Culture

Times of London Drops Paywall for Queen; Book of Mormon Stolen

Today in books and publishing: The class-action lawsuit against Google gets the go-ahead, the Times of London paywall temporarily comes down, and a copy of the Book of Mormon has been purloined.

By Ray Gustini
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Today in books and publishing: The class-action lawsuit against Google gets the go-ahead, the Times of London paywall temporarily comes down, and a copy of the Book of Mormon has been purloined.

Ooh, a federal court judge in Manhattan has refused to dismiss a claim by The Author's Guild that Google misappropriated the work of members in an attempt to build a digital library of unholy size and scope. That means thousands -- literally thousands -- of authors can join in on a class action lawsuit against the Internet behemoth. [Reuters]

The Times of London and Sunday Times  -- possessors of the one the few truly impregnable paywalls in modern publishing -- will be abandoning the system but only temporarily so readers can access stories Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee for free. How very sporting, how very English of them. [The Guardian]

Ellen Levine -- author of the very good children's books Henry's Freedom Box and Darkness Over Denmark -- has died. She was and was suffering from lung cancer. Her publisher, Scholastic, announced her death. [AP]

A first edition of the Book of Mormon -- the real Book of Mormon -- was stolen from a rare bookstore in Mesa, Arizona "sometime before Memorial Day weekend." There are just 5,000 first edition copies of the book is existence. It's valued at $100,000, but the owner of the store didn't have it insured. [Jacket Copy]

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.