Law and Copyright: Oral Arguments at the GBS Fairness Hearing : The Google Books Amended Settlement Agreement : Should it be Approved?

The Laboratorium has a summary of the oral arguments at the GBS Fairness Hearing.

Prior to that, Ivy Anderson, Director of Collections at the California Digital Library wrote:

"Late last week, Google and the plaintiffs filed their final briefs in defense of the Google Books Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA) that is before the New York Southern Federal District Court. As the rhetoric around the Settlement heats up to white-hot intensity in the final days before the Fairness Hearing on February 18^th, I’d like to offer a few personal thoughts from my vantage point at the California Digital Library....

I like to compare this to the building of the great Temple of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, a city with which my family has an ancestral connection. When my husband’s grandmother left Barcelona as a young girl in the late 19th century, the Sagrada Familia had barely erected its first stone. In 2006 more than 125 years later, her great-granddaughter traveled to Barcelona for the first time, where she was able to observe Gaudi’s monumental edifice, still under construction. At this writing, completion is projected for 2026.

Like the Sagrada Familia, without the Google Books Project we could still be building the digital library of the future 100 years from now."

Read the rest at Hurtling Toward the Finish Line: Should the Google Books Settlement Be Approved?: California Digital Library