Alles over Opting Out of the Google Books Settlement, Pro & Con | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | Slashdot | 2009-08-19 14:50:54
Here are diametrically opposing view on what authors should do about the upcoming deadline to opt out of the Google Books settlement. Miracle Jones writes "The William Morris Agency has come out strongly against the Google Books settlement for its clients, citing the fact that the settlement creates a non-competitive marketplace for a whole new product (orphan books), in addition to containing provisions that will make it impossible for writers to remove books from the database after 27 months have passed: 'We believe that the license being given to Google to publish and display with impunity out-of-print "orphan" works (where the rights owner is unknown and estimated by the Financial Times to be between 2.8 and 5 million books out of 32 million books protected by copyright in the United States) will open the door to establishing Google as the most comprehensive database, potentially a monopoly, with unfair bargaining power.'" On the other side of the debate, James Gleick writes "With the deadline approaching for 'opting out' of the Google Books settlement, the Authors Guild has posted an aggressive explanation of who it thinks should do that: no one. Not a single author in the world, it argues, stands to benefit from removing himself or herself from the class. This comes as part of a new set of 'Answers' meant to push back against what the authors group thinks is widespread confusion about the settlement; they also address questions about just what kind of money we might be talking about, and what kind of control authors will have over Google's use of their work."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gswBfv9Ydv0/Opting-Out-of-the-Google-Books-Settlement-Pro--Con
Alles over Google Books partners with Chinese publishers | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | Software Headlines :: Index | 2006-07-06 07:41:50
Google Books, a program thats been controversial in the US, has reportedly penned a deal with four publishing houses in China. Rival Baidu has deals with Chinese libraries instead; its program has access to 15 million books, the largest online collection of Chinese books in the world.Working with libraries is the approach Google came under fire for in the US when publishers said their copyrighted materiel was being included in the program without their permission. The search company took an opt-out approach in the US. Its notable that Windows Live Book Search has an opt-in program for publishers and Google appears to be following its lead when formulating its China strategy. Google Book Search China will give readers acccess to excerpts from books and require payment to read the full works. Though book search has not inspired a whole lot of interest in the US, Chinas long literary tradition may make this part of search more important there. I dont know how things work in China, but it seems that partnering with libraries instead of publishers would be the best way to access thousands of years worth of books. Given all the lawsuits against US companies lately for failing to respect intellectual property in other countries, perhaps Google is taking a safe approach in China.Google BooksTags: TechCrunch, Web2.0, , library2.0, libraries, China, Google, books, GoogleBooks Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch?m=1023 Marshall Kirkpatrick http://www.softwareheadlines.com/modules/planet/view.article.php/13355
