Absurd: Google wants to make ‘editorial decisions’
I’ve been cautiously optimistic about the Google Book Search Settlement. There are a few things to iron out — and I still haven’t wrapped my head around the implications of Google having access to a goose that lays golden eggs (i.e., making money from orphaned out-of-print-but-in-copyright books) — but on the whole, I think it’s dangerously exciting.
But that was before I read Section 3.7(e) of the agreement, which grants Google the “right to exclude books for editorial or non-editorial reasons”. Crikey. It’s no wonder the very next sentence says it “is an issue of great sensitivity to Plaintiffs and Google.”
Damn straight it’s an issue.
Make no mistake: the word editorial is used very specifically. Google certainly has the right to exclude books based on commercial reasons or as the result of a legal obligation, but to claim they should have the right to exclude books based on non-existent editorial guidelines? That’s what you do when you own the editorial, not when you distribute it, and especially not when it goes against your own policy.
This is different to the recent Amazon gaff where Jeff Bezos shoved one of his tentacled fingers into our Kindles and yanked our books away from us. While I don’t accept his apology (because he hasn’t addressed the issue, i.e., that Amazon can do this at anytime), I do accept that Amazon needs to go into new territory with guns blazing, which means they’re inevitably going to shoot someone in the thigh. Google, on the other hand, isn’t going into new territory. It’s about to become a monopolistic book selling juggernaut that can make editorial decisions based on a mysterious and changing set of guidelines, and we should all be concerned.
