[WikiEN-l] Google Books settlement reached

[Gwern Branwen]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 3:34 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> It seems a settlement has been reached between Google Books and those
> taking action against it. Anyone here know what this means in terms of
> what we do and how we use Google Books?
>
> http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/
>
> Carcharoth

I can't speak to the issues of exclusivity everyone was worrying
about, but it seems to be a win for Google Books in respect to orphan
works:

http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/#3

     "# In-copyright but out-of-print books

     Out-of-print books aren’t actively being published or sold, so
the only way to procure one is to track it down in a library or used
bookstore. When this agreement is approved, every out-of-print book
that we digitize will become available online for preview and
purchase, unless its author or publisher chooses to "turn off" that
title. We believe it will be a tremendous boon to the publishing
industry to enable authors and publishers to earn money from volumes
they might have thought were gone forever from the marketplace."

Notice that it's opt-out, which for a real orphan work means no one
will opt-out. Preview is better than nothing, for us. (It was
unrealistic to expect Google to be able to offer full downloads.)

-- 
gwern