On Tuesday, a settlement between the Google and the book publishers and authors came through after Google's controversial run with the Book Search program. The Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers had filed independent class action lawsuits wanting injunctive relief. They claimed large scale copyright violation and a potential loss of their eBook market. See here.
The settlement, awaiting court approval, is aimed to "breathe new commercial life into ...out-of-print Books, and to provide an innovative marketing tool for authors and publishers of in-print Books." Specifically, Google will be permitted to sell subscription to its Digitized Book collection or simply provide anytime access to millions of books, which it will make available virtually.
For showing snippets of books that are copyright protected and in print, permission of the Right holders is required. Snippets implies "three or four lines of text from a Book ...with up to three snippets per user for that Book." If Google wants to show more than snippets of such books, it will still need to get the Right holder's permission. Google will also have permission to make available out of print books. This has gotten a favorable response because it increases the longevity of books that were not in demand and thus out of print. Needless to say, books in the public domain will be have their entire content displayed. The concern however is the problem this arm of the settlement will have on orphan works. Right holders can opt out of this Settlement altogether, and the deadline for it is April 05, 2011.
Libraries, by signing Google's Digitization Agreement, will provide their books to be converted to a digital medium. A prerequisite will be getting the Right holder's assent. An interesting outcome of this lawsuit is that Google will be funding the Book Registry. The Registry will keep a list of books, the right holders list and instructions for exclusion or inclusion of Books.
However, this settlement is going to leave a significant question unanswered -was the unauthorized scanning of books permissible as fair use?
I don't think so. I guess the attitude is that since digitization seems as inevitable as tomorrow, might as well ride the wave...
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