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Google won't face Supreme Court fight over book scanning
After many years, Google's efforts to scan out-of-print books for online searching is officially in the clear. The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal over Google's victory in a legal dispute wit the Authors Guild, effectively determining once and for all that the book scanning (which focused on excerpts) represents fair use rights. The Guild had contended that Google's move violated copyright and potentially hurt profits, and would have had the internet giant pay damages.
Google's deal for book digitization rejected by judge, Books plans sent back to drawing board
It's taken a long, long time to fully consider Google's proposed $125 million settlement with publishers and authors of out-of-print works, but now the ruling has been handed down and it's not the one the Mountain View team wanted. Circuit Judge Chin, who had preliminarily approved the deal back in November 2009, has returned with the new conclusion that actually it goes "too far" in Google's favor. The origins of this settlement stem from a class action lawsuit filed against El Goog for a book digitization project it began back in 2004, and it's important to note that terms were agreed way back in 2008, before a bunch of external objections made them revise the document to its current state and refile it with the court in '09. Since then, the Department of Justice has had a look at antitrust concerns relating to Google potentially having a monopoly on orphan works (those whose author cannot be identified) and Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo have all piped up to say it's a bunk deal. Now, the one man standing between us and a whole ton of web-accessible reading materials has agreed with them. He does leave a pretty large door open for reconciliation, however, should Google be willing to accede to less favorable terms. Let's just hope whatever else transpires doesn't take another year and a half to do so.
Amazon formally protests Google Books settlement
Well, we knew this was coming: Amazon's trying to convince a federal judge to block the $125m settlement that'll let Google Books make out-of-print works available online. According to Amazon's newly-filed brief, allowing the settlement will essentially force copyright holders into allowing Google to scan in and sell their works whether they want to or not -- a thorny area of the law Amazon's gotten pretty familiar with as it builds out the Kindle library. Of course, since the actual settlement is between Google and those very same authors and publishers, it certainly seems like Amazon is crying crocodile tears here -- according to our old friend Paul Aiken of the Authors Guild, "Amazon apparently fears Google could upend its plans" to make the Kindle the dominant ebook platform. Heady stuff -- and with more briefs against the settlement due in the next few days from heavy hitters like Sony, Yahoo and Microsoft, things seem like they're building to fever pitch. We'll keep you updated.Read - USA TodayRead - CNETRead - Amazon's brief [Warning: PDF]
The Engadget Interview: Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild
As you're no doubt aware, this week's launch of the Kindle 2 came complete with copyright controversy -- the Authors Guild says that Amazon's text-to-speech features will damage the lucrative audiobook market. To be perfectly frank, we're of two minds on on this debate: on one hand, we're obviously all for the relentless progression of technology, and on the other, we sussed out the fundamental reasons for the Guild's objections almost immediately. It's pretty easy to find the first set of arguments online, but we wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything, so we sat down with Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken and asked him some burning questions. Read on!
Authors Guild president: Kindle's a swindle
We're not sure his tone or rhetoric are the most convincing, but Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr. has a little op-ed in the New York Times today attempting to explain his organization's objection to the Kindle 2's text-to-speech features. If you read our little Know Your Rights piece, you already know what he's on about: the main problem is that Amazon isn't paying for both ebook and audiobook rights for Kindle content, and Roy's worried that eventually computerized text-to-speech will be good enough for consumers to eschew buying audiobooks entirely. Take a deep breath, count to ten, consider that audiobooks are a billion-dollar business, and you can sort of see where the Authors Guild is coming from -- Roy doesn't sound too crazy when he says he thinks "authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2's version of books."What does this mean for you? Well, probably just higher prices in the short term, as we're guessing publishers will start increasing ebook license fees to cover what they think they're going to lose on audiobook sales, and Amazon and other ebook retailers will just pass those costs along. Lame, sure, but it's not the crackdown some were hysterically predicting -- Roy's pretty clear that the Authors Guild doesn't care about parents reading to kids or text-to-speech for the blind, just the Kindle's impact on the audiobook market. We'll see how Amazon and the Guild resolve this one over the next few months -- in the meantime, point your Kindle to the read link and blow Roy's mind by having Tom read the op-ed to you.
