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Delay, Renegotiation Sought For Google Books Settlement

Posted by Soulskill on from the back-to-the-drawing-board dept.

Miracle Jones writes "The Google Books settlement has been removed from consideration by Google and the Authors Guild after the DoJ made it crystal clear that the settlement would not be ratified 'as is' due to foreign rights, privacy, and antitrust reasons. The October 7th 'fairness hearing' has been canceled, and the next step is a November 6th 'status hearing' where the plaintiffs will reveal changes to the new settlement, such as how they plan to make it more fair, legal, and inclusive, and whether or not they will need to notify all the members of the class action lawsuit (7 million writers or so) yet again as a result of the changes. Some people are very happy about this."

6 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Historical analogy by TorKlingberg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is like when airplanes were invented. Before that if you owned land, you owned it all the way up to the sky. Imagine if every airline and hobby pilot had to get permission from each individual owner of the land they would fly over. Well, it was decided that property rights would have to yield to progress. There are of course limitations, such as how low you can fly, noise and other things that actually affect the land owner.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights

  2. Good by pavon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Class action lawsuits shouldn't be allowed to absolve future infringement against an entire class just because a few people agreed to the terms. This settlement should have dealt solely with liability for past infringement, and terms of further distribution should be handled in an opt-in manner, or by changing the law (which does need to be changed to better handle abandoned works).

  3. What did Google do wrong? by Eponymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't understand what Google is doing wrong. Can somebody please explain it what it is that so many people and corporations object to? I've read a bunch of articles but none have explained what the actual underlying problem is.

    The closest thing I've heard that makes sense is that a book (unlike a web page) was never written with the understanding that it would be read and indexed by a machine. But really, I have a hard time seeing how this would hurt authors or publishers or anybody. The benefits seem great.

    -ec

    1. Re:What did Google do wrong? by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Rough translation of the current state of affairs:

      Google has been eyeballing this huge mass of abandoned property, as have a few other companies. Google has finally moved toward putting this property to some use. Understand, the use is not an "exclusive" thing - they are just going to use it, since no one else is. Little kids can still romp and play on the property, people can do anything they like.

      But, other corporations see Google preparing to use the property, and fear that Google might make money from it in some way. Of course, if there is any financial gain to be had, then "MY COMPANY" should be entitled to some of it.

      In effect, the new negotiations are meant to ensure that other people and companies CAN make money. There really isn't much more to it than that.

      Odd, that Project Gutenberg has been quietly doing the same thing for some years now, and no one has jumped on them. No one else has volunteered to step forward, and get their hands dirty. Much ado about nothing, IMHO

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  4. Re:Win? by eleuthero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Part of the original settlement has unfortunately made much of the google book search feature worthless for people in my field--too many books are restricted to "snippet" view by the publisher. I have purchased two books as a result of successful searches on Google because I wanted to have a physical copy for when the search still worked but the viewing of pages went past the limit. I have purchased none of the books I couldn't search through because I couldn't find the content. The library has been helpful but having a physical copy and an unlimited search to go alongside it has been vital to my studies.

  5. Re:A Small Victory for "Good" in Battle v. "Evil" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some clauses on orphaned works,

    That's one of the big ones right there, since the way Google's deal was set up the first time around, "orphaned works" weren't always "orphaned works". They basically equated "orphaned works" to "not for sale in the USA, but quite likely still in print and under copyright in their countries of origin however we don't care."