results for ‘google’

Alice Gayley was kind enough to pass on an excellent piece from today’s Washington Post that spells out my position on the issue of Google’s scheme of massive copyright infringement better than I can.

This is, by the way, precisely the same argument that the musicians used in objecting to the Napster concept. And, as I have pointed our repeatedly, what Google proposes here is, in my humble opinion, a copyright infringement scheme on a scale more massive–and infinitely more egregious–than Napster, because a corporate giant is perpetrating it, not a bunch of college kids looking to download a few free songs.

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Well, now a publisher’s trade association has joined the fray in the fight against Google’s massive copyright infringement scheme. The Association of American Publishers’s press release states, quite correctly, that “the bottom line is that under its current plan, Google is seeking to make millions of dollars by freeloading on the talent and property of authors and publishers.”

This new lawsuit joins the suit filed by the Author’s Guild last month. The press release issued when the Author’s Guild suit was filed said, “This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law. It’s not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will …

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Google has commenced a program intended to make more books available on-line, in a free digital format. As an author, I have intensely mixed feelings about this program. On one hand, anything that promotes the further distribution of books or which in any way spreads the word about my work is potentially a good thing. Likewise, I wholeheartedly support the idea of making public domain works available for free in a digital format. Everyone wins there, and no authors are hurt since their entitlement to royalties expired long ago. However, as a lawyer, there is little doubt in my mind that that portion of this program that deals with works that are still subject to protection constitutes copyright infringement on …

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I found a fascinating publication while poking around on the Google Books site. Gen. Antoine Fortuné De Brack, a French cavalry general, published an outposting manual for use by the French cavalry. The third edition of his book was published in 1863, and was later translated and published by the United States Army in 1893. The introduction to this fascinating little volume contains General De Brack’s description of the importance of a light cavalryman:

One must be born a light-cavalryman. No other position requires so much natural aptitude, such innate genius for war, as that of an officer of that arm. The qualities which make the superior man–intelligence, will, force–should be found united in him. Constantly left dependent

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I’ve agreed to participate in what promises to be a really fun event. More than a dozen Savas-Beatie authors are going to assemble in Gettysburg from July 28-30 for what Ted Savas is calling the “author conclave.” The idea is that we authors will assemble there for an opportunity to interact with–and lead tours for–our readers. It will be a chance for many of us to get together for the first time as a group. Ted will be there, as well the Savas-Beatie marketing director, Sarah Keeney.

Here is the schedule:

Sunday, July 28: Gettysburg
Morning (time TBD): Lance Herdegen Tour – Gettysburg: July 1, 1863: The failure of Archer’s Attack on McPherson’s Ridge
1:30 – 3:00 pm: Lance Herdegen …

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Below are the details of the Brandy Station sesquicentennial tour, set for Saturday, June 8, 2013. ONLY THOSE WITH CONFIRMED RESERVATIONS ARE PERMITTED TO ATTEND. RESERVATIONS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED AFTER THURSDAY, JUNE 5.. For a larger version of the map, please click on it.

A Message from Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable:

Dear Tour Registrant,

Thank you for registering for the Brandy Station 150th Anniversary Tour hosted by the Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable (LCCWRT).

As the date for the event is fast approaching, please make note of the following information:

1. Our first “rally point” on June 8 will be the Civil War Trust’s property on the north end of the Culpeper Airport. Please refer to the

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Old friend John Hennessy has written a very interesting post on the Mysteries and Conundrums blog, wherein he addresses the positives and negatives of doing in-depth historical Internet research. I’ve been the beneficiary of John’s largesse–he has shared many of the cavalry-related newspaper articles that he has found with me, including as recently as last week when sent me an entire run of 22 articles by a trooper of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry that appeared in a long-defunct newspaper from Vevay, Indiana called the Vevay Reveille. I’ve actually been toying with the idea of transcribing them all and posting them here.

John is, of course, absolutely correct. Internet access to newspapers–some of my favorite sources, by the way–makes it …

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As some of you may recall, in January of this year, I commenced an experiment. I purchased a black and white Nook with the intention of using it to download public domain regimental histories and the like from Google Books for use in my various projects. A little over a week later, and on the recommendation of Steve Stanley, I exchanged it for a Nook Color. I then began to experiment with it in the hope that I could make it work the way that I hoped to use it. The experiment proved to be terribly frustrating.

I gave up on the experiment today. No matter what we tried, we were unable to make the thing work with …

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Thanks to years of hard work by Lost Causers and neo-Confederates, the true cause of the Civil War–chattel slavery–has been obfuscated. That’s tragic, because it marginalizes an atrocity and takes the focus away from where it should be in an effort to put a human face on the horror of slavery.

This article from Time does a fine job of explaining why it’s important to keep our eye on the ball here and why it’s important to continue to fight the good fight against this nonsense:

The Way We Weren’t
By DAVID VON DREHLE

A few weeks before Captain George S. James sent the first mortar round arcing through the predawn darkness toward Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12,

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After much debate, and with some very valuable information provided by old friend Dave Powell, I took the plunge and bought a Barnes & Noble Nook yesterday. I got the black and white version largely because the color version is difficult to read in bright sunlight, and I anticipate taking the thing out into the field with me from time to time. The black and white version does quite nicely in bright sunlight. The color version also costs about $70 more than the one I bought.

The debate was whether to purchase the Nook or the Amazon Kindle. My plan was to use it for the public domain books that I download from sites like Google Book Search and …

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