Publishers Weekly
Le Guin is far from alone in her concerns about the Guild’s representation. Gant has told the court there should be numerous groups of authors, all with separate counsel. And 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.” Since scholars have a different view of publishing, and what might constitute infringement, than, for example, a romance writer might, and since infringement is at the heart of the matter, Samuelson argues that it is unfair to bind the more than 800,000 academic authors in the U.S. under this agreement, especially considering that Google is scanning primarily from academic libraries, which contain mostly academic books.