Authors, say ‘no’ to Google … or ‘yes’
Panic, confusion, fear … that’s what happens when you mash together Google, the centuries-old book publishing industry, and one of the most complicated legal settlements in the past 30 years.
In this round, the authors get their chance to be confused. Should they opt in or opt out?
William Morris says they should opt out of the settlement:
“Now they’ve got this license to sell your books at a pre-negotiated one-time royalty that you’re stuck with unless a court changes the settlement,” Eric Zohn, an attorney in business affairs at William Morris, said in an interview. “It’s like a legislative change. Under copyright law, you don’t have anything without express written consent from the copyright holder. Now the court is saying Google is free to sell your book unless you expressly tell them not to.”
The Author’s Guild says William Morris doesn’t know what’s going on:
“[Here’s] the deal in one sentence: unless you want to sue Google, there’s no good reason to opt out of the settlement. If you want to allow your book to be searchable in Google’s database, and you want to be fairly compensated for Google’s use of your work, and you want to retain complete control over whether, and how, your book is displayed or sold to users, you should remain in the settlement.”
Way to go, AG. Sounds like sunshine and rainbows from here on in. Now how about getting onto this and this.
