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."

Comments

Google Is A Steamroller

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Google does not care what Microsoft thinks. Google does not care what publishers think. Google does not care what you think.

Google's stated objective is to gather, index and make publicly searchable every piece of information on the planet. Books included. They don't care about minor setbacks like publishers or authors complaints, or even lawsuits. Google is going to keep on scanning and digitising books and will quite patiently wait until the day it feels it can get away with putting them online. I imagine that their are literally millions of works sitting on Google's backend servers, waiting for the day when Google can use its muscle to get an agreement. Perhaps you might regard this as a good thing.

Now ask yourself this: What else has Google put on its backend servers?

I remind everyone reading this that aside from the odd token law, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever restricting private companies from compiling and indexing whatever data they want internally. Who knows what kind of information on people and societies that Google is privy to, and what applications they have in store for it. Stop and think about projects like Streetview. A lot of people really do not like the idea of pictures their houses and gardens being put on a globally accessible site, linked to map information. Does Google care? No. They'll continue to gather Streetview data, even in places where it is illegal to put it online, patiently waiting for the day when they can do as they please.

Google is a steamroller. You may think you've stopped them today, but they'll go on gathering information, and indexing it, and making application for it until they can wow a judge, or legislature, or the public with some fantastic application which shows how easy and harmles it is to provide all this data. Meanwhile, we have a private corporation with a now gargantuan databases on the lives, habits and details of the majority of the online population; soon to the the majority of the world population. How far do they have to go, before this becomes wrong?

This company's stated ambition is to know everything. How much do they know already?

Tricksy Lawyerses

[Adrian Lopez]

While I'm totally on Google's side when it comes to scanning books -- with or without permission -- for the purposes of making them searchable online, I find it outrageous that a lawsuit designed to stop Google from doing that should end up granting them rights they wouldn't have enjoyed before the lawsuit. It feels like a betrayal of the class by a plaintiff with somewhat narrower interests than those of the parties actually represented by the class.

Re:NO, Google is becomming the Public Domain

[Thing 1]

Has Google maps been a positive force on society. Probably yes, but consider the effect on companies like TomTom.

Has the automobile been a positive force on society? Probably yes, but consider the effect on companies that sell buggy whips (who didn't then migrate into S&M paraphernalia). And the effects on butterflies, deer, etc.

TomTom has no innate right to make money based on their mapping technology. Sorry.