Legal Issues

It appears that there are at least couple of companies in the book biz that are too big for their britches as the saying goes.

Publishers Weekly reports: The Department of Justice dealt a serious blow Thursday evening to the chances that the Google Book Search settlement will gain court approval later this month when it found that the revised agreement still raises class certification, copyright and antitrust issues. The DOJ said that despite “good faith” efforts to modify the agreement, “the amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation."

The crew at Vulture Central (further known as British tech publication The Register) posted a report by Cade Metz about the continuing review of the proposed Google Books settlement. Metz notes that the US Department of Justice still finds as a fundamental problem to the settlement that it is using class action lawsuit mechanisms to do an overly far-reaching end-run of the legislative process so as to effect significant change in society.

Let's hope your patrons are not quite as unappreciative as this particular teen at the Cortez (CO) Public Library.

Resolution in the case of a Montezuma County teenager who used e-mail to threaten a local librarian is scheduled for next month.

Keith Mandelski, chief deputy 22nd Judicial District attorney, said the case against the juvenile is scheduled for sentencing at 10:30 a.m. Feb. 19 in district court. Citing state statute, he declined Thursday to comment on the severity of charges the 16-year-old boy faces.

District Attorney Jim Wilson said the youth was charged in the threat incident as a juvenile, not as an adult. In Colorado, court records involving juvenile cases are not available to the public.

The youth sent an e-mail from a Cortez Public Library computer to a staff member at the library on Oct. 15, 2009. The e-mail explained his plan to murder the library's director, Joanie Howland, during the Nov. 7, 2009, Library Libations event held at the Cortez Journal.

...as was the case with the Niagara Falls (NY) Public Library.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's latest audit questions practices at the Niagara Falls Public Library. The audit says the board failed to provide proper stewardship of library operations, set an example to staff, or fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities. That includes auditing and approving claims before payment.

The report says library management agreed with the comptroller's recommendations and are planning to make changes. Additionally, they have hired a collections agency to try to get recover lost income.

More from WGRZ and The Niagara Gazette.

Four universities have agreed they will not purchase, recommend or promote use of the Kindle DX, or any other dedicated electronic book reader, unless the devices are fully accessible to blind students, according to the US Department of Justice.

Fahrenheit 451… Book burning as done by lawyers

For Bradbury’s book, this means that the reading public, the braille printer, the budding playwright, the school library face either higher prices, or legal restrictions on reuse or both. And they get no benefit from it. Clearly, the incentive of 28 + 28 years was enough to encourage him to write the book and the publisher to publish it. The evidence is that.. it happened. Retrospectively extending copyright is deadweight social loss — harm without benefit. But at least the book is available.

The ACLU has sued the Library of Congress for firing a former chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo military commissions.

Col. Morris Davis (now retired from the military) was fired for criticizing the system in which detainees at Guantanamo are tried while being employed by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, where he worked as an assistant director in the foreign affairs, defense and trade division.

The Library of Congress, which oversees CRS, said Davis had shown poor judgment and that his criticism “could do serious harm to the trust and confidence Congress reposes in CRS,” according to a letter sent to Davis in November by Daniel Mulhollan, the director of the CRS.

The LOC cited rules that require employees to explicitly disassociate themselves from the LOC when writing or speaking about controversial topics. The letter singled out criticism Davis expressed in two op-eds written in November; here's Davis's Wall Street Journal op-ed and his Washington Post letter to the Editor.

Story from The Hill.

The Library of Congress inspector general reportedly will resume investigations into old criminal cases that were put aside after the office lost its ability to buy and carry firearms.

"We're very happy to be back in business," IG Karl Schornagel said in an interview with Roll Call. "Obviously, we need this law enforcement authority to be able to conduct criminal investigations needed at the Library."

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking comment, due by December 8th, asking for public input as to the research efforts that need to be taken to establish the United States as a global leader in broadband access. (PDF) (MS Word)

Law Librarian's Firing Didn't Violate Free Speech
A law librarian's free-speech rights weren't violated when he was fired for blasting his superiors' alleged "disgusting, degrading, and utterly unprofessional" conduct in an email, a California appeals court ruled.

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking data about broadband deployment at libraries and in other community hubs. (PDF)

The case presents a tangle of issues: how to create new markets for old books without shortchanging authors; how to nurture new technology without stifling competition; and how to preserve all that when one company — in this case, Google — is pioneering the revolution and could profit handsomely. One commentator, who supports the original settlement, has called it "the World Series of antitrust."

Borrowing can quickly turn to stealing when patrons pick up music at their local libraries.

Copying compact discs is illegal, but library employees say they generally can't prove it's occurring except in the most egregious cases.

"Copyright is an important issue, but it's difficult to oversee," said Ann Moore, Upper Arlington Library spokeswoman. "Once they take materials home, we can't control what they do with them."

Copying music or a book from a library CD is a form of piracy just like illegal downloads on the Internet.

By LORI STAHL / The Dallas Morning News reports that the judge who has presided over a high-profile lawsuit against Southern Methodist University for years, State District Judge Martin Hoffman, has suddenly withdrawn from the case, bringing a temporary halt to all proceedings. The reason was not clear from a motion he filed with the court (but if you read his bio, you might suppose that he decided he could not be impartial in this case).

But the implications for the case itself – which has indirect ramifications for the George W. Bush Presidential Library at SMU – were fairly obvious: It no longer seems to be on the verge of ending.

Two months ago, SMU and the two former condominium owners who filed the lawsuit in 2005 announced that they had settled the case. Although the terms were not made public, it was clear that the condo owners agreed to back off their claim to land in exchange for some kind of payment. But within weeks, the terms of the settlement agreement were in dispute. Hoffman was set to issue a ruling on the settlement agreement when he recused himself.

The parties in the Google Book Search Settlement have asked the court to adjourn the scheduled October 7th fairness hearing, telling the court the parties intend to amend the deal. "Because the parties, after consultation with the DOJ, have determined that the Settlement Agreement that was approved preliminarily in November 2008 will be amended, plaintiffs respectfully submit that the Fairness Hearing should not be held, as scheduled, on October 7," reads a memorandum appended to the parties motion to adjourn.

"To continue on the current schedule would put the Court in a position of reviewing and having participants at the hearing speak to the
original Settlement Agreement, which will not be the subject of a motion for final approval." The court is expected to grant the motion. Publishers Weekly reports.

Britain's libel laws are making things tricky for science writers.

Opinion piece at the NYT blog

Excerpt: Several times this summer, science journalists in London have leaned over to me and said something along the lines of, “I was thinking of writing,” and gone on to describe an article that was going to be critical of someone. “But then,” the speaker would gloomily conclude, “I thought to myself, ‘Simon Singh,’ and I decided not to.”

Who is Simon Singh, and why is his name giving people the jitters?

After a flurry of last-minute filings on Tuesday, a federal judge must now begin untangling the mountain of competing claims about how a legal settlement granting Google the right to create the world’s largest digital library and bookstore would affect competition, authors’ rights and readers’ privacy.

“The number and quality of opposition filings is very unusual,” said Jay Tidmarsh, a professor of law at Notre Dame Law School. “The court is going to have to look at the public interest in the settlement.”

Full story here.

INDIANAPOLIS - The Indiana Supreme Court will decide whether engineering subcontractors should be held liable for millions of dollars in cost overruns in a recent renovation of Indianapolis' central public library.

The court will hear oral arguments in the $25 million lawsuit Sept. 15.
Chicago Tribune reports.