Post Tagged with: "friday forum"

The Friday Forum: Digitizing Books and the Google Book Search Settlement

The potential for a global digital library is increasingly viewed as one of the most exciting opportunities of the Internet age. Countries are working to digitize their works (I wrote four years ago about the possibility of Canada doing so) and the private sector has been active as well. By far the best known – and most contentious – initiative is the Google Book Search initiative. Working with university libraries around the world, Google has been digitizing millions of books. The Google Book Search initiative led to a pair of U.S. lawsuits over whether the plan qualified as fair use, which in turn led to a settlement with implications for authors around the world.

This week's Friday Forum takes a look at the digitizing issue with particular focus on Google Book Search. It starts with Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive and his vision for building a free digital library. The talked was delivered at the EG Conference in 2007.

The Friday Forum – Open Access Issues

Last week's first Friday Forum provided an introduction to open access. This week's examines several issues that grow out of the open access movement including open access to government data, open access to law, open access and development, as well as open access and science. Given my column this week on how the House of Commons has sent takedown notices to YouTube to remove videos featuring committee hearings and the Auditor General's report on IP in the government, it is appropriate to start with the issue of open access to government data. The leader in this field in Carl Malamud, who delivered an @Google talk on the issue in 2006.

The Friday Forum – A Weekly Series of Virtual Conferences – Open Access

Classes and exams have now concluded at the University of Ottawa and students won't be back on campus until September. Rather than taking a full hiatus on lectures, I thought it would be interesting to pull together a weekly virtual conference series using the incredible array of video lectures that have been posted online in recent years. The Friday Forum will be a weekly blog posting on a topic within the broad umbrella of law, technology, and policy. If you were to watch all the videos in their in its entirety, each virtual conference would take about a half-day. I'll also post additional readings and materials for those that want to dig more deeply into the issues. On most issues, there is a wealth of choice, so I'm bound to miss some great lectures that are on point.

This first Friday Forum virtual conference is the first of three on open access. This collection of lectures focuses on the open access movement and latest developments. Next week, I'll touch on some specific issues such as government data, access to law, development issues, and science commons. The final virtual conference will highlight the recent move toward university open access mandates.