The Authors Guild et al v. Google Inc.

Filing 791

LETTER addressed to Judge Denny Chin from Paul N. Courant dated 1/18/2010 re: I write to express my interest in speaking at the Fairness Hearing per your order of 19 November 2009. My interest in the case are many. I am an active scholar in economics and public policy, and am the author of many works that are subject to the settlement. I am also the University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan, and was the Provost and Executive Vice-President of the University at the time that Google began scanning the University's collections. In my role as librarian I oversee the University of Michigan Press, a significant academic publisher. As Provost and as Librarian I have been closely engages for several years with the Google scanning project, and the aspects of the settlement that have implication for participating libraries. As an active scholar and mender of the author class, as an academic administrator, and as the head of a major research library with responsibility for a university press, it is my strongly held opinion that the settlement will be of great benefit to the general public and to scholarly practice and progress. I would be most grateful for the opportunity to share these views with the Court at the Fairness Hearing.(mbe)