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DoJ Recommends NY Court Reject Google Book Deal
eldavojohn writes "The BBC and others are reporting on the US Department of Justice's recommendation to a New York court that they reject the Google book deal. The deal has received considerable attention, but for the most part it has been negative."
That's why it's a recommendation.
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
Because it's simple:
Copyright law is an agreement between "the people" (aka the government) and you. The first part of the agreement is that you enjoy protection and exclusive rights to copy and distribute. The second part of the agreement, that copyright holders often forget about, ignore or otherwise disregard, is that in exchange for said protection, the works would be released into the public domain upon expiry of the term of protection.
Here's the problem. The agreement is now lasting longer than the media it is distributed upon. This makes the works for which the people offered you copyright protection, unavailable to the people by the time the agreement expires thereby depriving the people of their public domain works and in fact the cultural and historical value of the works.
By having it available in digital archives, there is an increased chance that the works will still be available whenever the term of the copyright protection agreement has ended.
It's only "exclusive" in the sense that google is the defendant. Any other company is quite free to go through the whole process again ie scan, get sued & make their own settlement. Anyway as I recall google is making these books available to other companies.