| Professor
Berkeley Law School & University of California at Berkeley Voice: (510) 642-6775 |
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Pamela Samuelson is recognized as a pioneer in digital copyright law, intellectual property, cyberlaw and information policy. She has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new information technologies are posing for public policy and traditional legal regimes. Since 1996, she has held a joint appointment with the Berkeley Law School and the School of Information. She is the director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and on advisory boards for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Public Knowledge, and the Berkeley Center for New Media. She is also an advisor for the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic. Since 2002, she has also been an honorary professor at the University of Amsterdam
14) "Is the Google Book Settlement an Abuse of Class Actions?", to appear in The Nation, November 23, 2009.
Google is no more above the law than any other company, no matter how much social benefit one of its projects arguably bestows on society. Its proposed settlement of a copyright lawsuit initially brought by a small number of authors and publishers goes far beyond what class action settlements are supposed to achieve, and is tantamount to private legislation. Private legislation through the GBS class action settlement would set a dangerous precedent and undermine democratic values.13) "New Google Book Settlement Aims Only to Placate Governments", The Huffington Post, November 17, 2009
...Changes were overwhelmingly made to placate the governments of France and Germany, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)... Hundreds of authors, publishers and other interested parties raised dozens of objections to GBS 1.0, but their concerns were almost completely ignored. GBS 2.0, for example, does not address issues raised by academic authors about the risks of price gouging, lack of user privacy protections and restrictions on various uses that can be made of GBS books...12) "The Google Book Settlement: Real Magic or a Trick", The Economists' Voice, November 2009.
Paul Courant characterized the GBS class action settlement as "a magic trick." For Google to get a license to every in-copyright book on the planet for a mere $125 million - $45.5 million of which will go to the lawyers representing the author and publisher subclasses, and $34.5 million to fund BRR's initial operations - by settling this lawsuit does seem like 'magic.'... But the law is not magic and magic is not the law. The GBS settlement contravenes core rule of law principles of our society.11) "Lecture in Professor Terry Winograd's "Human-Computer Interaction" Seminar, Stanford University, October 30, 2009.
[Select "Free Seminars," "Computer Science," and Lecture 6 in "Human-Computer Interaction Seminar" with instructor "Terry Winograd"]10) "Google Books is Not a Library", The Huffington Post, October 14, 2009.
Anyone aspiring to create a modern equivalent of the Alexandrian library would not have designed it to transform research libraries into shopping malls, but that is just what Google will be doing if the GBS deal is approved as is.9) "Keynote Conversation with Paul Courant at 'D' is for 'Digitize' Conference", New York Law School, October 9, 2009.
Pam Samuelson responds to arguments by Paul Courant (University of Michigan Librarian) in favor of Google Book Search Settlement.8) "Google Book Settlement 1.0 Is History", The Huffington Post, September 24, 2009
Version 1.0 of the proposed Google Book Search (GBS) Settlement is history, pushed into the dustbin by hundreds of submissions urging Judge Denny Chin to reject it, none more devastating than the one filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)7) "DOJ Says No to Google Book Settlement", The Huffington Post, September 20, 2009
Although DOJ recognized that the public would benefit from greater access to books if the settlement was approved, it has concluded that the agreement in its current form does not satisfy legal requirements.6) "Academic Author Objections to the Google Book Search Settlement", Letter to Judge Denny Chin, September 3, 2009
The signatories of this letter are academic authors who object to the Google Book Search Settlement on the grounds that the Authors Guild and the named individual author plaintiffs did not adequately and fairly represent the interests of academic authors during the litigation and the negotiations that produced this agreement
5) "The Google Books Settlement and the Future of Information Access", University of California (Berkeley) School of Information , August 28, 2009
Video recording of the full conference. (Pam Samuelson is the moderator of the session "Public Access and the Google Books Settlement").
4) "Why is the Antitrust Division Investigating the Google Book Search Settlement?", The Huffington Post, August 19, 2009
Antitrust critics of the settlement have expressed concern about the "monopoly" that Google will have over orphan books.
3) "The Audacity of the Google Book Search Settlement", The Huffington Post, August 10, 2009
Sorry, Kindle. The Google Book Search settlement will be, if approved, the most significant book industry development in the modern era...This settlement will transform the future of the book industry and of public access to the cultural heritage of mankind embodied in books
2) "Reflections on the Google Book Search Settlement", OCLC/Kilgour Lecture at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC, April 22, 2009
(Presentation slides)
1) "The Dead Souls of the Google Booksearch Settlement", O'Reilly Radar, April 17, 2009 (pre-print from Communications of the ACM, July 2009)
The Book Search agreement under consideration is not really a settlement of a dispute over whether scanning books to index them is fair use. It is a massive restructuring of the book industry's future without meaningful government oversight. The market for digitized orphan books could be competitive, but will not be if this settlement is approved in its current form without modification.
- Law 276.1/Infosys 235 : Cyberlaw/Legal Issues in Information Management
- InfoSys 204: Information Users and Society
- InfoSys 296A-2: Intellectual Property and the Future of the Information Society
- InfoSys
296A-3: Economics of Intellectual Property for the Information Age
- Infosys 204: Information Users and Society
- Infosys 296A (section 2): Future of the Information Society, Copyright & Community
- Law 276: Cyberlaw
- Infosys 290 (section 1): Intellectual Property Rights
Fall 2009 Fall 2008 Spring 2008 Spring 2007 Fall 2006 Fall 2005 Spring 2005 Fall 2003 Fall 2002Fall 2001 Fall 2000 Spring 2000 Fall 1999 Spring 1999
Fall 1998 Spring 1998 Fall 1997
Spring 1997
Pam Samuelson with Former Polish President Lech Walesa (July 2009)
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Pamela Samuelson at US Supreme Court with Bilski Brief (November 2009)
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