Google Book Search: Well, That Was Fun - Now What?
Tuesday afternoon, the plaintiffs in the Google Book Search Settlement filed a motion to adjourn the fairness hearing (scheduled for October 7th) indefinitely, in order to “amend the agreement”. What does this mean? Well, it means a mess. Not that things weren’t messy before the adjournment. Let’s look at the various parties involved:AAP and Authors Guild Publishers and authors need to look carefully at the original settlement document. They need to determine what Google should have the rights to do with their content – they may decide that Google should not have the exclusive right to do very much, which offers other services the same opportunity to make books discoverable on the web.
Both AAP and Authors Guild need to determine whether or not they are representing their constituencies’ interests appropriately. There are plenty of authors and publishers who were incensed at the original settlement and who felt that a so-called “class action” wasn’t really representing them as a class.
Furthermore, if the AAP and the Authors Guild is going to truly represent publishers and authors as a class, they need to figure out what exactly should be done about “orphaned” works – books for which rightsholders cannot be determined. This has to be done from the authors’ and publishers’ point of view – this is not something that any third party should have anything to do with.
Google They need to continue to talk with publishers and authors and negotiate agreements with them directly, essentially creating content licensing deals for full-text book content. This will be slower, more expensive, and less lucrative, but it will be ultimately more efficient than what has happened up to now, for the simple reason that there will be agreement on all sides about the uses to which that content will be put.
BRR The Books Rights Registry is needed, I would argue, now more than ever. One thing the Google Book Search fiasco has pointed up is the desperate need for rights management and standardization in the book world. However, Google was essentially going to fund the BRR for the first few years. If the BRR is going to be truly impartial, the funding has to come from elsewhere, not only Google.
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