Surprisingly few authors have asked me about the Google Settlement, perhaps because most articles about the digital scanning/copyright infringement issues are mind-numbingly written in legalese. I’ve prepared a couple of letters to send to our authors, only to have the status change overnight. While waiting patiently for the “real and final deal”, here’s today’s update from Publishers Weekly.
In a nutshell, some years back, Google started an ambitious plan to scan every single book ever published and making them findable online via key search words. They invited Stephens Press to participate and we agreed, providing copies of our books for scanning. The results of a search offers a small section of a book that includes the search term — a few paragraphs or a page at the most. The search results also offered links to where to buy the book, starting with the publisher. We thought it was a good way to further our reach and help people find our books. We don’t really have any mechanism in place to track a search all the way to a sale, but we’re eternal optimists and assume some books have, in fact, been purchased as the result of a Google search.
The waters got murkier when Google acquired the rights to digitize the holdings of several major libraries, including many out-of-print books. Now it was the libraries giving Google permission to scan these books — but the libraries don’t own the copyrights, just physical copies. Some are out of copyright but others aren’t. It may well require the tracking down heirs and long-defunct publishers in order to acquire permission to scan. Google argues that it is for the greater societal good that these books be made available to the world via their vast, well, vastness.
So you can see the sticky questions that have popped up. Certain entities, including the Authors Guild, took Google to task, and to court. Google agreed to a settlement, but the so-called settlement hasn’t been settled and seems to morph into new complications daily. The Department of Justice ruled on September 18 that the settlement is flawed and all sides need to return to the table.
The issues are complicated and strike at the heart of current copyright law. We can’t very well say no one can help themselves to someone else’s writing without permission except for Google. And what will Google do in the future? Once it “owns” essentially all the books of the land, will it start selling them? On the other hand, should researchers and ordinary folks have access, at least in some limited form, to everything ever written? Weighty questions. Stay tuned.
It is a weighty problem indeed. It is one that will have impact on the written word potentially for generations. Even when copyright is not an issue, the “commodity” aspect of all of these books controlled by one entity is somewhat staggering.
Tom, It definitely has me scratching my head (and many others with bigger heads than mine). How do you reconcile new technologies with the ability to share information with the masses (and is that information that “wants to be free”?) with the rights of the individuals who created it? Maybe in a New World Utopia where all our needs are met, people will create for the pure joy of creation. But in today’s world, starving writers need to eat! Then there’s the issue of putting all that power/information in the custody of one humongous entity. I already believe that much of the publishing world’s woes are related to the bigger is better mentality and the strangulation of indie bookstores and squeezing out of the marketplace of all but the biggest NY publishers. And don’t get me started on the limited offerings at the Big Four of book sales (Target, Walmart, Sam’s, Costco) where people who buy books . . . buy books. Get thee to a real bookstore . . . or library . . . PLEASE!