The Hill: Authors slam publishers’ lawsuit against ‘Open Library,’ push for new e-book policies. “Hundreds of authors signed a letter slamming major publishing companies’ lawsuit against a free digital library, and urged publishers to update their policies to allow libraries to purchase copies of e-books.”
The Nation: You Can’t Buy These Books. “In reality, the publishers’ attack on the Internet Archive is a Trojan horse for a very different, and radical, idea: that e-books are fundamentally—legally—different from paper books. If accepted, their argument would remove e-books from the many statutory protections upon which library rights positively depend. That outcome would leave libraries vulnerable to the draconian licensing deals under which e-books are increasingly offered. And libraries would have to pay and pay, in the absence of digital books that can be permanently bought and owned outright.”
PublishersWeekly: Publishers, Internet Archive File Dueling Summary Judgment Motions in Scan Suit. “The battle lines have now been drawn in a potentially landmark lawsuit over the scanning and lending of books.”
Poynter: News organizations have a social media problem. “News outlets often ask their journalists to promote their work and to engage with their audience on Twitter and other social media platforms. Some even use social media to promote their own ‘brand.’ (That’s a whole other topic, but I generally get it, because it helps the news outlet, too.) However, when you’re interacting with people on Twitter, for instance, and writing about controversial issues, someone is eventually going to tweet something that someone might find offensive or confrontational.”
Publishers Weekly: Efforts for Ukrainian Publishers, Refugee Children Expand. “In the months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the international publishing community has come together with a number of initiatives aimed at offering support to children’s authors, publishers, and aid organizations. Here, we continue to cover these ongoing efforts.”
Reuters: Google paying more than 300 EU publishers for news, more to come. “Alphabet unit Google has signed deals to pay more than 300 publishers in Germany, France and four other EU countries for their news and will roll out a tool to make it easier for others to sign up too, the company told Reuters.”
ABC News (Australia): High Court asked to decide if search engine giant Google is a publisher of content. “Google and Melbourne lawyer George Defteros are set for a showdown in the High Court of Australia today over whether the search engine giant is classified as a publisher or not. Mr Defteros successfully sued Google in 2020 for $40,000, after it failed to take down a story he said had defamed him.”
Washington Examiner: Meet the publisher bringing JRR Tolkien and military manuals to Ukraine’s readers. “[Oleh] Feschowetz did not enter the book industry to promote military expertise. He left a senior post in the philosophy department at the nearby Ivan Franko National University more than two decades ago on a ‘mission to return Ukraine to the Western civilization’ — a goal reflected in the selection of poetry, philosophy, and literature available in his catalog. And yet, the martial texts only sharpened the edge of the publisher’s broader efforts. ‘Because Russia always interpret[s] the culture just like a weapon,’ he said in another conversation. ‘We must do the same. Culture is a weapon.’”
Columbia Journalism Review: Australia pressured Google and Facebook to pay for journalism. Is America next?. “Australia looks like a success story to those who’ve long yearned to force big tech to prop up suffering newsrooms. But it’s a murky deal, with critical details guarded like they’re nuclear launch codes.”
WIRED: Australia’s Standoff Against Google and Facebook Worked—Sort Of. “Australia might have created the blueprint for forcing Big Tech to pay for news, but it hasn’t actually applied it. Only tech companies that are named, or ‘designated,’ under the code by Australia’s treasurer can be forced into the arbitration process with news organizations. But no tech site has ever been designated. Instead, Google and Facebook have been rushing to strike deals with news organizations in private, to avoid the arbitration process, which could end up being more costly.”
The Register: Attack on Titan: Four Japanese Manga publishers sue Cloudflare. “Four major Manga publishers are set to sue internet-grooming firm Cloudflare, on grounds its content delivery network facilitates piracy of their wares. The four companies – Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan and Kadokawa – together dominate the market for Japanese comics and own many iconic properties.”
Publishers Weekly: With AAP Reply, Legal Battle Over Maryland Library E-book Law Intensifies. “In a January 28 court filing, lawyers for the Association of American publishers doubled down on their claim that Maryland’s library e-book law is clearly preempted by the federal Copyright Act, and said supporters of the law are seeking to ‘unravel decades of federal legislation and jurisprudence that delineate the contours of copyright law.’”
Techdirt: Book Publishers Sue Maryland Over Law That Would Require Them To Offer ‘Reasonable’ Prices On Ebooks To Libraries. “In an ideal world, Congress would get its act together and fix copyright law and properly add first sale rights for digital goods like ebooks. But, without that, some states are trying to step in and fix things, including Maryland, which earlier this year passed a law that would require publishers to sell ebooks to libraries at ‘reasonable’ rates.”
Slightly outside my lane, including anyway from Good E-Reader: The US is investigating the terms ebook distributors charge libraries. “Two US representatives have written letters to aggregators that distribute and sell digital content to libraries. They want to know all about the standard ebook licensing agreements for every major publisher they work with, including Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.”
Techdirt: Top Publishers Aim To Own The Entire Academic Research Publishing Stack; Here’s How To Stop That Happening. “Techdirt’s coverage of open access — the idea that the fruits of publicly-funded scholarship should be freely available to all — shows that the results so far have been mixed. On the one hand, many journals have moved to an open access model. On the other, the overall subscription costs for academic institutions have not gone down, and neither have the excessive profit margins of academic publishers. Despite that success in fending off this attempt to re-invent the way academic work is disseminated, publishers want more. In particular, they want more money and more power.”
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