I continue to fail to understand why anybody but Google's competitors are up in arms about this now. Google scanned a bunch of books - entered a gray area in "Fair Use", was taken to court, _and then came to out-of-court settlement_.
Amazon is free to negotiate the same settlement with the book publishers.
Google is making available a sizable number of _out of print_ books - that is, those books that can not be purchased from Amazon - and, here is the important thing - _Only with the permission of the rights holders._
The only real major take away for Google are the "Orphan" works - that is those books who no copyright holder can be found for and are out-of-print.
Does anyone out there who is not a competitor of Google see this as a bad thing?
I don't have knowledge of the specifics of the case but I believe Google only have the permission of an organisation representing authors, not the authors themselves.
Amazon is free to negotiate the same settlement with the book publishers.
Google is making available a sizable number of _out of print_ books - that is, those books that can not be purchased from Amazon - and, here is the important thing - _Only with the permission of the rights holders._
The only real major take away for Google are the "Orphan" works - that is those books who no copyright holder can be found for and are out-of-print.
Does anyone out there who is not a competitor of Google see this as a bad thing?