The journalist, Chris Elliott, had published an internal document listing heightened security procedures in the wake of the attempted plane bombing on Christmas Day. The TSA subpoenaed Elliott and blogger Steven Frischling, Dec. 29, ordering them to comply within two days.

Frischling turned over his computer hard drive to the agency. Elliott did not comply, and his attorney, Anthony Elia, filed an objection in addition to requesting an extension of the two-day deadline.

Earlier in the day on Dec. 31, amid several press reports about the incident, the TSA indicated it would honor the deadline extension.  And about 6:30 p.m., it withdrew the subpoena, with a lawyer for the agency saying it had enough information for its investigation into the leak of the document.

“This underscores the need for a federal press shield law,” Elia said. “Journalists and their sources perform an important function in our Democracy and they should be able to do their jobs without the specter of legal action or incarceration.”

According to news reports, the TSA also offered to pay for a new computer for Frischling, whose computer was damaged after he consented to the search of his hard drive.
“Needless to say, I’m delighted by this turn of events,” Elliott wrote on his blog, www.Elliott.org. “TSA did the right thing by withdrawing its subpoena.”

The Department proposed that the parties consider a number of changes to the agreement, including:

* Imposing limitations on the most open-ended provisions for future licensing
* Eliminating potential conflicts among class members
* Providing additional protections for unknown rights holders
* Addressing the concerns of foreign authors and publishers
* Eliminating the joint-pricing mechanisms among publishers and authors, and  
* Providing some mechanism by which Google’s competitors can gain comparable access.
 

The deadline to file a Claim Form for Cash Payments for past use is January 5, 2010. 

The deadline for demanding Removal of your work from the Google Book Project is April 5, 2011.

Note that the Google Book Settlement is not final and may be changed by the court, so these deadlines may change.  Accordingly, be sure to check back periodically and certainly no later than the date of the Final Fairness Hearing on October 7, 2009. 

A couple months after I became Authors Guild president in 2006, we met with Google to propose a settlement to our class-action lawsuit. The Guild had sued Google in September 2005, after Google struck deals with major university libraries to scan and copy millions of books in their collections. Many of these were older books in the public domain, but millions of others were still under copyright protection. Nick Taylor, then the president of the Guild, saw Google’s scanning as “a plain and brazen violation of copyright law.” Google countered that its digitizing of these books represented a “fair use” of the material.  Our position was: The hell you say.  Of such disagreements, lawsuits are made.

Our proposal to Google back in May 2006 was simple:  while we don’t approve of your unauthorized scanning of our books and displaying snippets for profit, if you’re willing to do something far more ambitious and useful, and you’re willing to cut authors in for their fair share, then it would be our pleasure to work with you. 

We’re happy to report that our proposal found a receptive audience at Google and at Association of American Publishers and the several publishing houses that had filed a separate lawsuit in October 2005 against Google.  Reaching final agreement turned out to be not so simple, but today, after nearly two and a half years of negotiations, we’re joining with Google and the AAP and those publishers to announce the settlement of Authors Guild v. Google.

The settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge before it takes effect, includes money for now and the prospect of money for later.  There’ll be at least $45 million for authors and publishers whose in-copyright books and other copyrighted texts have been scanned without permission.  If your book was scanned and you own all the rights, you’ll get a small share of this, at least $60, depending on how many rightsholders file claims. 

Far more interesting for most of us –- and the ambitious part of our proposal — is the prospect for future revenues.  Rightsholders will receive a share of revenues from institutional subscriptions to the collection of books made available through Google Book Search under the settlement, as well as from sales of online consumer access to the books. They will also be paid for printouts at public libraries, as well as for other uses.

The payments will flow through the Book Rights Registry, a new independent entity that can be thought of as the writers’ equivalent of ASCAP.  Much as ASCAP tracks the uses of songs and collects royalties for songwriters and musicians, the Registry will serve the interests of authors and others who own the rights to books appearing online as a result of this settlement. The Registry will be controlled by a board of authors and publishers; as part of the settlement, Google will pay $34.5 million to get the Registry up and running, notify rightsholders of the settlement, and process claims.

Readers are also big winners under the settlement of Authors Guild v. Google.  Readers will be able to browse from their own computers an enormous collection of books.  We hope this will encourage some readers to buy full online access to some of the books.  Readers wanting to view books online in their entirety for free need only reacquaint themselves with their participating local public library:  every public library building is entitled to a free, view-only license to the collection.  College students working on term papers will be able to point their computers to resources other than Wikipedia, if they’re so inclined:  students at subscribing institutions will be able to read and print out any books in the collection.

We expect that millions of out-of-print books (and many in-print books) will be available through Google Book Search to readers, but we don’t know how many, since that depends partly on you.  Participating rightsholders can choose to pull their books from this service with reasonable notice at any time and will retain substantial control over Google’s presentation and pricing of their books.

As with any class action, individual class members remain free to opt out of the settlement.

There are many, many more details, but I’ll leave those to the official notice.  There’s also an official press release, edited to within an inch of its life and the settlement agreement itself.  They’re linked below; be my guest.

Currently, eCO accepts basic registrations only, including for: (a) any single work; (b) a collection of unpublished works by the same author and owned by the same claimant; or, (c) multiple published works contained in the same unit of publication and owned by the same claimant. (Examples.  A compact disk containing 10 songs; a book of poems)

Unfortunately, groups of contributions to periodicals cannot be registerd via eCO at this time.

H.R. 6146 would U.S. authors and publishers a basis for attacking foreign judgments in domestic courts as the New York Libel Tourism Protection Act does. 

The newspaper printed an editor’s note stating that the plaintiff, Monroe Mann, the town attorney, was the true power behind the throne in the town’s politics, was a “political hatchet Mann,” and was leading the town to destruction.  

The Court reiterated the three major factors in determining what constitutes opinion: whether the language used has a precise meaning; whether the statement is capable of being proven true or false; and whether in the full context of the statement readers understand that the statement is opinion rather than fact.

The Court of Appeals emphasized that the key to determining whether a statement is opinion or fact is its context, and that figurative or hyperbolic language is not determinative.

The decision affirms existing New York law, which generally gives broad protection to opinions.