A PW interview with Keith Michael Fiels, the Director of ALA, suggests that ALA perceives that reaching an agreement with trade publishers over ebook lending is an increasingly important strategic imperative for ALA and U.S. libraries -

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/artic...

Q ... I assume everything has been cordial thus far, and you do have a case to make about library sales, discovery, community, literacy, and access to information. But do you have any leverage?

A. ... And the decision not to offer equitable access, not to make something available to libraries, is to deny fundamental, basic access to information. So, you asked about the carrot and the stick. I think it is very important to realize that we are not too far from the point where the media is going to figure out that this is an issue. Now, we’re very much eager to do anything we can to facilitate publishers making works available to libraries. But if you want to talk about freedom of access, for a major publisher to make a decision that they will not sell their works to a particular group of individuals, to me, that raises some serious issues. I’m not going to go further than that, other than to say we really need to get this resolved because we don’t want this to be an embarrassment to anyone.

Q. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but are there issues here for lawyers to take up?

A. At this point, I don’t see legal action as necessary. As I said, I think the press is beginning to figure out that this is an issue, and that public libraries have existed as a major educational force in this country for going on 200 years, and that if you have major publishers that will not make works available to libraries, that is a serious issue.

the Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reading, has proposed a new law on data privacy which would provide for a right to "forget" as well as more explicit rights over data use provisions and data portability.

Interesting to think about what this would mean for ebook retailers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16677370

"It says people will be able to ask for data about them to be deleted and firms will have to comply unless there are "legitimate" grounds to retain it.

...

"The commissioner said that firms would have to explicitly seek people's permission to use data about them and could not proceed on the basis of "assumed" consent in situations where approval was required.

"Her proposed law says that internet users must also be notified when their data is collected, and be told for what purpose it is being processed and for how long it will be stored.

"The bill also suggests people must be given easier access to the data held on them, and should have the right to move it to another provider in addition to the right to have it deleted."

An amended complaint has been filed in the publisher price fixing case, as expected, consolidating individual actions.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/arti...

"In a amended complaint filed January 20, Hagens Berman, the law firm chosen in December to consolidate the class action lawsuits charging that Apple and major publishers conspired to fix e-book prices, argued that the adoption of the agency model has driven up the cost of e-books by as much as 50%, costing consumers millions of dollars. The new complaint does not include Amazon and Random House. Although some of the original suits had included those companies, Hagens Berman’s consolidated complaint limits the suit to Apple, HarperCollins, Penguin, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan, and dubs those publishers the “Agency 5.” "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Action

"Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a "blackout" of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

...

"Therefore, on behalf of the English Wikipedia community, the Wikimedia Foundation is asked to allocate resources and assist the community in blacking out the project globally for 24 hours starting at 05:00 UTC on January 18, 2012, or at another time as determined by the Wikimedia Foundation. ... Sister projects, such as the German and Italian Wikipedias and Wikimedia Commons, have indicated an intention to support the same principles with banners on those sites, and the support of other projects is welcome and appreciated."

And the Foundation responds:

"On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, I thank all editors who participated in the conversations, and we accept the recommendations, and will work hard to follow the recommendations to the best of our ability."

Via Gary Price's (@infodocket) quick elementary research, there are some interesting members of the AAP - http://publishers.org/members/

1.  Library of Congress 
2.  United Nations Publications 
3.  RAND 
4.  National Geographic Society 
5.  National Academies Press 
6.  Modern Language Association of America 
7.  Ithaka (JSTOR and Portico) 
8.  IMF 
9.  Highwire Press 
10.  Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (incl. Atlantic Monthly Press) 
11.  Getty Publications 
12.  Council on Library and Information Resources 
13.  CrossRef 
14.  City Lights Booksellers & Publishers 

and of course, most of the substantial university presses such as the University of Chicago Press and The Johns Hopkins University Press.  The academic and library communities should request clarification from these members on their stance on AAP's support of Issa's proposed legislation.

http://www.publishers.org/press/56/

A wide ranging interview with robert darnton of harvard. for me, the heart of the interview imo is bwlow:

http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/2012/01/robert-darnton-interview-google-book...

"The cover-to-cover deep reading that was typical of my generation when we were students is now almost extinct, and instead you’ve got superficial reading: reading snippets and tweets and cutting texts up into tiny units that really prevent any appreciation of the whole sweep of a text. I have one half-answer to that, which isn’t adequate but I think deserves consideration. And that is, first of all, that this cover-to-cover deep reading shouldn’t be exaggerated as something that occurred in the past. We have learned a lot about the history of reading ... and one thing we have learned is that, for example, sixteenth-century humanists rarely read a book from cover to cover. They were reading what we today would call ‘snippets’, or even ‘tweets’, they were taking -

"Q. As in the Commonplace Books?

"That’s right. They were taking short passages out, copying them into Commonplace Books, and using those passages for various purposes, often rhetorical battles at court by their patrons, or what ever it was. But this was not reading in the way that we like to imagine it. Now, of course, deep reading also did take place. ... But I’m not sure that we can assume that it was typical.

"Has deep reading become extinct today? ... Perhaps the big difference is this: when I teach courses on the history of books, I try to sensitise students to the physical aspects of books, and how those physical aspects convey meaning. It’s not just erudition for the bibliographical sake of erudition, but rather, a question of how paratextual elements and so on shape the message that is being conveyed in the text, and the way the reader makes sense of that message. So, I do find that students who are, so-to-speak, ‘digital natives’ and are used to electronic communication are very excited about this new way of looking at old books. Their reactions are much more energising than those of students, say, twenty years ago who saw the world of print as the established world: one that had existed since Gutenberg and was never going to change."

Google filed today in Chin's court to dismiss the AG suit because they assert the AG cannot claim associational status in this case because the facts on the ground are essentially too muddy for them to know, well, what they can actually claim. Grimmelmann's got the low-down.

http://laboratorium.net/archive/2011/12/22/google_moves_to_dismiss

"Google’s argument, in a nutshell, is that the legal issues this case will confront will require too much individualized proof for associational standing to work. As Google sees it, deciding whether its scanning and indexing infringes on each author’s book will require deciding (a) whether that author really owns the relevant rights, and (b) whether Google has a fair use defense specific to that book. Both of these inquiries, Google alleges, are so fact-dependent that they will “require[] the participation of individual members in the lawsuit,” thereby making associational standing impermissible.

"Google’s arguments on both of these points are interesting. When it comes to ownership, Google brief effectively asserts that the e-rights situation for books is a tarpit in a bog under a swamp shrouded in fog. You want to sue us as an association, it asks? Fine. Just sort out who owns e-rights throughout the publishing industry first. Get back to us when you’re done. "

The National Library of Sweden has cancelled negotiations with OCLC to become a member of WorldCat as a result of irreconcilable differences over OCLC's restrictions on bibliographic record use.

http://www.kb.se/english/about/news/No-deal-with-OCLC/

Included in their explanation is this rather eye-opening paragraph:

"Nor would the National Library be able to deliver bibliographic data to Europeana and the European Library if it were to become part of WorldCat. Europeana aims at only obtaining data that can be made available under open license. The issue has been discussed with OCLC; they argue that making bibliographic records originating in WorldCat available in Europeana under open license conflicts with the WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities Statement as it is not consistent with the responsibility of WorldCat members to ensure the long-term viability and utility of WorldCat."

Gary Price unearths an announcement from Purdue Univ. Libraries that reveals they signed a single year, $2.9MM "Big Deal" package with Elsevier, pretty much under the proverbial shotgun. ("We'll cut off your access in January unless you sign on the dotted line ... ").

Purdue is a major, very important science and engineering school.

http://infodocket.com/2011/12/19/scholarly-publishing-purdue-university-signs...

"Purdue signed another one-year contract with a publishing company that allows access to journal articles necessary for research for $2.9 million, after being threatened to be cut off in January if the contract was not singed by the end of the month.

"Elsevier is one of the largest publishing companies. Purdue uses this company so its faculty and researchers may publish their work in world-renown journals and be able to access the articles later. This is used mostly for scientific and engineering articles. Trustee Bruce White described the way the company is charging and raising rates as "truly a monopolistic operation.""

Steve Gillmor has an interesting take on the "end of email" discussion, certainly one of the most insightful that I have seen.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/18/remembering-email/

"Our kids already understand that email is fading. They model the world on Facebook, tracking invites in their message stream or as event invites. At a glance they see who’s coming, who’s not, and why not. A calendar invite carries none of that context unless you go to a web page, which for those too young to remember is an early form of social media. Foursquare tells you you’re late or on time based on who you know showing up or not. GPS is people.

"Our kids have the advantage of not having to deconstruct email and calendar. They don’t have to move their friends into the new paradigm; they’re already there with them.

...

"Change is ratified by the difficulty in rolling back. What was once hard to imagine let alone accept can become so obvious as to be ignored. In a world dominated by mobile, the invisible triumphs in the cloud, is passed along as entertainment, and then ratified by economy of scale in time saved. The reason email will disappear is because it is the single most effective tool for moving to social."