Photographers Want Their Cut From Google's Ebooks

It's not just the writers anymore: carluva writes "The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) and several other visual artist groups are suing Google over its digitization of of millions of books, claiming copyright infringement related to images within the books. The photographers initially wanted to be included in the authors' and publishers' class action suit, but filed their own suit after that request was denied. Google and others assert that images are only included in the digital copies when permission has been obtained from the copyright holder."

Comments

Re:Me too

[TheRaven64]

They aren't quibbling over paying anyone, they are just trying to find a blanket way to offer payment to those who deserve it

No they aren't. They are trying not to pay anyone. They committed large-scale commercial copyright infringement. Then, in response to a lawsuit, they tried to cut a deal. If Google had been held to the same standards as individuals, they would have had to pay $7,500 to $150,000 per book. Those are the statutory penalties in the USA. For the number of books they've made available, the statutory fines could have bankrupted the company.

If Google had really been acting in a non-evil way, they'd have pushed for the law to be changed to require compulsory licensing for out-of-print works and tried to reach an agreement with the publishers before hand for in-print works. Instead, they used a legal loophole to try to get a special exemption for them (but no one else) retroactively.