Google To Remove "Inappropriate" Books From Digital Library

Miracle Jones writes "In an interview with Professor (and former Microsoft employee) James Grimmelmann at the New York Law School, who is both setting up an online clearinghouse to discuss the Google book settlement and drafting an amicus brief to inform the court about the antitrust factors surrounding "orphan books," he revealed that Google will be able to moderate the content of its book scans in the same way that they moderate their YouTube videos, leaving out works that Google deems "inappropriate" from the 7 million library books it has scanned. The Fiction Circus has called for a two-year long rights auction that will ensure that these "inappropriate" titles do not get left behind in the digital era, and that other people who are willing to host and display these books will be able to do so. There is only one week left for authors and publishers to "opt out" of the settlement class and retain their rights or raise objections, and Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has been stopped from jumping on board Google's settlement as a party defendant and receiving the same legal protections that Google will get. A group of authors, including Philip K. Dick's estate, has tried to delay the settlement for four more months until they get their minds around the issue." In related news, Google is seeking a 60-day extension to the period in which it's attempting to contact authors to inform them of their right to opt-out of the terms of the settlement.

Comments

Re:How can a third pary lawsuit change my rights?

[wordsnyc]

What I don't understand, as an author who holds copyright in at least one book that is out of print, is: how can a lawsuit to which I am not a party give *my* rights under copyright law to someone else?

That seems to be fundamentally wrong.

Bingo. The Authors Guild (of which I used to be a member) convinced an idiot judge that they represent your interests. Then they "settled" with Google by taking a huge bribe in return for agreeing to Google creating a huge monopoly on digitized books. It's the American way.

Tangentially, I find it somewhere between interesting and amusing (or perhaps scary) that Google appears to have made no attempt to contact me, despite the fact that I'm hardly the most difficult person to find.

Even more tangentially, there doesn't seem to be any place to go to see if google has actually digitized a book in which I have rights. Someone please correct me if there's a way to do that. (But in any case, why should I be the one who has to go and see if they've infringed rights? They are the ones who are supposed to seek permission from me.)

Frankly, this whole "settlement" seems utterly unconscionable.

Yeah, essentially Google bribed a bunch of spineless quislings and rewrote US Copyright law.

Are your books still in print? If so, you probably won't hear from Google directly because the agreement requires affirmative consent by both the author and publisher of "in print" works. If it's out of print, they will notify you, but then assume consent unless you opt out.

All you can do is go to Google Books and search under your name. If they show anything, they've done your book in toto. They may just show "snippets," but they've scanned the whole thing.