Yesterday, Judge John Sprizzo of Manhattan approved a lawsuit settlement between Google and book authors and publishers. In what can only be seen as a huge win for both Google and publishers, Google will pay out $125 million into a fund for copyright holders and be granted the right to put millions of out-of-print texts online. The settlement provides a glimpse into the financial terms of a deal that may see the search giant become a significant retailer of out-of-print books.
The lawsuit dates to the launch of Google Print back in 2005, when Google entered the scan-and-publish arena. At the time, its digitizing efforts were described as massive copyright infringement, since the results were made freely available online. The suit attracted the Author’s Guild as well as five major publishers: McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin, John Wiley & Sons, and Simon & Schuster. It eventually reached class action status.
The settlement approved today remains preliminary. A June hearing will determine whether the agreement is fair, reasonable, and adequate. Should it pass that hurdle and become a settled class action suit, Google will be able to operate Google Print without fear of future legal action.
The Authors’ Guild calls the deal “the writers’ equivalent of ASCAP.” They have gathered documents together in a Settlement Resources Page. When the deal was announced last month, Larry Lessig spent some time studying it before posting his reaction to it:
IMHO, this is a good deal that could be the basis for something really fantastic. The Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers have settled for terms that will assure greater access to these materials than would have been the case had Google prevailed. Under the agreement, 20% of any work not opting out will be available freely; full access can be purchased for a fee. That secures more access for this class of out-of-print but presumptively-under-copyright works than Google was initially proposing. And as this constitutes up to 75% of the books in the libraries to be scanned, that is hugely important and good. That’s good news for Google, and the AAP/Authors Guild, and the public.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, who’s now working on his book, The Googlization of Everything [the site is down, I’ve linked to cached versions], says academia must reflect on how some universities have been complicit in centralizing and commercializing knowledge under a single corporate umbrella. He catalogs the problems and pitfalls of the settlement but finds:
…it certainly improves Google Book Search substantially. As long as we are stuck with Google Book Search as the major — perhaps someday soon only — source for digital book search and access, it might as well be better than what it has been.
Siva points to a very helpful reading of the Google/publishers’ settlement from UCLA’s Neil Netanel.