-Publishers Weekly, February 1, 2010 by Andrew Richard Albanese
http://www.publishersweekly.com/index.asp?layout=talkbackCommentsFull&talk_back_header_id=6641791&articleid=CA6717077

University of California, Berkley law professor Pamela Samuelson, in a brief filed last week on behalf of over 100 academic authors, many of them legal scholars, argued that the Authors Guild and its members “do not share the interests, professional commitments or values of academic authors.”

-San Jose Mercury News, February 4, 2010 by Mike Swift
http://www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_14336753

“The future of public access to the cultural heritage of mankind embodied in books is too important to leave in the hands of one company and one registry that will have a de facto monopoly,” Samuelson and the group of academics argued.

-Palo Alto Online, February 5, 2010 by Susan Kostal
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=15634

“Until the U.S. Justice Department says this is a clear antitrust problem, I don’t think the judge will find there are antitrust problems,” Samuelson said.

-The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2010 by Jessica E. Vascellaro
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01/27/amazon-and-others-slam-revised-google-books-deal/

U.C. Berkeley Professor Pam Samuelson submitted an objection on behalf of a group of academic authors. “We do not believe that the settlement of a class action lawsuit is a proper way to make such a profound set of changes in rights of authors and publishers, in markets for books, and procedures for resolving disputes as the (settlement) would bring about,” the letter read.

-Inside Higher Ed, January 29, 2010 by Steve Kolowich
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/29/google

“We believe that most unclaimed works in the [Google Book Search] corpus will prove to be books written by scholars for scholars, and most such authors would prefer that their out-of-print books be available on an open-access basis,” the professors say in a public draft of the letter.

PBS NewsHour, December 30, 2009 by Spencer Michels
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec09/google_12-30.html

There really are not checks and balances in the agreement about pricing strategies. And it seems like, the more books that Google scans, the higher the prices can be. The entire thing transformed itself into a commercial enterprise. It’s basically turned this project into a bookstore, rather than a library.

Wired, December 11, 2009 by Priya Ganapati
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/diy-book-scanner/

If you scan a book that you have already purchased, it is “fine, and fair use,” she says. “Personal-use copying should be deemed to be fair, unless there is a demonstrable showing of harm to the market for the copyright at work,” says Samuelson.

Publishers Weekly, December 7, 2009 by Andrew Richard Albanese
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6710195.html

Samuelson’s criticism captures the conflict at the heart of this deal: should the parties be allowed to possibly bend the law because of the settlement’s potential cultural benefits? No, Samuelson insists. “Arguments that the settlement is in the public interest should be directed to Congress, not the courts,” she writes. “The GBS class action settlement would set a dangerous precedent and undermine democratic values.”

-CNET News, November 16, 2009 by Elinor Mills
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10398995-93.html

“The risk of price gouging over time is very high and universities in particular have experienced excessive increases in prices of scholarly journals over the last few years,” she said.

-The Wall Street Journal, Law Blog, November 17, 2009 by Ashby Jones
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/11/17/the-google-books-settlement-a-lawsuit-ripe-for-congress/

“Nobody should get a license to orphans without congressional action,” said Pamela Samuelson, a professor at UC-Berkeley School of Law. “This is a legislative matter — you shouldn’t use a class action for that.”

-The Huffington Post, November 17, 2009 by Pamela Samuelson
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-samuelson/new-google-book-settlemen_b_358544.html

To my mind, the most serious problem with GBS 1.0 has not been cured by GBS 2.0. Google will still get a de facto monopoly right to commercialize all out-of-print books, including the orphans, through the class action settlement process. No one else can get a comparable license, and hence no one else can offer a comprehensive database of books to allow competition in the market for institutional subscriptions.

-Library Journal, November 18, 2009 by Norman Oder
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6707799.html

“While I think that there were some substantial changes that were made to it, it more had to do with getting foreign rights holders out of the settlement and trying to respond at least in part to issues that the Department of Justice raised,” Samuelson said.

The New York Times, November 9, 2009 by John Schwartz
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/10patent.html?_r=2

Pamela Samuelson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said, “It’s not very often that some obscure issue of patent law can excite so much attention.” Professor Samuelson, who was an author of a brief … said it was time for the court to tap the brakes on the business patents rush.

San Jose Mercury News, November 1, 2009 by Mike Swift
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_13680481

“Google has done a great job of shining the spotlight on things about the settlement that people would find attractive, but they don’t tell you some of the stuff that would be most worrisome about it.”

TIME, October 31, 2009 by Theo Emery
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1933055,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

“The logic of the agreement, I think, is going to put Google in a very privileged position in the digital book market.”

The Huffington Post, October 14, 2009 by Pamela Samuelson
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-samuelson/google-books-is-not-a-lib_b_317518.html

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.