random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
  How could you ask me to believe in God when there's absolutely no evidence that I can see? I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that's out there that we haven't discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don't know any better.

tagged: religion
  —Jodie Foster

Google Book Search panel at ALA Midwinter

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

The ALA’s Copyright Subcommittee (Committee on Legislation) is hosting a panel on the Google Book Settlement at ALA Midwinter this year — Saturday at 1:30 at the Grand Hyatt. (I’m on the committee and on the panel.) Should be interesting. Come to the Google Book Settlement Session at ALA Midwinter Conference January 24th, 2009, 1:30-3:30, [...]

“scan this book”?

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

siva linked to “scan this book!”, a NYT magazine article by kevin kelly, with a promise to post comments about it soon. i look forward to them, and in the meantime will post my own (hurried & no-doubt flawed) quick reactions to one point: Authors and publishers (including publishers of music and film) have relied [...]

google print postscript

Tuesday, December 6th, 2005

More Google Print … Although the media coverage is only picking up, to me, it seems that some of the most interesting discussions have died down. So, here’s a very few that caught my attention for one reason or another: Google Kills Children, A Whole Lotta Nothing, 2005/11/5: Link and complaint about interview with spokesperson [...]

Google Print: whither goest this debate …

Monday, October 31st, 2005

Oy. The Google Print discussion just keeps going on, and on … Karl-Friedrich Lenz makes the point that Yahoo!’s opt-in only venture, and older search databases that licensed content, weaken Google’s case. Yep. As a copyfighter, though, I resist the idea that copyright-holders already legally possess that level of control over copyrighted works, and can [...]

lost licensing revenue & Google Print

Thursday, October 27th, 2005

I just got around to reading the weekend’s Washington Post Google Print editorials, pro (Mary Sue Coleman, UMich Pres) & con (Nick Taylor, Authors’ Guild). Short editorials, and I suppose the format limits their ability to go beyond rhetoric (“access to vast libraries of content” … “this is a socialist plot!”) into any actual legal [...]

google print: google’s evilness is beside the point (Bonus Rant Included)

Wednesday, October 26th, 2005

I’m pleased to see the Google Print issue spurring discussion of the role of corporations in controlling access to information. See, e.g., today’s post @ Gnuosphere [link from sivacracy] Gnuosphere, Siva, and others point out that Google isn’t doing Google Print out of the goodness of its heart; the company is scanning, indexing, and providing [...]

authors vs. copyright owners

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005

Meghann Marco, a new author, would like to have her book indexed by Google, but her publisher says no, they’d rather sue. [link from kottke.org] As a person who spends a large part of her day trying to get people to read her book, I asked my publisher to include me in Google Print. They [...]

essence of library

Wednesday, August 17th, 2005

I like the flow of the google / library discussion: what’s the essence of library? and suspect I’ll be thinking about that one for a long time to come. (It sounds like a delightful perfume: a bit musty with an sweet undernote of decaying paper and an overnote of astringent preservative, maybe.) Just picking out [...]

google & not-for-profit libraries

Saturday, August 13th, 2005

More on Google and Siva’s response (and my responses to Siva): Recap: In response to publisher anxieties & thinly-veiled threats of litigation, Google is implementing an opt-out provision in its scan-copyrighted-library-books program, and delaying scans of copyrighted books until November. [google blog] This has been widely reported as Google backing down. See, e.g., “Chilled by [...]

interesting reading, early saturday morning

Saturday, August 13th, 2005

Up early for my spouse who caught a red-eye. Now she’s resting peacefully and I of course can’t get back to sleep. But that’s okay, because there’s the Internet! Positive outcomes of BlogHer: Mary Hodder at Napsterization is establishing a Speakers’ Wiki. In response to publisher anxieties & thinly-veiled threats of litigation, Google is implementing [...]