The court is busily scanning hard-copy filings. There were 200 yesterday alone. Here’s my tally:

• A fair number of already-noted electronic filings were redocketed as the clerk’s office scanned the courtesy hard copies as well. The clerks made a fair number of errors in the scanning. Some documents are unreadable, and others are misassociated with the metadata from some completely different filing. As a result, all totals in here are approximate.
• Pam Samuelson’s crackerjack letter on behalf of an all-star group of academic authors objecting to the settlement with concerns about how it “will affect the cultural ecology of public access to books” reached the electronic docket. If you read only one objection, read this one.
• Some eighty-nine German publishers filed one-page letters telling the court that they joined in Scott Gant’s objection and in the one I like to call Harrassowtiz. Somewhat ironically, the letter template noted, “not do we wish to burden this Court with duplicative filings.” Yes, they avoided submitting lengthy briefs, but I would have thought they could all have signed on to a single letter. On the upside, some of them have wonderful letterhead.
• Sixteen Swedish publishers did the same.
• The publishers associations of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland submitted letter objections—both individually and together.
• Another dozen Dutch publishers filed the same form letter in objection that fourteen already have.
• The New Zealand Society of Authors and nine individual New Zealand authors filed substantially identical letters of objection claiming standard Berne and notice problems—and also denying that the court has jurisdiction over them in the first place.
• CDT’s brief, as expected, hit the docket. It walks an interesting middle line: the settlement should be approved but the court should order that Google’s implementation of the settlement should conform to the Fair Information Practices.
• Questia’s brief in objection also hit the docket. This one raises some familiar points about competition and copyright from the perspective of a competitor that sees itself as having “played by the rules”—not using works without explicit permission.
• Remember the Media Exchange? They filed a brief that asks the court to affirm “the legal reality that an owner who has lawfully purchased a book is not committing a crime by digitizing that book for his or her own personal use and that they have the right to authorize third parties to do this on their behalf.” Their business model is to digitize physical books sent them by members, and then using DRM to ensure that only one user can access the digital copy at a time. The brief argues that the Media Exchange’s solution is all around better than Google’s.
• The state of Texas filed its own objections to the Registry’s handling of unclaimed funds under its charitable trusts law.
• The Syndicat National de l’Edition—the French national publishers’ association—filed a detailed objection with extensive complaints about Google’s power and the poor quality of its database, in addition to Berne and competition concerns. Two French publishers sent in their own letters joining its objections.
• Judge Chin denied the Open Access Trust and ASMP motions to intervene, and also denied the Harold Bloom group’s discovery request. The ground of denial in both cases was the same: this case has been going on for years and you had plenty of time before to bring this up. He did, however, indicate that he would take their concerns into account as objections.
• The court approved a number of routine procedural matters, granting pro hac status to three attorneys and letting the CCIA file its amicus brief.
• Frequent Lab commenter Ed Hasbrouck opted out by filing a letter with the court. Readers of Lab comments will be familiar with his concerns, which are also described in his Google Books and Writers’ Rights. I was particularly struck by his first point in the letter—that he’s afraid of being swept into the class (and thus bound by the settlement) but then determined not to be a “Rightsholder.” It’s a nice way of putting a sharp point on the deep discomfort some authors feel with the Author-Publisher Procedures.
• EMI Music Publishing opted out with the kind of aggressive neener-neener letter only a lawyer could write. The letter was especially pointed on a procedural issue: EMI (which owns over a million musical copyrights) simply refuses to go to the settlement website and tell Google which works in particular it’s opting out. It takes the position that it has no obligation to, and that it’s Google’s job to figure out which works it needs to steer clear of because EMI owns them. That strikes me as right, given the logic of a class-action settlement. Indeed, the detailed notice is careful to say in the fine print that the plaintiffs only “request (but do not require)” that copyright owners identify their works.
• The AAUP submitted a letter asking for an academic representative on the Registry’s board.
• The library associations’ supplemental comments hit the docket. The comments respond to developments since their initial comments in May, most notably Google’s amended agreement with Michigan. The libraries’ concerns themselves—pricing, censorship, privacy, and Registry diversity—are largely unchanged. The International Federation of Library Associations filed a letter signing on to the American librarians’ positions.
• The UK Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, which plays a role somewhat like the one the Registry would play, sent in a letter praising the settlement as a “pragmatic” solution to the tension between public-serving uses and authors’ rights.
• The UK Booksellers Association sent in a set of recommendations (that include an “executive summary”) generally critical of the settlement. They’re concerned, among other things, with the effects of the settlement on bookshops, and want some form of compulsory licensing. David Drummond’s announcement yesterday comes closest to satisfying their concerns, although I have trouble seeing that being a Google reseller is a viable long-term strategy for most bookshops. Their future is looking fairly bleak, whatever happens to the settlement.
• Diane Aronson, an editor, sent in a letter noting the importance of photocopying in the editing process, and asking the court to ensure that the settlement enables free downloading of passages of limited length for scholarly or critical purposes.
• The German Coalition for Copyright in Education and Society filed a letter raising open access concerns and making recommendations for improving the details of the settlement in open-access friendly ways.
• The Competitive Enterprise Insitute filed a letter arguing (contra the ALA, EFF, etc.) that the court should not mandate privacy protections in the settlement. Consistent with its free-market orientation, the CEI believes that consumers can vote with their wallets over the level of privacy protection they desire.
• More of Google’s library partners filed letters in support of the settlement. I saw new ones from Cornell, the CIC, the University of Virginia, Stanford.
• Gregory Crane, the Editor-in-Chief of the fabulous Perseus Project, wrote in support of the settlement. It’s a beautiful letter; he draws on his experience as a classicist to explain the difference that access to texts and scholarship can make. It’s not an unambiguous endorsement either; he notes the open-access concerns raised in the University of California faculty letter, but regard those concerns as issues that ought to be addressed so that the overall project can move forward.
• More groups concerned with accessibility and equality filed letters in support of the settlement: CUNY LEADS, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and NAFEO. The National Grange (“the nation’s oldest national agricultural organization”) had a nice, succinct letter pointing out the benefits for rural libraries and distance learning. The best of the bunch was a letter from Lateef Mtima and Steven Jamar of Howard University’s law school, which praises the settlement’s potential to close the digital divide; they take the arguments they’re opposing seriously and respond in principled ways rooted in copyright policy.
• More objections from the Japanese: the Japan Visual Copyright Association and authors Shojiro Akashi and Motohiso Ohno. A group of Japanese publishers were kind to us settlement-watchers and filed their letters of objection as a single packet. (Unfortunately for my ability to comment, the letters were all in Japanese.) On the other side, the Japan Writers Association filed a letter in support of the settlement.
• Twenty-one literary agencies in the U.K. filed a joint letter asking the court not to certify the class with respect to foreign rightsholders. They think better notice would have been “trivial” if Google had just run ads on its heavily-trafficked sites telling potential class members to click through for information about the settlement.
• Giles Sandman-Allen submitted a one-page letter requesting a modification of the Author-Publisher Procedures to take better account of how reversion of rights works under foreign copyright law. (His example is that in the U.K., rights automatically revert to the author’s estate 25 years after his or her death.)
• The Dr. Seuss estate wrote a short letter in praise of the settlement.
• Stuart Bernstein and Susan Bergholz, literary agents, filed letters of objection. They’re concerned both about intrusions on their clients’ rights and about the practical difficulties of opting out and managing rights under the settlement’s procedures.
• Mary Lynn Cabrall, author, asked Judge Chin to reject the settlement as a matter of right and wrong: she sees Google as an obvious wrongdoer that’s now being rewarded for its “stealing.” I don’t agree with most of what she says, but her letter is charmingly written. (That’s one of the benefits of watching a major literary-copyright case: there’s lots of eloquence on display.) Other authors with highly personal letters of objection: Jesus Gonzalez, Mark Levine (also a lawyer and it shows), Salley Shannon, and Jay Starkman.
• Harry Lewis and Lewis Hyde, the prime movers behind the Open Access Trust’s intervention attempt, each filed a brief letter of objection.
• The Uniform Law Commission joined with the American Law Institute’s objection—not a broad objection to the settlement, only a focused argument that the Uniform Commercial Code should not be swept up into the settlement’s programs.
• The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (whose acronym contains only one “F”) filed objections. Some reflect their specific interests, such as the point that none of the named plaintiffs is an author of adult trade fiction, and that the settlement doesn’t adequately contemplate publishers of fiction in anthologies.
• Lawprof Raymond Nimmer and lawyer Jeff Dodd filed a letter objecting to the settlement as a kind of “eminent domain.”
• Israeli publisher Shocken Publishing House filed a letter with commentary on the settlement, primarily objections. For example, Shocken believes that in a small country such as Israel, the Public Access service alone could undermine their market. Shocken itself has opted out, but wrote the letter to advise the court to restrict the settlement’s international effect.

And that’s just yesterday. As I type this, there are 108 more filings from today waiting for me to look at. My original plan was to spend the next week writing in detail about all of the filings. It appears I’m going to need to devise a new plan.

As always, the Public Index elves are hard at work uploading everything.