“The Library of Congress is launching a campaign today to create the World Digital Library, an online collection of rare books, manuscripts, maps, posters, stamps and other materials from its holdings and those of other national libraries that would be freely accessible for viewing by anyone, anywhere with Internet access.

“This is the most ambitious international effort ever undertaken to put precious items of artistic, historical, and literary significance on the Internet so that people can learn about other cultures without traveling further than the nearest computer, according to James H. Billington, head of the Library of Congress.”

David A. Vise. World Digital Library Planned. WashingtonPost.com. Nov. 22, 2005.

See also:

James H. Billington. A Library for The New World. WashingtonPost.com. Nov. 22, 2005.

Danny Sullivan. World Digital Library Project Announced, Backed By Library Of Congress & Google. SearchEngineWatch. Nov. 22, 2005.

Michael Liedtke. Google Donates $3M to Help Scan Documents. WashingtonPost.com. Nov. 22, 2005.

Katie Hafner. Google Gift to Digital Library. The New York Times. Nov. 22, 2005.

(Editor’s Note: The Post allows free access to their stories on the Web for 14 days before sending the stories to the paper’s fee-based Archives.)

“This is a summary report of findings from a study of takedown notices under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Section 512 grants safe harbor from secondary copyright liability … to online service providers (OSPs), such as Internet access providers or online search engines. In order to receive the safe harbor, online service providers respond to cease-and-desist letters from copyright complainants by pulling their users’ information—web pages, forum postings, blog entries, and the like—off the Internet. Because the OSP is removing material in response to a private cease-and-desist letter that earns it a safe harbor, no court sees the dispute in advance of takedown.

“In this study, we traced the use of the Section 512 takedown process and considered how the usage patterns we found were likely to affect expression or other activities on the Internet. [We] found some interesting patterns:

• Over half—57%—of notices sent to Google to demand removal of links in the index were sent by businesses targeting apparent competitors;
• Over a third—37%—of the notices sent to Google targeted sites apparently outside the United States.”

Jennifer M. Urban and Laura Quilter. Efficient Process or “Chilling Effects”? Takedown Notices Under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Summary Report). No date.

Search & Text Mining Report™ K. Matthew Dames & Stephen E. Arnold on the business, technology, and law of search.

“After a year on line and a tremendous amount of media coverage, the company changed ‘Google Print’ to Google Book Search.

“What gives? Well, it was increasingly clear that Google had a major branding problem on its hands. I had told a Google lawyer that as much a few weeks back after a debate we had in Washington, DC. Despite — or more likely because of — hundreds of journalists taking an interest in the project to scan millions of books, the problem was not getting any better.

“Over the past few months I have done dozens of radio, television, and print interviews about this project. With rare exceptions (Salon.com’s brilliant Farhad Manjoo among the exceptions) reporters tended to conflate the portion of the project called ‘Google Print Library’ with the larger umbrella project, ‘Google Print.’ The problem was, of course, that ‘Google Print’ also included another sub-project, the authorized and licensed content then called ‘Google Print Publisher.’”

Sivacracy.net. On the ‘Google Print Book Search Publisher Partner Library Project Program’: How We Know Google Is Not Like Other Companies. Nov. 22, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Google Print has stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy, but another company has been offering online book search capabilities, with the blessings of publishers, for years.

“Ebrary has been around since 1999. The company offers numerous services including one that lets you search and read over 20,000 in-copyright books for free. You pay only to print and copy text.”

Gary Price. A (Non-controversial) Alternative to Google Print. Search Engine Watch. Nov. 21, 2005.

See also:

Will Knight. Battle for the Digital Bookshelf Gains Momentum. NewScientist.com. Nov. 4, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“This is a summary report of findings from a study of takedown notices under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Section 512 grants safe harbor from secondary copyright liability … to online service providers (OSPs), such as Internet access providers or online search engines. In order to receive the safe harbor, online service providers respond to cease-and-desist letters from copyright complainants by pulling their users’ information—web pages, forum postings, blog entries, and the like—off the Internet. Because the OSP is removing material in response to a private cease-and-desist letter that earns it a safe harbor, no court sees the dispute in advance of takedown.

“In this study, we traced the use of the Section 512 takedown process and considered how the usage patterns we found were likely to affect expression or other activities on the Internet. [We] found some interesting patterns:

• Over half—57%—of notices sent to Google to demand removal of links in the index were sent by businesses targeting apparent competitors;
• Over a third—37%—of the notices sent to Google targeted sites apparently outside the United States.”

Jennifer M. Urban and Laura Quilter. Efficient Process or “Chilling Effects”? Takedown Notices Under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Summary Report). No date.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Hollywood studios announced an agreement with Bram Cohen, the creator of the popular BitTorrent file-swapping technology, that will keep him from helping users find pirated copies of movies online. Cohen had launched a service on his Web site last May that searched the Internet for file downloads that use his BitTorrent technology. While many of these are legal files, such as open-source software packages, inevitably the search engine also found feature films.”

“In an event held at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, Cohen and executives from the Motion Picture Association of America said they were united in thwarting piracy.”

John Borland. Hollywood, BitTorrent Creator Strike Deal. News.com. Nov. 22, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.