Need some research help

[rolanni]

OK, the US Government has decided to be upset about the Google Book Settlement. The Justice Department has sent out formal requests for information to various entities, including the Authors Guild, Google, and divers publishers.

But none to authors.

Can someone figure out how authors can get in on the fun, here? I love my publisher, but their interests do not necessarily coincide with mine in this matter; we have different necessities.

Article here

Abundant Spanish Aunts.

Comments

[johnhawkinson.livejournal.com]

In general, I would feel free to call New York Times reporters and ask them more detailed questions if you have a particular interest in something they've written about. Just call 212-556-1234 and let the automated system direct you to Miguel Helft.

The article is really kind of weird because it quotes a lawyer representing the Authors Guild and doesn't indicate any attempt made to reach USDOJ public information folks, who in my experience are quite professional and get back to you quickly.

Helft has previously written about this, e.g. in http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/technology/internet/29google.html, and that article suggests that the Authors Guild was included because they are an explicit party to the settlement in question.

Both articles note that these are issues before the Honorable Denny Chen, a federal district judge in the Southern District of New York. Searching the SDNY via PACER (http://ecf.nysd.uscourts.gov/), for which you need to sign up for an account and they will charge you 8 cents per-page retrieved, there are about six cases docketed under Google, of which two of them are anti-trust matters before Judge Chen:

• 1:05-cv-08881-DC The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. et al v. Google Inc.
  Denny Chin, presiding
  Date filed: 10/19/2005
  Date of last filing: 04/06/2009
  
• 1:05-cv-08136-DC The Author's Guild et al v. Google Inc.
  Denny Chin, presiding
  Date filed: 09/20/2005
  Date of last filing: 06/05/2009
  

Looking at the Authors Guild case, there are about 13 plaintiffs, including the Guild, The Association of American Publishers; some large publishers like McGraw-Hill and Simon & Schuster; some individuals I don't recognize like Betty Miles and Daniel Hoffman but who are represented by the same counsel as the Guild.

Under "Appellants" are listed Lewis Hyde, who has retained counsel, and Harry Lewis from Harvard and then Open Access Trust (who are "pro se," meaning they have not retained counsel), apparently representing those who use orphaned works, per this boingboing item (http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/14/trying-to-save-orpha.html).

Google of course is the defendant, and the New York Law School, Institute for Information Law and Policy is listed as an amicus, their counsel are Daniel Joseph Kornstein and Mikaela Ann McDermott of Kornstein Veisz Wexler & Pollard, LLP. It might be worth talking to the people at the NYLS, and presumably their counsel could directly you to pertinent folks.

No one from the USDOJ has entered an appearance though, but I'm not really well-versed in antitrust sleuthing matters. I wouldn't spend too much time on the general web site, but there's a wealth of information at the Antitrust Division (http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/) site.

I did pick up the phone and make some calls. The New York office tells me that it's being handled by Washington, which seems a little surprising but I suppose they have a lot more resources there and this case is pretty high-profile. After being transferred around eight or nine times in DC, I mostly concluded that it was not being handled by the "Telecommunications and Media Section," but hopefully someone there will get back to me.

Not sure how much detail you're looking for, or how far you want to take this...

Oh, right back on the Guild's case docket. There's not a lot of activity recently, though many authors have filed notices of opting out of the settlement, including Dennis Eddings, who does so on behalf of David Eddings.

This whole matter is sufficiently complicated that I'd advise talking to someone who has retained a lawyer; you'd like to think SFFWA would have some advice on this sort of thing. I really don't know, but I certainly haven't read all mainstream newspaper articles on this, much less kept up no the nitty-gritty details of the settlement and who should (or can) opt out and what that actually means, etc., etc.

Anyhow, I would hope the DOJ/ATR would be happy to release copies of their civil investigative demands, though I suppose I have no idea if any of those might be confidential (perhaps the answers)? I would be surprised if they wouldn't do so, but I guess you might have to FOIA them.

I'll comment again if I find anything from the DOJ.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Now, that's research. Thank you, sir.

SFWA's advice, if any...is not something I'd be likely to find any value in. That is, naturally, Just Me. And! SFWA cannot negotiate for its members.

Both Google and the Authors Guild seem to have forgotten that copyright is property and, barring cases of work-for-hire, copyright belongs to the creator. Publishers lease the use of a work for X number of years, but when that time is done, the rights revert, as we say, to the copyright holder, who may then decide to hold the work aloof (in order to build up demand, say); to sell it again; to give it away for free on the web; or to print it up as a pamphlet and distribute it with the Sunday paper.

The copyright holder gets to determine the use of hisorher rights. Not Google. Not the publisher. Not the Authors Guild.

It is this point that I wish that the court will not forget when making its determination.

Heard back from DOJ and Authors Guild.

[johnhawkinson.livejournal.com]

DOJ

The section of the DOJ handling the Google Books settlement investigation is Litigation III ("Lit.3"). I heard back today from a staff attorney there, who explains that their civil investigative demands are not public, and they are particularly focused on the questions of consumer harm and anti-trust. He further explains that questions regarding the composition of the class (for class action) and what he terms "Rule 23" questions, referring to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule23.htm) (HTML copy at Cornell; official PDF here (http://www.uscourts.gov/rules/CV2008.pdf)) that govern class actions—those are all best directed to the Court.

If there are particular issues of consumer harm to bring to the Antitrust Division of the DOJ, they can be filed with the DOJ ATR's Citizen Complaint Center (http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/newcase.htm):

E-mail antitrust.complaints@usdoj.gov
Mail Citizen Complaint Center
Antitrust Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Room 3322
Washington, DC 20530
Phone 1-888-647-3258 (toll free in the U.S. and Canada) or 202-307-2040

Author Guild

I also corresponded with the Authors Guild's counsel, Joanne Zack (of Boni & Zack) confirmed that the Authors Guild did indeed receive a civil investigative demand, but she said that neither the demand nor information as to who at the DOJ issued it were public.

I think that's about it for what I can do on this topic...