Google Book Search Copyright Settlement

[Bonte]

Google Book Search Copyright Settlement
http://books.google.com/intl/en/booksrightsholders/

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-chapter-for-google-book-search.html

In don't know exactly what this settlement will do but it seems that Google can take the next step to own all books ever made. Now hope for Apple to make us a nice ebookreader.

 

[bartelby]

Is this a good thing??

 

[Bonte]

I think it is, its resolving a big problem with the orphan books and lets Google digitize all books without having to deal with every single author and publisher in the world.

Publishers and authors can claim there rights with a certain entity but when they don't a general agreement kicks in, this is especially important for out of print books an orphan works. At least, this is how i understand the text. I'm a small publisher and archiver but i do see that digitizing books is a necessity that will benefit history and ultimately the human race.

 

[mkrishnan]

I'd be curious to see some good non-partisan analysis of this settlement.

I think generally the principle of making these documents available is a good thing -- in fact, I think it would be better if the US had public domain laws that prevent perpetual copyrights from causing low volume books to become almost completely unattainable in practice after they go out of print.

On the other hand, as "nice" as Google is, this is a continuation of a dangerous amount of power in the hands of a for-profit entity.

I'm really curious how this will play out. I can't imagine Google continuing along this path and remaining a private company in 20-30 years without some kind of fairly disastrous results.