The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, on behalf of a broad class of copyright holders, will join with Google to host a teleconference today to discuss a settlement agreement that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search.
This concerns a class-action suit brought by the Authors Guild and a separate one filed by five large publishers as representatives of the AAP’s membership. The Guild had sued Google in September 2005, after Google struck deals with major university libraries to scan and copy millions of books in their collections.
Roy Blount Jr., President of The Authors Guild, writes:
The settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge before it takes effect, includes money for now and the prospect of money for later. There’ll be at least $45 million for authors and publishers whose in-copyright books and other copyrighted texts have been scanned without permission. If your book was scanned and you own all the rights, you’ll get a small share of this, at least $60, depending on how many rightsholders file claims.
Far more interesting for most of us — and the ambitious part of our proposal — is the prospect for future revenues. Rightsholders will receive a share of revenues from institutional subscriptions to the collection of books made available through Google Book Search under the settlement, as well as from sales of online consumer access to the books. They will also be paid for printouts at public libraries, as well as for other uses.
The settlement is still subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Wow. $125 million strikes me as a pretty cheap deal for Google, given the potential copyright liability. Is this the green light for Google to continue its Internet library project?
This it to preempt any self promotional comment by “Web 2.0 Chick”.
Please excuse me.
We’ve always said that in a sense, Google Book Search is as old as Google itself
Google Book Search !!
First break the law, then profit. Nice! This is an encouraging sign to everyone who wants to run a successful business.
I don’t think Google broke any laws by scanning the books themselves. The issues will arise if/when they begin to distribute the content which is why they’re working on a settlement now.
The reason Google settled, presumably, is that they were concerned that the courts would find that they HAD broken the law by scanning in-copyright books without permission from rightsholders. The potential benefit to writers is not merely the $60 initial payment, but the opportunity to share in the revenues from future use of the work. The 60 bucks is only covers the scanning, not the millions and millions of potential viewers. And if you don’t want your book to be part of it, you can opt out entirely.
This is nice settelment by Google.If someone want to run business he/she should make a agreement between partners.
No enjoy as a publisher.
http://www.iboozi.com
I am sorry to hear Google got sued..:-(
Yeah, everybody are sorry Google got sued. how come a company like that can be sued. They are doing “no evil”
…
get a room
So if your copyrighted book was opened up to millions and millions of potential online viewers, you’ll get maybe $60? Wow, what a deal.
seems like a good deal to me
Is there a better alternative? As an author of six books, I am delighted by what Google did. Publishers pay very little money to authors, except for the tiny percentage that have huge sales.
For anyone writing academic books, the pay-off is to your career from having your book read, not to your bank account from having your book bought. The audiences are simply too small.
By the way, the most interesting part of that Roy Blount piece is the creation of the ASCAP for writers. I think that’s actually huge news. It makes some sense to have a central licensing body for written content in the digital age. If you want to profit from your content, lower the transaction costs.
sounds like a good deal
How exactly do they plan to extract commissions “for printouts at public libraries”??
Absurd.