Re: Authors, publishers, settle suit with Google

[Donald Taylor <dstaylor@sfu.ca>]

>From the Chronicle of Higher Ed story: "The settlement does not 
apply to the use of Google Book Search outside the United 
States." While I'm very happy for residents of the US, this 
decision probably doesn't make any immediate (or medium term) 
difference to most of the globe. It also creates an uneven 
playing field amongst Google Book participants since libraries 
outside of the US who are participating will see fewer benefits 
than the US participants. Or did all non-US participants restrict 
their participation to public domain books? Bye for now, Don

Donald Taylor
Acting Head, Document Delivery Services
e: dstaylor@sfu.ca
Simon Fraser University Library
8888 University Dr.
Burnaby, BC Canada V5A 1S6

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Bridges" <kbridges@uvm.edu>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu, "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, 30 October, 2008 16:54:26 GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: Authors, publishers, settle suit with Google

Well, this is good for libraries if A) the licensing costs are 
reasonable and B)they provide MARC data. I expect many libraries 
would prefer to integrate the books into their catalog and they 
would need that information -- rather than go through Google.

On the legal side, it seems complicated. In many cases, the 
author's rights are in their long settled estates. Does this 
mean, for example, in order for Google to pay the royalties on 
out of copyright materials that these cases would have to be 
reopened in probate court to determine the disposition of the 
revenues? Just determining who the heirs are to some long 
deceased author would seem to be a large problem in itself.

Karl Bridges
University of Vermont


Quoting "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2@yahoo.com>:

> The New York Times mentions an interesting twist on this settlement:
>
> "Libraries, universities, and other organizations will also be
> able to purchase an institutional subscription, which will give
> users the ability to access the full text of all the titles in
> the Google Books index. This, depending on the pricing, could
> turn out to be a revolutionary development for libraries."
>
> See:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2008/10/28/28readwriteweb-end_of_snippet_view_google_books.html
>
> Meanwhile, from another source:
>
> The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that "All public
> libraries in the United States would be given free portals for
> their patrons" (whatever that means). The Chronicle article
> also reports some positive reactions from librarians involved
> in the Google Book Search project:
>
> Article at:
>
> http://chronicle.com/free/2008/10/6010n.htm
>
> Bernie Sloan
> Sora Associates
> Bloomington, IN