A $125million settlement means consumers will soon be able to read in-copyright books online.
In what has been hailed as the start of the digital reading revolution, Google have been given the go-ahead to make in-copyright books available for public download.
Readers will soon be able to search, preview and read millions of in-copyright but out-of-print books online using Google Book Search. The internet giant are said to already have over 7 million books scanned into their database, many of which are not readily available elsewhere either on or off-line.
Google’s announcement, made yesterday, represents the culmination of a two year copyright lawsuit pursued by the American Association of Publishers and the Authors Guild.
After lengthily negotiations and a reported $125million settlement, a deal has now been reached that will see authors and publishers receive adequate remuneration for their downloaded works. These royalty payments will be coordinated through the Google-funded Books Rights Registry, however, it is yet unclear exactly how downloads will be priced.
At the present time this groundbreaking agreement between Google and key representatives of the US publishing world is still awaiting court approval. However, once the deal gets the green light, internet users will be able to search for books using Google, preview up to 20% of the material for free and be given the opportunity to download the complete work for a fee.
As the settlement is to be agreed by a US court, full access to the in-copyright reading material will initially be reserved for US customers only. For those outside of the US, Google Book Search will continue to operate on its pre-settlement terms, enabling users to simply search and preview select snippets of in-copyright books. Out-of-copyright books scanned into Google Book Search will still remain accessible for all.
Google have however stated that they are "committed to working with rightsholders, governments, and relevant institutions to bring the same opportunities to users, authors, and publishers in other countries" too.
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Comments (11)
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RichardMcLaughlin.biz
19th Nov 2008 18:36
as a former Microsoft employee I see this as a way for MS to do just the same as Google, but on a possibly larger scale. Gates already owns the largest collection of the electronic rights, which could be a good base to begin with, followed by whatever google does.
carlos
19th Nov 2008 22:28
I prefer to read books in paper.
Anne Wingate
20th Nov 2008 05:57
If I find some books I wrote on Google, Google and I are going to round and round and I'm going to get PAID.
Lorraine
20th Nov 2008 14:43
I think 20% free can be too much for some books, such as reference titles or cookbooks. People can get the parts they needed at no charge. There will be no way for authors to make money by the time their little percent gets to them.
I wonder if anyone has addressed the research which was in a Chronicles of Higher Education, that stated "digital" readers read poorly. It had to do with eye coordination and the fact that when reading things from computer screens and from books is very different.
this could mark the beginning of the dumbing down of of literature by only pooling from a few sources of institutions.
Bravo for Google. Another example of their thinking-outside-the-box excellence.
Wesley E. Smith
20th Nov 2008 19:43
It is a good idea because it will give some money to those authors that would not have received any because their books are out of print.
It is also good for the rest of us to peruse those books as we would do at the library.
It it wouldn't be the same, not reading books in paper.
The smell of old books, the crisp feel of new ones, you'd never get to experience that...
Jens Arnt
22nd Nov 2008 16:30
And for those who require it in print there is a number of print-on-demand services exactly for that..
Marshall Banana
30th Nov 2008 22:56
Now they need to do this for old, unavailable, video games
