The Author’s Guild filed a lawsuit against Google yesterday to try to stop Google from digitizing library books as part of its Print Library Project. According to the Guild

“This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law,” Nick Taylor, president of the New York-based Authors Guild, said in a statement about the lawsuit, which is seeking class action status. “It’s not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied.”

To which Google responded:

Let’s be clear: Google doesn’t show even a single page to users who find copyrighted books through this program (unless the copyright holder gives us permission to show more). At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries.

Jonathan Band, an attorney focusing on intellectual property and the internet wrote an extensive article (PDF) about how a previous case, Kelly v. Arriba Soft, may be used in Google’s favor. He concludes

The Google Print Library Project will make it easier than ever before for users to locate the wealth of information buried in books. By limiting the search results to a few sentences before and after the search term, the program will not conflict with the normal exploitation of works nor unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of rightsholders. To the contrary, it often will often increase demand for copyrighted works.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this. A week after Amazon launched their “Look Inside This Book” search, they reported that books with full text search outsold books without the feature by 9%. (source Information Today) Of course, the difference is that publishers must give Amazon permission to make their text searchable.

Personally, I’m far more inclined to buy a book that I can browse through than one that has no information available. I can do it at the book store or library - why not online? I’ve certainly ended up purchasing far more books than I care to admit because I’ve started reading a few chapters and had to buy it. And I can also say that it’s rare that I’ve finished an entire ebook. Sure, I’ve scanned them in small portions, but reading 300+ pages on a computer screen is not my idea of a good time.

Apparently, I’m not the only one since some publishers are experimenting with online publishing. A few months ago, an article at The Book Standard discussed how sci fi/fantasy publisher, Tor, has been successful releasing Creative Commons versions of some of its books.

A CNN article quotes others who aren’t opposed to Google Print

“For a typical author, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy,” said Tim O’Reilly, chief executive of O’Reilly Media and an adviser to Google’s project. “Google is offering publishers an amazing opportunity for people to discover their content.”

James Hilton, associate provost and interim librarian at the University of Michigan, said his school is contributing 7 million volumes over six years because one day, materials that aren’t searchable online simply won’t get read.

“That doesn’t mean it’s going to be read online, but it’s not going to be found if it’s not online,” he said.

Still, this phenomenon is much too new to convince old school publishers that allowing greater access to their intellectual property will end up benefiting them in the long run. Until then, the courts will have to decide.

Source: BoingBoing

Copyright

My dad, an attorney in York County, PA, informed me that today was a sad day for attorneys in the area. Today, it hit the media that a now disbarred attorney and his son were accused of stealing almost $1.1 million from their clients.

Mark Frankel was a widely known attorney in the area. Using the back of the yellow pages as a prominent way of advertising, he trademarked the phrase “Turn the book over” which later the firm shortened to “TTBO.” If you lived in York, you couldn’t miss seeing one of his billboards.

Last year, Frankel was disbarred for inappropriately touching his younger male clients. He denied the accusations and claimed the judge was anti-Semitic, thus persecuting him for being a Jew. Today, the big picture story of how the firm did business broke. It appears that Frankel and his son, Stephen, (who has been arrested twice in the past year for cocaine possession) were using the funds in their escrow account to pay the firm’s IRS payroll taxes. Stephen also allegedly withdrew $40,000 to buy himself a new Hummer.

Now, clients are mad. They’ve been lied to and their trust is shattered. As one client put it “After something like this happens, how can you trust another attorney again?” It’s like Enron all over again, though on a much more local scale. Unfortunately, these few rotten apples continue to reinforce the public’s negative perception of lawyers.

Ethics

Miami attorney Martin Sandler is getting some embarrassing publicity from the Smoking Gun. The website learned about a continuance motion he filed yesterday with a typo and promptly added it to their website. It seems that Mr. Sandler is recovering from back surgery for a herniated disk. Unfortunately, that’s not quite what he wrote.

We all make typos from time to time, so I’ll take this opportunity to provide a few quick proofreading tips.

1) Print it out. I find that it’s easier to catch errors in printed documents than on the computer screen where I tend to skim.

2) Read it out loud. When you read to yourself you can easily skip over words or insert words that aren’t there. Reading out loud makes it painfully obvious if you’ve skipped a word or something just doesn’t sound right.

3) Read the second half first. That’s usually where the errors creep in.

4) Take a break before re-reading. It’s much easier to find errors when your mind isn’t stuck in the stream of conscious flow. Take a 20 minute break to clear your mind so you can read it fresh.

5) Know your common mistakes. There are certain words I always seem to spell wrong. Unfortunately, spell check programs only pick out the non-words, so if you know you’re inclined to spell something wrong, do a word search.

6) Have someone else read it over. A second pair of eyes is always helpful for catching what you don’t.

Marketing

A recently published study looked at competitive intelligence (CI) - that is “knowledge and foreknowledge of the competitive environment refined to the point that is can be used in making a business decision” - to determine just how often law firms use CI in making decisions. The study was primarily focused on large firms with a mean size of 255 lawyers and a median of 115.

Competitive intelligence goes back to Michael Porter’s strategy models and looks at things like what clients want, what competitors are doing, trends in the legal industry, government regulations, opportunities and threats in the market place, and possible substitutes for your services - basically anything that might have some influence over how well your firm does.

(Read the article)

Market Research