EU calls hearing over Google 'orphan' treatment As the US Department of Justice continues its investigation into Google's $125m book-scanning settlement with American authors and publishers, the EU has cranked up its own review of the controversial pact. On September 7, Bloomberg reports, the European Commission will hold a hearing where interested parties can comment on …
just a technical note,
"settled a lawsuit from the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers"
is not the same as
"settlement with American authors and publishers"
the Authors Guild does not represent most authors in the US, and settled in it's own right, not on behalf of individual authors. There is nothing in the settlement about individual author's rights.
Google should be able to scan any of the above books they want, at their cost, and make them available for free as a pr exercise.
so long as they DO NOT aquire eternal copyright to the work.
They make enough money as it is.
Traceable authors should have a standard rate of royatly.
Lets have openess up front from google. It would be to your credit.
..as another poster alluded to, the settlement states that members of the USAG and AAP won't sue for orphaned works. However, surely all members of the two stated bodies are known, therefore not the owners of *any* orphaned works.
Furthermore, it then follows that the owner of an orphaned work cannot join the USAG or be printed by a member company of the AAP without foregoing his legal right to sue Google for every penny they're due him.
So the settlement disadvantages all non-member published authors -- they're well and truly forked: sign up (with either USAG or AAP) and write off legitimate intellectual value; don't sign up (with an AAP member company) and not be able to reach a wide enough audience to realise the full intellectual value of your work.
So technically, a non-member author could sue Google not just for the value of the misappropriated intellectual property (the illegally scanned and redistributed book), but for damages against the future loss of earnings induced by not being able to have the work published by an AAP member company....
Whereas I am fairly neutral about your views on orphaned works I disagree with your views on standard royalty rates for traceable authors in that as a copyright holder one of the main rights is control over who / what / where / when / how etc. your copyrighted material is used. Your suggestion removes this right.
If you come across a play named "The Producers" (Mel Brooks), buy it to read, not to copy.
Paul4, yes I have an unfortunate last name. Do you think I ought to change it to something more salable? Where can I buy "Winston Churchill", always liked that one. Should my last name be changed forcibly to Google like the orphans ?
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