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Google Files a Revised Books Settlement Proposal
At 14 minutes to midnight last night, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers filed a revised settlement agreement with a US district court in New York. Here is the blog post of Dan Clancy, Google Books engineering director. Google has provided an outline of the differences from the original settlement (PDF) and a FAQ (PDF); the full revised settlement (PDF) is also available. In brief, the changes include limiting the settlement to books published in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia; a court-appointed fiduciary to represent the rights of orphaned works' (undiscovered) rightsholders; and further opening up Google's library to competitors in ways that don't favor Google. The new plan was immediately criticized as a "sleight of hand" by the Open Book Alliance, a consortium of Google's opponents including Microsoft and Amazon. The Internet Archive said, "None of the proposed changes appear to address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest."
As it is now competitors cannot scan their own books, it's against the law. Each party should now negotiate their own settlement with the authors guild and since the authors guild has absolutely zero incentive to do that this is a classic anti-trust case. Ofcourse the only real solution here is to stop these stupid class action lawsuits and just reform copyright law. Internet archive and project Gutenberg are at this a lot longer and they would've scanned lot's more books if they where allowed to.
Dyslexics are teople poo
Google is trying to include a MAP BOOK my friend published 12 years ago. The company he had then is no longer is business, but he is updating the map every few years and publishing with a different company.
Google's OPT-OUT process is confusing and stupid.
Why should they get to sell a book that's only 12 years old, and a book that is in print and updated although under a different company name??
Isn't 12 years a little to recent to grab the copyright and sell, especially when it competes with an update product??
He's having a bear of a time opting out.
I love the tie in to the library of Alexandria.
It was a library where everything in it was a copy. They literally copied every book that came through town and put it there for public use.
Today that would be heresy, evil to be sure and they would be burned to the ground. How do we look back on Alexandria? One of our greatest educational and cultural achievements of all time. Many people are still upset thinking about it burning down, the books destroyed.
Google is attempting to make old dead books available (selling them FOR the author, while taking a small slice). And we think this is a bad thing? This is pathetic. We should be and authors as well should be thanking Google for saving these fading books.
Copyright grants authors exclusive rights to their books for the entire length of the copyright term. This means Google is not allowed to sell out-of-print books without the author's permission, nor does it get to decide for how much the books are to be sold to them. The lawyers have betrayed the class by turning a lawsuit against Google into a settlement that benefits Google more than it benefits the class. The class was expecting a remedy, but instead they got their exclusive rights sold to Google under the terms of the settlement.
Perhaps it's true that the world would benefit from an orphaned works policy, but a class action lawsuit is not the proper place to set such policies. Orphaned works is a legislative issue, not to be settled for all authors through strategic class-action settlements.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."