Mass Digitization: Fair Use, Google Books, and the Digital Public Library of America | Interdisciplinary Lunch Series

Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/31/2014
12:00 pm

On Friday, January 31, 2014, the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy will host our first “interdisciplinary lunch” of the spring semester. The lunch is open to faculty and graduate students from across the UNC system. The topic will be “Mass Digitization: Fair Use, Google Books and the Digital Public Library of America,” led by Dave Hansen of the UNC School of Law Library.

In October 2004 Google introduced to the world an ambitious project to digitize all of the world’s books.  Less than a year later publishers and authors groups had sued, claiming massive copyright infringement. Although that suit remains unsettled even today, it has emboldened libraries, archives, and other memory institutions to engage in similar projects. Those projects have resulted in several recent legal developments in the courts, in Congress, and by private organizations such as the Digital Public Library of America. During this lunch we will discuss those developments and their effect on access to knowledge generally and on important new areas of research that rely on large digitized collections, such as text and data mining.

Dave Hansen is a reference librarian at UNC School of Law and a Digital Library Fellow at UC Berkeley. At Berkeley David has written about Google Books and related cases, and has authored briefs in those cases on behalf of academic authors and other scholars.

January’s lunch discussion will be held from noon to 1:15 p.m. on Friday, January 31 in the Faculty Lounge at the UNC School of Law. We will provide box lunches and drinks. RSVP using the form below by Tuesday, January 28.

Background Readings:

• Authors Guild v. Google, Case No. 05-cv-8135, Opinion, (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (district court opinion dismissing claims brought by the Authors Guild; currently on appeal)
•  Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, Case No. 11-cv-6351, Opinion (S.D.N.Y. 2012) (district court opinion dismissing claims brought by the Authors Guild; currently on appeal)
•  Bob Darnton, The National Digital Public Library of America is Launched!, The New York Review of Books, April 25, 2013
•  Orphan Works Challenges for Libraries, Archives, and Other Memory Institutions (Berkeley Digital Library Copyright Project & American University Center for Social Media, 2013)

* If you are unable to register using the form below because we have reached the maximum number of reservations, please email ewoolery@email.unc.edu to be added to the waitlist.

RSVP