• Orphan works–books whose copyright holders are unknown–will be overseen by an independent trustee who will administer their licensing, not by Google.
• Books published outside the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia will be excluded from the settlement.

Those are substantive alterations, but they clearly haven’t placated critics who accuse Google (GOOG) of attempting an “end-run around copyright law as we know it.”

The Open Book Alliance–a coalition whose members include the Internet Archive, Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO)–has blasted the revision twice already, decrying it as “a sleight of hand” intended to distract people from Google’s continued efforts to establish a monopoly over digital content access and distribution.

“The proposed changes fail to address this deal’s fundamental flaws,” Open Book Alliance Co-Chair Gary Reback said in a vitriolic statement. “Despite Google’s effort to spin this deal, it does nothing to promote competition nor does it reform Google’s exclusive access and monopoly hold on this digital database of books. Their proposed ‘unclaimed works fiduciary’ will have zero authority to promote competition or expand access. It is a cynical diversion away from the parties’ continued reliance on the discredited argument that competitors can obtain access through the very means Google did–getting sued for copyright infringement and abusing the class action process. This deal remains rife with anti-trust, class action and copyright violations.”

In a post to its new community site Tuesday, Psystar said it has dumped its original legal counsel and hired Texas-based legal firm Camara & Sibley LLP to represent it.

Why? It’s not entirely clear. Certainly, Psystar’s explanation leaves a lot to be desired. “Psystar has always been more a Cowboy than a Hippie,” the company said. “Now we’ve changed lawyers to better reflect who we are. Everyone here values openness. And that’s how we’re going to fight Apple: in public.”

An ironic claim for the company to be making given that Apple has accused it of being backed by shadowy third parties. But if, as Psystar claims, it as “nothing to hide,” then perhaps it really has nothing to hide.

In any event, we’ll find out in a few months. “A new trial date has been set for January 11, 2010, in federal court in San Francisco,” Psystar said. “As we move toward trial, we’ll be keeping you informed about the arguments, the evidence, and what’s going on in the case. And, come January, Camara & Sibley will be ready to fight for Psystar, guns blazin’.”

And end up a-headin’ for the last roundup, no doubt…

Also: Debtor is suffering under mounting legal costs as it is steadily beaten into submission by Apple (AAPL) and its notoriously vicious legal team.

Pystar’s bankruptcy declaration will delay Apple’s copyright-infringement suit against it, but only temporarily. In the meantime, the company will be allowed to continue to do business and perhaps, strengthen its defense. But on June 5, the date of its bankruptcy hearing, things could get nasty. Psystar will almost certainly be forced to reveal its financial backers, and if they are the nefarious Svengalis that Apple claims, there may be hell to pay.

The judge disagreed. And his reasons for doing so will undoubtedly come into play in the Viacom case and others as well. “Veoh has simply established a system whereby software automatically processes user-submitted content and recasts it in a format that is readily accessible to its users,” the judge wrote. “Veoh preselects the software parameters for the process from a range of default values set by the third-party software. … But Veoh does not itself actively participate or supervise the uploading of files. Nor does it preview or select the files before the upload is completed. Instead, video files are uploaded through an automated process which is initiated entirely at the volition of Veoh’s users.”

Google (GOOG) was understandably quite pleased with the ruling: “It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights,” Zahavah Levine, YouTube’s chief counsel,” said in a statement.

Viacom (VIA) was equally displeased, understandably. “Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners,” the company said in a statement. “Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement–conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA.”

Plus, said Schmidt, Google’s attention is best focused where the real money is, or will be soon: mobile advertising. “We can make more in mobile than desktop, eventually,” Schmidt said. “The reason is because the mobile device is more targeted. Think about it: You carry your phone with you everywhere. It knows all about you. We can use that to do a very, very targeted ad. Over time, Google will make more money from mobile advertising.”

“Copyrights are not supposed to protect board games,” intellectual property attorney Pete Kinsella told CNet News.com. “What copyrights protect is the expression of an idea rather than the idea itself. The law allows people to design around things, and particularly when there isn’t patent protection, the law has great incentive to design around things by making things somewhat different.”

Which is an unfortunate state of affairs for Hasbro (HAS): The newly launched Wordscraper has, in a very short time, already signed up 3,569 users. And it will surely gather more as word of its debut spreads. What will the game company do now? What will it do if Wordscraper’s creators release it as a true board game?

“Scrabble: Every Word’s a WINNER!”

Except for Scrabulous, apparently. The online knockoff of Hasbro’s 75-year-old word game has been removed from Facebook at the game-maker’s request. “In response to a legal request from Hasbro, the copyright and trademark holder for Scrabble in the U.S. & Canada, the developers of Scrabulous have suspended their application in the U.S. and Canada until further notice,” Facebook explained in a statement.

Not exactly a surprise, given recent events. Last week, Hasbro filed suit against Scrabulous creators Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, claiming trademark and copyright infringement. “Hasbro has an obligation to act appropriately against infringement of our intellectual properties,” said Barry Nagler, Hasbro’s general counsel, at the time. “We view the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement of our Scrabble intellectual property, and we are pursuing this legal action in accordance with the interests of our shareholders, and the integrity of the Scrabble brand.”

An understandable view. Scrabulous is, let’s face it, trading on Scrabble’s name and conceit. And, until it was pulled, it had over two million users and was generating over $25,000 per month in revenue–for someone other than Hasbro. That said, when was the last time you played Scrabble offline?

If you answered, “I can’t recall,” or “at Aunt Marge’s house when I was eleven,” you’re probably like a lot of other folks out there who only rediscovered the game because of Scrabulous. And when you think about it that way, Scrabulous could have been the perfect licensing opportunity for Hasbro (HAS), had the company decided to view it as that, instead of an affront to its intellectual property. Two-million- users-and-growing is a hell of a lot better than the 8,900 users the official Scrabble Facebook app has garnered since its launch earlier this month.