Books Rights Registry set up as part of the settlement, but at the moment the company is the only organization in the world with a license to scan and display books that have gone out of print but are still protected by copyright laws. Google plans to display portions of those books (rights-holders can specify how much Google is allowed to show) as part of the Google Book Search product and will also provide access to the books through public library terminals and institutional subscriptions sold to university and research libraries.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association filed a brief in support of Google's proposed settlement. ""For the past 20 years, I have dedicated my career to fighting against monopolies and this settlement isn't one. This settlement will increase competition for online book sales, and among books themselves," said Ed Black, CCIA president and CEO, in a statement.
And over the holiday weekend, Google agreed to give European authors and publishers a seat at the table. However, an umbrella group involving the EFF, American Civil Liberties Union, and several authors is distrustful of Google's intent.
"Google Book Search and other digital book projects will redefine the way people read and research," said author Jonathan Lethem in a press release distributed by the EFF. "Now is the moment to make sure that Google Book Search is as private as the world of physical books."
Google updated its privacy policy for Google Books last week after it was urged to provide more details, but several groups don't think it goes far enough. Google has said it will release a complete privacy policy for Google Books once the settlement is approved and the company launches all aspects of the service.
Privacy advocates are starting to sound the alarm over a feature in Google's Chrome that sends anything typed in the browser's Omnibox back to Google.
Google told CNET News earlier Wednesday that it plans to store about 2 percent of the data it gets back, along with the IP address of the computer that sent it. Google said it won't receive or store data if users turn off the auto-suggest feature or if they select a default search provider other than Google or if they are using the product's "Incognito" mode.
Still, EFF staff technologist Peter Eckersley said in an interview that he is concerned about Google having yet another window into what the world is browsing.
"We're worried that Chrome will be another giant conveyer belt moving private information about our use of the Web into Google's data vaults," Eckersley said. "Google already knows far too much about what everybody is thinking at any given moment."
Eckersley did point out that there are several ways to keep the data from being sent to Google, but noted that there is still a lot of data that will head Google's way.
Because Chrome is open source, Eckersley suggested that one option would be for privacy-minded outsiders to create their own suggestion engine that sits on surfers' own PCs, offering some of the utility that Google provides, without having to send the data to its servers. He noted that Chrome, itself, already does this when a surfer uses Chrome in its more stealthy Incognito mode. In that case, all suggestions are based on a surfer's locally stored history.
"The addition of Incognito is great," he said, adding that Google is making some strides with Chrome, clearly recognizing that people want to be able to surf the Web without having a record of it stored in various places.
"They are making some initial moves in the directions of that," Eckersley said, but reiterated his concerns over how the Omnibox works.
"We are genuinely really worried about the Omnibox thing," he said. "It's just one more piece of the complete puzzle of Google seeing everything that everyone is doing."
Simon Davies, Founder of Privacy International and a senior fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) also expressed concern over the Omnibox feature.
"I'm astonished that these terms are sent to Google even without the return being hit," Davies said. "That is beyond anything that Google has ever contemplated before."
Davies said the lack of attention to privacy and less-than-clear disclosure of its information use is typical Google behavior.
"This is why Google is running into trouble with regulators in Europe," Davies said. "They will trip themselves up at some point very badly. The patience of regulators is growing thin."
Jammie Thomas
UPDATE: Jammie Thomas is going to have to sell a lot more thongs.
Thomas, the woman ordered by a federal court in October to pay the recording industry $222,000 for pirating music, doesn't have enough money to fund an upcoming appeal and has been forced to look for a new lawyer, according to her current attorney, Brian Toder.
Thomas was the first person sued by the recording industry for copyright violations to argue a case before a jury and was found to have illegally shared 24 digital-music files.
Toder, who represented Thomas in the civil case, told CNET News.com on Wednesday that handling her appeal on a pro bono basis would be too expensive. Thomas has been selling merchandise, such as T-shirts, coffee mugs, and women's underwear, as well as accepting donations, to help raise money for her defense. But the fund-raising efforts have "actually raised very little," Toder said.
"I'm very confident she will find representation," Toder added. "There are many passionate organizations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), chomping on the bit to help her."
The other good news for Thomas is that the music labels have agreed to waive their lawyer fees, Toder said. After winning a judgment against Thomas, the record companies could have required her to pay their legal costs.
Toder said that because one of the plaintiffs, Virgin Records, was forced to dismiss its part of the case on the day of trial, Thomas was therefore entitled to attorneys fees from Virgin. Toder used that to negotiate with the rest of the plaintiffs and they agreed not to seek fees.
That Toder was not going to handle Thomas' appeal came as news to Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the EFF, which advocates for the rights of Internet users and has offered support to Thomas in the past. He said the group would most certainly try to help Thomas when the time came but that he couldn't guarantee anything.
"We've helped lots of people caught in the music industry's litigation campaign to find counsel," von Lohmann said. "But I can't say we've succeeded in every case. It's easier for me to find lawyers in San Francisco and New York than it is in Minnesota...If people think we're out there backstopping every lawsuit, they need to donate a lot more money."
Thomas' case, however, has several things going for it, von Lohmann said.
"There is a strong basis for an appeal based on the jury instruction," von Lohmann said. "There's been a lot of speculation that (Thomas) is guilty, but the thing to keep in mind on appeal is that it's not whether the jury got the facts right. It's about whether the right legal standards were applied. A lot of copyright attorneys think the jury instructions were erroneous."
Thomas won't be able to file her appeal until a federal district judge in Minnesota decides on a motion to reduce the jury award. The $222,000 award violates the Constitution, Toder said.
The blog TorrentFreak was first to report that Thomas is looking for a new attorney.
Think Secret, the Apple rumor Web site, will no longer be published, under the terms of an undisclosed settlelment with Apple Inc. The site issued a small press release on the matter late last night, with Think Secret's publisher Nick Ciarelli noting, "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits."
The site was sued by Apple in 2005 regarding leaks about upcoming hardware and software products that later came to fruition, including an updated iLife software suite and the Mac mini desktop computers that were showcased at the Macworld Expo in 2005.
Think Secret was being represented by attorneys in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and in March, the site had attempted to get Apple's lawsuit dismissed on the grounds of it being a First Amendment violation, although to no avail.
The news is certainly a big hit to other large Apple rumor sites including 9to5Mac, Mac Rumors and AppleInsider. Sites like these encourage news tips and leaks about upcoming or unannounced Apple products, which is what got Think Secret into trouble in the first place.
Up for a do-it-yourself project this weekend? Rarely does Web site swag get as intricate as the Digg button from Adafruit Industries. The $20 kit gives you everything you need (sans soldering tools) to put together a slick, working Digg button that has a three-digit counter on it to keep track of Diggs. Every time you click the tiny, red button, you get a nice "dug" message on the LED display, and the count goes up by one. The real-world possibilities for this are endless.
The kits were first made available at last month's Digg 1 million user party, where partygoers could purchase and put them together on the spot. Many were soldering for the first time--in the dark, with loud music playing, while potentially under the influence of alcohol. You get the benefit of being able to do this in your home. Also, $1 from each purchase goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
While the button doesn't actually link to Digg.com in any way, it makes for great office kitsch and was a lot of fun to make. It took about 20 minutes for CNET's very own soldering guru Donald Bell to melt put it together . We've condensed that down into the three-minute clip below.
- Viacom sued over Colbert parody on YouTube. A takedown notice for a parody video clip of The Colbert Report was the cause for a lawsuit against Viacom by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The video featured several short clips from the popular late-night TV show, along with user-generated content. Viacom said it doesn't mind the video being shown on the service.
- MySpace photos upgraded. MySpace rolled out an update to its photo service last night, giving users the option to create albums and manage shots en masse with a batch uploading tool. Size limits on uploaded photos have also doubled to 1200KB per photo, up from 600KB. The update was long overdue; competitor Facebook's photo service has had batch uploading and album support for over a year now. (Found on Mashable.)
- Wii browser delayed until April. The full version of Opera's Web browser for the Nintendo Wii was originally scheduled for release this month. Opera issued a press release this morning that said it would be available in April. The current trial version of the browser has fairly limited features that we've complained about before. Opera originally offered Wii users the full version for free until June and for $5 thereafter. That offer is expected to be extended given the release delay.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
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