European Commission hearing on Google Books Settlement

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There was a European Commission hearing on Google Books Settlement on Sept. 7th. Google Books' speech to the EU is at:
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/speeches/google-books-hearing. Of particular interest is the paragraph on DRM "Our second concern is Digital Rights Management. ebooks sold online may be obliged by rights holders to include DRM. DRM has clear and significant adverse effects for the law-abiding consumer. It is used to create vendor lock-in, and force resales and upgrades. It can prevent completely legitimate activities, including transfer between formats and devices, fair dealing uses of works, and even
the ability to have text read aloud automatically - a crucial need for the partially sighted."

Two additional interesting posts (extracted from the EDRI-gram newsletter of Sept. 9):
"It is time for Europe to turn over a new e-leaf on digital books and copyright". Joint Statement of EU Commissioners Reding and McCreevy on the occasion of this week's Google Books meetings in Brussels (7.09.2009)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/09/376&format=H
TML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Bringing the world's lost books back to life (7.09.2009)
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2009/09/bringing-worlds-lost-books-ba
ck-to-life.html