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British Booksellers Association still has problems with Google Settlement
November 18, 2009 | 8:23 am
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By Paul Biba
Even after the revision, which they praise, the BA still has some difficulties. They had hoped that the amendment would exclude all UK and European works, but this is not the cases as the agreement includes works published before January 5 of this year. They also do not like the continuance of the opt-out mechanism and feel that the amended agreement is still at sword’s point to the European copyright regime.
While not completely against the revised agreement the BA said: “The BA would have far preferred UK titles and orphan works to have been excluded, but as it seems this is not going to be the case, the Association is pleased that a number of considerable concessions, at least, have been made following our representations.”
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Comments:
U.S. writers and publishers should take note that their counterparts overseas are delighted when their books are excluded from this settlement. Having a year’s more experience with the market, they’re not buying Google’s always rather dubious claim that having a book available for free online via Google would stimulate demand for a printed versions.
We need the same thing in the U.S. and that’d be easy to do. As the BA suggests, simply make the settlement optional and display only works by those who opt in. We could deal with orphan works by setting aside some of the profits to locate the copyright holders for books that matter rather than trashing copyright law to clutter Google’s database with tens of thousands of near-worthless works that just get in the way.
Mike,
One man’s trash, as they say. Who are you to decide for me what is ‘near-worthless’? Maybe what you hate is the very thing someone else might adore.
Making *everything* available is the only real value the Google Books project has. All the ‘good’ (that is, popular) stuff is more than likely still in print or otherwise available.
You don’t have right to be a censor any more than anyone else has.