Google announced Thursday its partnership with On Demand, the maker of the Espresso Book Machine. The machine is capable of printing and binding an entire book in about 5 minutes, and retails for more than $75,000. More here.

Apparently agreeing with recent criticism of the deal, the Department of Justice  urged a federal court on Friday to reject Google’s disputed settlement with book authors and publishers. The class action settlement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. as proposed, could potentially lead to copyright infringements. As such, the Department, proposed [...]

Considering the recent tussle over Google’s Book Search settlement, one might be interested in just how Google is capable of scanning books en masse to its digital library. NPR recently posted this interesting review of Google’s scanning technology and a brief history of scanning techniques generally.

Google’s Director of Product Management for Book Search speaks out via the Public Policy Blog (Google) amid antitrust concerns over the proposed author settlement. In 2005, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and numerous authors and publishers filed a class action lawsuit against Google Book Search claiming copyright infringment. Google initially expressed its [...]

James Boyle, professor of law and co-founder of the Centre for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University comments on the content of his book “The Public Domain: enclosing the commons of the mind.” Listen to the MP3 here. Download the book as a .pdf here.