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The Internet Archive has lost a legal battle which could see the whole web get a lot less freaky. The Second Circuit US Court of Appeals upheld a previous ruling in favor of Hachette Book Group. Hachette sued the Internet Archive over a project which scanned library books and lent infinite copies. Hachette and other publishers argued this was “tantamount to piracy,” as Wired phrases it.

The literary executor of George Orwell's estate is accusing Amazon.com of committing an Orwellian crime: doublespeak. In a letter published this week in The New York Times, Bill Hamilton criticized the online retailer for "turning the facts inside out" by alleging that the British author known for the novels "1984" and "Animal Farm" had urged publishers in the 1930s to join together and stop the rise of paperbacks. "I'm both appalled and wryly amused that Amazon's tactics should come straight out of Orwell's own nightmare dystopia, '1984,'" Hamilton wrote.

The U.S. filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple Corp., Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York district court, claiming collusion over eBook pricing. Apple and Macmillan, which have refused to engage in settlement talks with the Justice Department, deny they colluded to raise prices for digital books, according to people familiar with the matter. They will argue that pricing agreements between Apple and publishers enhanced competition in the e-book industry, which was dominated by Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

Wednesday, April 11, 2012 By AppleInsider Staff Published: 10:05 AM EST (07:05 AM PST) An antitrust suit accusing Apple and a number of book publishers of price fixing and collusion was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday. The complaint was filed in a New York district court against Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Penguin, according to Bloomberg. Indications first surfaced on Tuesday that the Department of Justice was readying an antitrust suit. The justice department is expected to settle with "several publishers" this week, as Reuters reported earlier that Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, Macmillan and HarperCollins...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. is finishing off the year by finishing off one more magazine: Shock, its U.S. version of the successful French photo monthly called Shoq. Shock, which hit newsstands here on May 30, was a bid by Hachette to bring something new to American readers: a visually driven title with virtually no ads, plenty of consumer-contributed pictures and no print-edition subscriptions available. "We might open up a new category here," Jack Kliger, Hachette's president-CEO, said back in February. Gamble hadn't worked In a statement today, Mr. Kliger indicated that the gamble hadn't worked. "We...

HACHETTE FILIPACCHI, ONE OF THE world's largest publishers of consumer magazines, is poised to be restructured following a quiet reorganization at its parent company, Paris-based Lagardère SCA. Big moves including consolidation, management changes, and potential sales and/or acquisitions are expected to follow the reorganization, which puts a single executive in charge of Lagardère's two media divisions: Hachette Filipacchi and Lagardère Active, which specializes in digital and mobile media. Didier Quillot, formerly chief of telecom giant Orange France, last week was named chairman of both Hachette Filipacchi and Lagardère Active, and Quillot is expected to consolidate and coordinate their print and...

<p>Saddam: French media mogul MEDIA monolith Hachette Filipacchi, already fearing an anti-French backlash, has a bigger problem: Saddam Hussein owns a $90 million stake in its parent company. Saddam owns just under 2 percent of Lagardere SCA, the French company of which Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., publishers of Elle, Car & Driver, Women's Day and other titles, is a unit. His shares are held by Iraqi-controlled Montana Management, based in Geneva. Saddam's Hachette holdings first came to light when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and the UN Security Council along with the French and U.S. governments acted to freeze Iraq's assets. At the time he was the second-largest shareholder in Hachette SA, controlling 8.4 percent of the company. Fearing a backlash, Hachette brass voiced their intention to buy the Iraqi strongman out, which most people assumed had been done long ago. In fact, Saddam still has his stake and it's currently worth $90 million, a Hachette rep confirmed to PAGE SIX's Jared Paul Stern. "Under international sanctions, blocked assets are being held until future direction from the UN and applicable governments," the rep said. "Those assets are frozen." Since Saddam has no representation on Hachette's board of directors, he has no influence over the company, and Hachette's spokeswoman assured us the firm is unafraid of a backlash. Some American Elle advertisers we contacted yesterday had no idea Saddam ever owned a slice of Hachette. "We don't know anything about it," said a rep for MAC cosmetics. Donna Karan's people had no comment. Reps for Coach, Estee Lauder and Banana Republic were similarly in the dark. In 1990, when the Saddam-Hachette news broke on "60 Minutes," publishers of Hachette magazines placed emergency calls to top advertisers in a bid to keep them from leaving. They also established a "circulation crisis group" to deal with subscribers who wanted to cancel over the news. Hachette has been testing consumer reaction to the fact that it is a French company, to determine whether "guilt by association" will harm it, Hachette U.S. CEO Jack Kliger told Media Industry Newsletter. Americans "feel comfortable buying [Elle] just as they do with say, Evian and L'Oreal, and dining in French restaurants. Remember too, there are Americans who oppose war with Iraq."</p>