For months, Google and its partners in a class-action settlement that would allow the company to create a vast digital library appeared unmoved by a rising tide of opposition.
Google and its settlement partners — the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers — argued that the agreement would not harm competition, and said they were confident that it would be approved in its current form by a federal court.
But the Justice Department, in a filing on Friday, made clear that the parties were busily negotiating modifications that would address some of the concerns raised. Those negotiations are likely to accelerate now that the Justice Department has said that it too believes the settlement raises serious legal issues and has urged the court not to approve it without changes.
Legal experts say the new round of discussions, and the government’s intervention, are almost certain to delay an agreement that Google and the other parties were eager to see ratified quickly. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/technology/internet/21google.html
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Monday, September 21, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
F.C.C. Seeks to Protect Free Flow of Internet Data
The New York Times - In a move to make good on one of President Obama’s campaign promises, Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will propose Monday that the agency expand and formalize rules meant to keep Internet providers from discriminating against certain content flowing over their networks, according to several officials briefed on his plans.
In 2005, the commission adopted four broad principles relating to the idea of network neutrality as part of a move to deregulate the Internet services provided by telephone companies. Those principles declared that consumers had the right to use the content, applications, services and devices of their choice using the Internet. They also promoted competition between Internet providers.
In a speech Monday at the Brookings Institution, Mr. Genachowski is expected to outline a proposal to add a fifth principle that will prevent Internet providers from discriminating against certain services or applications. Consumer advocates are concerned that Internet providers might ban or degrade services that compete with their own offerings, like television shows delivered over the Web.
Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Genachowski will propose that the net neutrality principles be formally adopted as commission rules, a lengthy procedure that involves several rounds of public comment. His predecessor, Kevin Martin, avoided making formal rules, arguing that the industry changes too quickly. He preferred to respond to complaints when they were filed.
The commission relied on its net neutrality principles when it sanctioned Comcast last year for impeding the Internet connections of some customers who were using certain file-sharing software. The cable company has appealed that ruling, challenging the principles as invalid because the commission adopted them without a formal rule-making process.
Other cable and phone companies have distanced themselves from Comcast’s actions. They argue that vague guidelines are preferable to formal rules. Some lobbyists see Mr. Genachowski’s move in part as a way to prevent a court from diminishing the commission’s powers as a result of Comcast’s suit. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/technology/internet/19net.html
In 2005, the commission adopted four broad principles relating to the idea of network neutrality as part of a move to deregulate the Internet services provided by telephone companies. Those principles declared that consumers had the right to use the content, applications, services and devices of their choice using the Internet. They also promoted competition between Internet providers.
In a speech Monday at the Brookings Institution, Mr. Genachowski is expected to outline a proposal to add a fifth principle that will prevent Internet providers from discriminating against certain services or applications. Consumer advocates are concerned that Internet providers might ban or degrade services that compete with their own offerings, like television shows delivered over the Web.
Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Genachowski will propose that the net neutrality principles be formally adopted as commission rules, a lengthy procedure that involves several rounds of public comment. His predecessor, Kevin Martin, avoided making formal rules, arguing that the industry changes too quickly. He preferred to respond to complaints when they were filed.
The commission relied on its net neutrality principles when it sanctioned Comcast last year for impeding the Internet connections of some customers who were using certain file-sharing software. The cable company has appealed that ruling, challenging the principles as invalid because the commission adopted them without a formal rule-making process.
Other cable and phone companies have distanced themselves from Comcast’s actions. They argue that vague guidelines are preferable to formal rules. Some lobbyists see Mr. Genachowski’s move in part as a way to prevent a court from diminishing the commission’s powers as a result of Comcast’s suit. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/technology/internet/19net.html
Friday, September 11, 2009
Copyright Office Assails Google’s Settlement on Digital Books
The New York Times - SAN FRANCISCO — The nation’s top copyright official made a blistering attack Thursday on a controversial legal settlement that would let Google create a huge online library and bookstore.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Marybeth Peters, the United States register of copyrights, said the settlement between Google and groups representing authors and publishers amounted to an end-run around copyright law that would wrest control of books from authors and other right holders.
Ms. Peters, the first government official to address the settlement in detail, said it would allow Google to profit from the work of others without prior consent and that it could put “diplomatic stress” on the United States because it affected foreign authors whose rights are protected by international treaties.
But David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, who also testified at the hearing, defended the agreement saying it let authors retain control of their books and would expand access to millions of out-of-print books that are largely hidden in libraries.
In a concession that appears intended to allay complaints that the class-action settlement would grant Google quasi-exclusive rights to profit from millions of books, Mr. Drummond said that Google would allow rivals like Amazon or Barnes & Noble to sell online digital copies of out-of-print books that Google has scanned from libraries.
The $125 million settlement, which is subject to court approval, would resolve suits filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google over its plan to digitize millions of books from libraries without approval from copyright holders.
The settlement would protect Google from liability and would establish a registry administered by authors and publishers. In concert with Google, the registry would sell access to those books to individuals and libraries. The revenue would be split among Google, authors and publishers.
Ms. Peters said that in granting something like a “compulsory license,” a requirement that rights owners license works to others, the settlement essentially usurped the authority of Congress and skirted deliberationshttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/technology/internet/11books.html
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Marybeth Peters, the United States register of copyrights, said the settlement between Google and groups representing authors and publishers amounted to an end-run around copyright law that would wrest control of books from authors and other right holders.
Ms. Peters, the first government official to address the settlement in detail, said it would allow Google to profit from the work of others without prior consent and that it could put “diplomatic stress” on the United States because it affected foreign authors whose rights are protected by international treaties.
But David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, who also testified at the hearing, defended the agreement saying it let authors retain control of their books and would expand access to millions of out-of-print books that are largely hidden in libraries.
In a concession that appears intended to allay complaints that the class-action settlement would grant Google quasi-exclusive rights to profit from millions of books, Mr. Drummond said that Google would allow rivals like Amazon or Barnes & Noble to sell online digital copies of out-of-print books that Google has scanned from libraries.
The $125 million settlement, which is subject to court approval, would resolve suits filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google over its plan to digitize millions of books from libraries without approval from copyright holders.
The settlement would protect Google from liability and would establish a registry administered by authors and publishers. In concert with Google, the registry would sell access to those books to individuals and libraries. The revenue would be split among Google, authors and publishers.
Ms. Peters said that in granting something like a “compulsory license,” a requirement that rights owners license works to others, the settlement essentially usurped the authority of Congress and skirted deliberationshttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/technology/internet/11books.html
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Harvard Backs Off Media Policy
The New York Times - Harvard Medical School is backing off a new student policy that would have restricted interaction with the news media after students complained it would chill their ability to talk about current issues in medicine, school officials said Tuesday.
“We need to be very careful,” said Dr. Nancy E. Oriol, the dean of students, who helped develop the policy. Promising it would be revised, she said the policy was intended to help students, rather than limit speech or control what they say on controversial topics.
But several students said the policy was an attempt to keep them quiet about issues like medical conflicts of interest.
“This is one of many ways that medical education implicitly teaches behaviors that differ significantly from the values that we hope physicians will uphold,” Nate Favini, a Harvard medical student and chairman of the Student Council Advisory Board, said in an e-mail message Tuesday. “Instead of limiting students, we should encourage bold thinking and allow them to advocate for the reforms that our health care system so badly needs.”
Mr. Favini and some Harvard Medical faculty said they were encouraged by the decision Tuesday to retract the policy.
“The policy was extremely ill advised,” Dr. Marcia Angell, a Harvard lecturer and former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, said Tuesday.
The policy says: “All interactions between students and the media should be coordinated with the Office of the Dean of Students and the Office of Public Affairs. This applies to situations in which students are contacted by the media as well as instances in which students may be seeking publicity about a student-related project or program.”
In an interview Tuesday, Dr. Oriol said, “The wording is problematic and it doesn’t really capture our intent.”
She did not deny that the policy was prompted in part by student remarks earlier this year about the influence of pharmaceutical companies on medical education. But she said, “I could give you a nice long litany of prompts.”
Other factors, Dr. Oriol said, included concern about patient privacy and the growing prevalence of Twitter. But she conceded the policy applies to “the media” rather than new media like Twitter.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/business/media/02harvard.html
“We need to be very careful,” said Dr. Nancy E. Oriol, the dean of students, who helped develop the policy. Promising it would be revised, she said the policy was intended to help students, rather than limit speech or control what they say on controversial topics.
But several students said the policy was an attempt to keep them quiet about issues like medical conflicts of interest.
“This is one of many ways that medical education implicitly teaches behaviors that differ significantly from the values that we hope physicians will uphold,” Nate Favini, a Harvard medical student and chairman of the Student Council Advisory Board, said in an e-mail message Tuesday. “Instead of limiting students, we should encourage bold thinking and allow them to advocate for the reforms that our health care system so badly needs.”
Mr. Favini and some Harvard Medical faculty said they were encouraged by the decision Tuesday to retract the policy.
“The policy was extremely ill advised,” Dr. Marcia Angell, a Harvard lecturer and former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, said Tuesday.
The policy says: “All interactions between students and the media should be coordinated with the Office of the Dean of Students and the Office of Public Affairs. This applies to situations in which students are contacted by the media as well as instances in which students may be seeking publicity about a student-related project or program.”
In an interview Tuesday, Dr. Oriol said, “The wording is problematic and it doesn’t really capture our intent.”
She did not deny that the policy was prompted in part by student remarks earlier this year about the influence of pharmaceutical companies on medical education. But she said, “I could give you a nice long litany of prompts.”
Other factors, Dr. Oriol said, included concern about patient privacy and the growing prevalence of Twitter. But she conceded the policy applies to “the media” rather than new media like Twitter.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/business/media/02harvard.html
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Tobacco Firms Sue to Block Marketing Law
Most of the nation’s largest tobacco companies filed a free-speech lawsuit on Monday in Kentucky to try to stop a landmark federal law from curtailing their marketing or forcing them to print graphic warnings on the top half of cigarette packages next year.
The first lawsuit against the new law, which was signed in June by President Obama, is likely to end up before the United States Supreme Court, lawyers on all sides of the issue said on Monday. In 2001, the Supreme Court rejected outdoor advertising restrictions in tobacco regulations in Massachusetts, ruling 6-3 that it violated free speech rights.
“The case is likely to proceed quickly,” Floyd Abrams, a constitutional lawyer who is representing the Lorillard Tobacco Company, said in a phone interview on Monday. “Tobacco is a legal product for adults, and the Supreme Court has said that the industry has an interest which the First Amendment protects to communicate information about its products, and adults have the right to receive that information.”
Anti-tobacco lawyers said the federal legislation was carefully worded to withstand just such a legal test.
“It was perfectly clear there was going to be a constitutional challenge, and I think it will survive the challenge,” Richard A. Daynard, a professor at the Northeastern School of Law in Boston and chairman of its Tobacco Products Liability Project, said in a phone interview.
The 46-page complaint seeks declaratory judgments and injunctions against the federal government and officials in the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services. It was filed in the United States District Court in Bowling Green, Ky.
Mr. Abrams said the lawsuit is not challenging the government’s right to regulate cigarette contents, but focuses on speech and marketing restrictions. Congress did not ban cigarettes or addictive nicotine despite a death toll estimated by the government at 400,000 a year, partly because public-health advocates say smokers would turn to a black market.
The parts of the law that are at issue restrict tobacco marketing after decades of revelations about how the industry hid health hazards, secretly manipulated nicotine levels to hook smokers, advertised to children and falsely claimed low-tar or light cigarettes were safer.
The law requires new warnings by June 22, 2010, to cover the top half of the front and back of packages and to contain “color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.” The companies in their lawsuit said “shocking color graphics” would force them “to stigmatize their own products through their own packaging” and leave no room in display cases to show their desired branding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/01tobacco.html
The first lawsuit against the new law, which was signed in June by President Obama, is likely to end up before the United States Supreme Court, lawyers on all sides of the issue said on Monday. In 2001, the Supreme Court rejected outdoor advertising restrictions in tobacco regulations in Massachusetts, ruling 6-3 that it violated free speech rights.
“The case is likely to proceed quickly,” Floyd Abrams, a constitutional lawyer who is representing the Lorillard Tobacco Company, said in a phone interview on Monday. “Tobacco is a legal product for adults, and the Supreme Court has said that the industry has an interest which the First Amendment protects to communicate information about its products, and adults have the right to receive that information.”
Anti-tobacco lawyers said the federal legislation was carefully worded to withstand just such a legal test.
“It was perfectly clear there was going to be a constitutional challenge, and I think it will survive the challenge,” Richard A. Daynard, a professor at the Northeastern School of Law in Boston and chairman of its Tobacco Products Liability Project, said in a phone interview.
The 46-page complaint seeks declaratory judgments and injunctions against the federal government and officials in the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services. It was filed in the United States District Court in Bowling Green, Ky.
Mr. Abrams said the lawsuit is not challenging the government’s right to regulate cigarette contents, but focuses on speech and marketing restrictions. Congress did not ban cigarettes or addictive nicotine despite a death toll estimated by the government at 400,000 a year, partly because public-health advocates say smokers would turn to a black market.
The parts of the law that are at issue restrict tobacco marketing after decades of revelations about how the industry hid health hazards, secretly manipulated nicotine levels to hook smokers, advertised to children and falsely claimed low-tar or light cigarettes were safer.
The law requires new warnings by June 22, 2010, to cover the top half of the front and back of packages and to contain “color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.” The companies in their lawsuit said “shocking color graphics” would force them “to stigmatize their own products through their own packaging” and leave no room in display cases to show their desired branding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/01tobacco.html
Shrinking Newsrooms Wage Fewer Battles for Public Access to Courtrooms
The New York Times - You don’t see newspapers fighting to open court proceedings the way they used to, and people are starting to notice.
“The days of powerful newspapers with ample legal budgets appear to be numbered,” a public defender in Georgia, Gerard Kleinrock, wrote in a recent Supreme Court brief. “Will underfunded bloggers be able to carry the financial burdens of opening our courtrooms?”
The brief concerned the case of Eric Presley, a Georgia man convicted of cocaine trafficking. The judge closed the courtroom during jury selection in Mr. Presley’s case, on the theory that it was too small to accommodate both potential jurors and the public. Citing the public’s lack of access to the jury selection, Mr. Presley appealed, and the Supreme Court will soon consider whether to hear his case.
Thanks to The Press-Enterprise, a newspaper in Riverside, Calif., the press and the public have nearly an absolute constitutional right to attend jury selection in criminal cases. In the 1980s, the paper fought ferociously to establish that principle, taking two access cases to the Supreme Court.
News organizations used to consider those kinds of lawsuits a matter of civic responsibility.
“For the last four decades, maybe longer, citizens have been able to rely on small, medium and large news organizations, mostly newspapers, to fight their access battles on their behalf,” said Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which has filed a supporting brief in Mr. Presley’s case.
These days, she said, “the access litigations have dried up.”
It is notable, for instance, that the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups have taken the leading role in trying to shake loose information about the Bush administration’s policies and actions, while news organizations have largely sat on the sidelines.
There are exceptions, of course. Jane E. Kirtley, who teaches media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, singled out The Associated Press for its efforts. In general, though, she said, “we’ve shifted our emphasis from principle to survival.”
Companies that still have ample resources do not always share a journalistic commitment to open government.
Consider the aftermath of a recent settlement in a lawsuit against Amtrak. After the railroad lost a $24 million jury verdict and while its appeal was pending, it agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the plaintiffs, two trespassing teenagers who suffered severe electric burns after climbing onto a parked train.
As part of the settlement, the parties asked Judge Lawrence F. Stengel of Federal District Court in Philadelphia not only to vacate eight of his decisions in the case but also to “direct LexisNexis and Westlaw to remove the decisions” from “their respective legal research services/databases.”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/us/01bar.html
“The days of powerful newspapers with ample legal budgets appear to be numbered,” a public defender in Georgia, Gerard Kleinrock, wrote in a recent Supreme Court brief. “Will underfunded bloggers be able to carry the financial burdens of opening our courtrooms?”
The brief concerned the case of Eric Presley, a Georgia man convicted of cocaine trafficking. The judge closed the courtroom during jury selection in Mr. Presley’s case, on the theory that it was too small to accommodate both potential jurors and the public. Citing the public’s lack of access to the jury selection, Mr. Presley appealed, and the Supreme Court will soon consider whether to hear his case.
Thanks to The Press-Enterprise, a newspaper in Riverside, Calif., the press and the public have nearly an absolute constitutional right to attend jury selection in criminal cases. In the 1980s, the paper fought ferociously to establish that principle, taking two access cases to the Supreme Court.
News organizations used to consider those kinds of lawsuits a matter of civic responsibility.
“For the last four decades, maybe longer, citizens have been able to rely on small, medium and large news organizations, mostly newspapers, to fight their access battles on their behalf,” said Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which has filed a supporting brief in Mr. Presley’s case.
These days, she said, “the access litigations have dried up.”
It is notable, for instance, that the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups have taken the leading role in trying to shake loose information about the Bush administration’s policies and actions, while news organizations have largely sat on the sidelines.
There are exceptions, of course. Jane E. Kirtley, who teaches media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, singled out The Associated Press for its efforts. In general, though, she said, “we’ve shifted our emphasis from principle to survival.”
Companies that still have ample resources do not always share a journalistic commitment to open government.
Consider the aftermath of a recent settlement in a lawsuit against Amtrak. After the railroad lost a $24 million jury verdict and while its appeal was pending, it agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the plaintiffs, two trespassing teenagers who suffered severe electric burns after climbing onto a parked train.
As part of the settlement, the parties asked Judge Lawrence F. Stengel of Federal District Court in Philadelphia not only to vacate eight of his decisions in the case but also to “direct LexisNexis and Westlaw to remove the decisions” from “their respective legal research services/databases.”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/us/01bar.html
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