 Google Books, the project to digitize every book ever published, was shut down in 2011. A federal judge rejected the agreement proposed by Google to settle the class action brought against it by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers alleging copyright infringement. While the decision prevented a corporate monopoly on access to public cultural heritage, the dream of making all the books in the world easily accessible continues to inspire Robert Darnton, international authority on electronic publishing. In this video of a 2011 Falling Walls Conference lecture, Darnton—a professor and university librarian at Harvard, a trustee of the New York Public Library, and the founder of Gutenberg-e—discusses his research group at Harvard that is studying the legal, financial, technological, and political implications related to a new model of the digital public library, which would provide digital books free of charge to readers. (21 minutes)
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