The massive Google Book Scanning scheme, and the Google attempt to force a publishing contract onto all authors and their out of print or “orphaned works,” has not met with the approval of the US Department of Justice.

“The amended settlement agreement still confers significant and possibly anti-competitive advantages on Google as a single entity,” the DOJ said.

It said that the agreement would allow the Google to be “the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats”.

Thank you to Miki for being the first of many to send me the news.

At PC World, this interesting tidbit, in case anyone is still unclear as to what all this is really about:

Google Inc. called off its proposed search advertising deal with Yahoo just three hours before the U.S. Department of Justice was to file an antitrust complaint on Nov. 5 aimed at blocking it, according to the lawyer that the government hired to pursue the case.

In an interview with the legal blog AMLaw Daily published Dec. 2, Sanford Litvack – the attorney who would have been the lead counsel on the antitrust case – said that Google and Yahoo decided to abandon the proposed deal shortly after DOJ officials informed them of the agency’s plans to file the antitrust complaint.

Also of interest: Google appeals the French court’s decision over its rejection of Google’s scanning scheme.

The tribunal ruled that by scanning entire books or excerpts and putting them on line, “Google has committed acts of copyright violation to the detriment of Le Seuil” and two other publishers.

The People Versus George Lucas.

Star Wars enthusiasts have made a documentary about their obsession, and how they feel Lucas has failed the franchise:

Fan debate over the extensive changes made by Lucas in special editions of the films released long after the original theatrical runs gets pretty intense in The People vs. George Lucas, Phillippe said: “As documentary filmmakers, we had to distance ourselves from the fact that we’re fanboys and fangirls at heart, to deliver an objective, uncensored, no-holds-barred examination of a unique cultural phenomenon.”

The British Library goes head to head with Google and offers Public Domain works online.

Many of the downmarket books known as “penny dreadfuls” will also be made available to the public, including Black Bess by Edward Viles and The Dark Woman by J M Rymer.

Altogether, 35%-40% of the library’s 19th-century printed books — now all digitised — are inaccessible in other public libraries and are difficult to find in second-hand or internet bookshops.

Author Susan Morgan committed suicide. Under the pen names Zoe Barnes and Sue Dyson, she is said to have popularized the “Chick Lit” genre.

After the breakdown of her relationship with husband Simon, the author – who fought chronic pain caused by two rare auto-immune conditions – became depressed and ‘began to loathe the life she had’, the inquest was told.

A review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:

The woman who provides this book its title, Henrietta Lacks, was a poor and largely illiterate Virginia tobacco farmer, the great-great-granddaughter of slaves. Born in 1920, she died from an aggressive cervical cancer at 31, leaving behind five children. No obituaries of Mrs. Lacks appeared in newspapers. She was buried in an unmarked grave.

To scientists, however, Henrietta Lacks almost immediately became known simply as HeLa (pronounced hee-lah), from the first two letters of her first and last names. Cells from Mrs. Lacks’s cancerous cervix, taken without her knowledge, were the first to grow in culture, becoming “immortal” and changing the face of modern medicine.

A manuscript sequel to the Gormenghast novels has been found in an attic:

Titus Awakes was written by Maeve Gilmore shortly after her husband’s death from Parkinson’s Disease in 1968.

She decided to write the book, which runs to 210 pages, after he left her a page and a half of fragmented notes about how he might have continued the story.