Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Important digital books ruling in Federal court in New York

The EFF reports on its blog that Judge Denny Chin in NY has rejected a settlement agreement between the Authors Guild and Google in this decision.  This is a very complicated class action suit wherein The Author's Guild represents the class of people who own copyrights of printed books.  The EFF objected to the settlement because of privacy concerns for how Google will track what people are reading.

However, Microsoft and Amazon objected based on anti-trust concerns, that the settlement would effectively give Google the rights to all unclaimed works.  The court found this logic persuasive.  This is because the settlement required the owners of books to simply notify Google that Google had digitized their book, and Google would cut them a check, as low as $60.00.  Judge Chin noted that he would consider a settlement wherein the current opt out system was replaced by an opt in system.  Since Google has, in fact, already digitized a massive quantity of books, it is not clear what the opt in system would look like.

Amazon, who has an opt in policy for the Kindle consisting of a revenue split between Amazon and the rights holder, would be at an obvious disadvantage if Google could just digitize a book and pay an author after the fact.  However, Google's quest to make all books available for everyone is also compelling.  Obviously, this fight is far from over.

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