Who’s Unhappy with Google Book Search Settlement? Some Authors, Many Photographers
Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 4/3/2009
- Authors Guild happy with deal
- National Writers Union, photographers dismayed
- Online book producers gain new life as vendors?
(For a set of links, go to LibraryJournal.com/GoogleBookSearchSettlement.)
The conference March 13 at Columbia University on the Google Books Settlement, notable for warnings by Harvard librarian Robert Darnton that the public interest was at risk, also contained significantly contrasting views from content creators
Jan Constantine, General Counsel & Assistant Director of the Authors Guild (plaintiffs along with the Association of American Publishers), called the settlement “an absolutely wonderful deal for authors,” given that Google will promote the “long tail”: she estimated that at least 90 percent of the database is out of print. Authors, she said, will be able to bring books back into print, as they show publishers the signs of demand.
"As for authors of in-print books, and publishers,” she said, their interests are aligned; they both want “to get books promoted and marketed in the best way possible.”
Ebooks and backlist
Arthur Klebanoff, president of both Scott Meredith Literary Agency and ebook publisher RosettaBooks, noted that ebooks have not yet achieved expectations posited seven or eight years ago, and many entrepreneurs have lost money on digital book projects.
“We’re at a point now where there’s a critical mass of ebook availability,” he observed. So the settlement “takes digital literacy for printed material to a new level and, in doing so, introduces a much broader set of people to what I’d loosely call digital reading. That can only be good, in the long term sense, for ebooks.”
Klebanoff suggested that it’s “very unlikely” that “there is a large unlocked economic value in the world of out-of-print books.” While the settlement deals with out-of-print books, the effort to move “the backlist and the front list to comparable online solutions… has major implications.”
Tracey Armstrong, president and CEO, Copyright Clearance Center, pointed to Google’s “first mover advantage,” noting that Microsoft, which had its own digitization project, has dropped out. If Google Book Search becomes the de facto choice for authors, some online book producers like iUniverse and Blurb may become vendors.
Author Eugene Linden raised a caveat, saying that, while he’s glad for a boost to out-of-print books, “I want to be sure system benefits us and not just the intermediaries.” He said the business of being an author had gotten ever tougher: “Do we want a society where only a Medici can afford to write?”
Who’s left out?
Victor S. Perlman, general counsel and managing director, American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), questioned why photographers were not included in the settlement. He said he’d approached Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken before the filing of lawsuit and was told the suit was limited to textual materials, “presumably to keep this already complicated situation as relatively uncomplicated as possible.”
“As far as I’m concerned, this is an infringement,” Perlman declared. While he suggested that photographers and others may achieve a “win-win-win” role in the project, he said it was unclear whether money for photos would come from authors or Google.
Not all writers sign on
Charlotte Dennett, cochair of the book division of the National Writers Union, was in the audience and expressed dismay that her organization and others will not have a place in the registry.
“They took a proactive role and instituted litigation,” Authors Guild attorney Michael Boni responded. “Those people were at the bargaining table.”
That concern got new life in a March 28 Wall Street Journal op-ed by agent Lynn Chu, who write, “No one elected these ‘class representatives’ to represent America's tens of thousands of authors and publishers to convey their digital rights to Google. Nor are the interests of this so-called class identical. There is nothing more individual in the world than a book, an author, a publisher, and the value of a contract.”
Questions raised
Panelists mused about the perfect system. “First, it would have the database at the Library of Congress, rather than a private entity, even if a private entity were the intermediary,” Linden suggested. “Second, it would give new life to what’s previously published, but… with a barrier to access.” He suggested micropayments for specific titles.
What about the impact on books in foreign editions? Boni noted that the settlement does not provide for any use outside the United States. A member of the audience insistently asserted that the use of proxies would render such a border impossible to maintain.
Boni shrugged it off, but Columbia Law Professor Jane Ginsburg, the moderator, observed, “I think this is one source of considerable concern to the foreign rights holders.”
