[A2k] Google settles with publishers

[Manon Ress]

The End of Snippet View: Google Settles Lawsuit with Book Publishers
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2008/10/28/28readwriteweb-e

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By FREDERIC LARDINOIS, ReadWriteWeb
Published: October 28, 2008

Google today announced that it has reached a deal with book publishers
to settle two copyright lawsuits over potential copyright violations
in its Google Book Search product. This $125 million settlement, which
still needs approval from a U.S. district court, will be used to
establish a Book Rights Registry that will ensure that publishers and
authors receive compensation from subscription services and ad
revenue. For users of Google Book Search, this settlement will mean
that they might soon be able to build an "online bookshelf" and buy
licenses to read the full-text of books in Google's index.

Google will now be able to fade out the 'snippet view' in Google Book
Search, which only showed very small amounts of text from a given
book. Instead, most books will now allow readers to preview 20% of the
book.

Book Rights Registry

According to Google, the Book Rights Registry will also help to
address the 'orphan' works problem. For a lot of out-of-print books,
it is virtually impossible to establish the current copyright holder.
However, given that the Books Registry will also be responsible for
distributing the income from licensing and advertising, Google hopes
that this will be an incentive for rightsholders to claim their
abandoned works.

Licenses for Libraries

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.

Google Books is already changing the way many of us are doing our
research, and having access to even more books is only going to move
this trend forward even faster.

It is important to note that this settlement only applies to U.S.
copyright holders. Users outside of the U.S. will not see any changes
to Google Books yet.
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Manon Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org
Knowledge Ecology International
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Fax: +1.202.332.2673