View From the Publishing Trenches

I’m still slowly working my way through the 141 pages (plus attachments) of the Google Book Search Settlement negotiated by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Thanks a lot, guys. For nothing.

It is becoming very clear to me that this is a bad agreement with ramifications that will come back to haunt publishers and authors who fail to opt-out by May 5, 2009. And then there are the unintended (except maybe on the part of Google) consequences that the AG and AAP haven’t foreseen.

The primary objection I have had from the very beginning is that this settlement rewards Google for bad behavior, squarely placing the burden for enforcement of existing copyright restrictions on the backs of those who hold those copyrights.

Google’s getting a free ride.

Google took the approach several years ago — when they began scanning every book they could get their grubby corporated hands on — that they had the inherent right to scan and make available every book in the world. Sure, they promised to be careful and only let folks see snippets or just a few pages at a time.

All we had to do was trust them. Yeah, right, trust the 800-pound Internet gorilla that had been thumbing their big nose at authors and publishers everywhere.

Google took the unique — and, in my non-lawyer opinion, illegal — position that anyone who didn’t like could contact them and tell to leave their books alone. Google’s contention was that this was within the bounds of fair use. Uh-huh, that only works if you’re the biggest, baddest and most disrespectful power on the whole damn Internet. If I tried a similar approach to using whatever I felt I needed from, say, the New York Times…somehow, I think I’d wind up in court facing a gaggle of overpaid legal beagles.

Opt-out is contrary to long-accepted copyright practice in the USA.

What happens if I do absoutely nothing? Google then can:

• Continue to digitize Books and Inserts
• Sell subscriptions to an electronic Books database to institutions;
• Sell online access to individual Books;
• Sell advertising on pages from Books;
• Display portions of Book in a “preview” format to encourage sales of online access to Books;
• Display Snippets from Books; and
• Display bibliographic information from Books.

If I decide to file a claim under this settlement (and the court eventually approves the settlement as filed), I might receive:

• A one-time $60 cash settlement per book
• 63% of revenues Google receives from their uses of each book

Of course, I also give up:

• Claims against Google for having digitized your Books and Inserts
• Claims against Google for using your Books and Inserts in Google’s products and services
• Claims against libraries for having provided Books and Inserts for digitization
• Claims against Google for having provided digital copies of Books and Inserts to libraries
• Claims against Google and the libraries that arise after the “Effective Date” of the Settlement if and to the extent that their acts are authorized by the Settlement

Oh, and Google agrees to pay $34.5 million to establish a Book Rights Registry. Ongoing operation of the Registry will be funded by an “administrative fee as a percentage of revenues received from Google.”

How big a percentage? Good question. And one not addressed in the settlement. Another big “trust me.”

This whole opt-out rather than opt-in scheme is being used — and supported by the looney tunes in the federal court system — in other areas of the Internet. Like YouTube. (Wait…I suppose it’s a coincidence that Google bought YouTube…hmmm…)

Google and Amazon may soon control most of the intellectual property in the world. However, there is a big difference (at least, so far) — Amazon won’t display your book’s content unless you first authorize it. That’s an opt-in system.

There are two excellent articles in the March issue of Book Business Magazine. I read them last night in the print edition but found them also in the online edition:

News & Trends : Countdown to the Google Book Search Settlement Review

Digital Directions : The Google Settlement

Even better, download the full settlement document and start reading. It will either put you to sleep..or make you mad as hell..or both. At least, those were my own reactions.

Hope this stuff doesn’t give you nightmares.