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Google Books Settlement: Who is filing and what are they saying?
September 30, 2009 | 10:42 am
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By Paul Biba
That’s the title of a PDF prepared by the American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College and Research Libraries. It’s a good summary of who is involved in the actual settlement case (as opposed to just making media noise). Unless you are a party to the case any of your comments will not be considered by the Court, so this is the definitive playlist.
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Comments:
It’s an excellent report. Particularly revealing is the enormous contrast (page 3) between the 295 foreign “class-members” (meaning copyright holders, either authors or publishers) who opposed the settlement with the none who supported it. Among authors, support here in the U.S. was tepid. Overseas it was almost non-existent.
That’s important. Sorting out the difficulties new technologies have created absolutely requires that the Berne Convention be brought up to date. It hasn’t been revised since 1979 and is in desperate need of a major overhaul. If this settlement had gone through, the result outrage among authors when they found out what it means would have poisoned treaty negotiations for years to come. Nothing that would benefited Google, however slightly, would have stood a chance of passing. And punishing Google would could only be done by punishing any online-based scheme.
The data on “key supporters” confirms what I’ve been saying. Only 1 of the 27 argued principally that the settlement would help authors, but 22 of the 27 (81%) argued that it was “pro-user,” which I take to mean “Yeah, free books.”
For what it is worth, there are already exceptions in copyright law covering books for those with disabilities.
–Mike Perry