The Google Book Settlement, or, How to Rub Your Tummy and Pat Your Head at the Same Time ~ Zoe Dattner [22.01.2010]
"If you think it sounds complicated... that's because it is."
This week I attended CAL's information session/update on the Google Book Settlement. I was hoping to go in there and come out all the wiser, with lots of incredibly useful clarifications on What It All Means. Then I was going to disseminate that information to the SPUNC members so that they knew what in the heck was going on and how it all affected them.
As you can probably tell from the overall tone of this blog, I didn't quite get the clarity of thought I was hoping for and am going to have to default to CAL's presentation notes, which you can download at the end of this post.
However, in as much of a nutshell as I can muster, here's what you might like to consider doing if you are a small publisher or any-particular-size author.
- Go to the Google Book Settlement page.
- Go to the Claim Form section, and if you haven't done so already, create an account.
- Now you can search for any of your books, and find out if Google have scanned them.
Be aware that only titles that were published before January 2009 were scanned, so there's no need to worry about anything published since then. Your titles may indeed appear on the Google Books Registry, but the important thing to do is determine, firstly, has that title been scanned, and secondly, is that title 'commercially available' today? If it's not commercially available, and it has been scanned, then congratulations! You can claim $60 from Google! It may not seem like much, but I reckon you should go ahead and do it. And let's face it, they don't need $60 – you probably do.
The other issue is around this whole 'opt in' or 'opt out' business. This only affects you if you have had titles scanned. If you opt in, that means you can claim your $60, if you opt out, that means, if you can be bothered and have loads of time and spare cash, you can file your own law suit. If you do nothing, and you have titles scanned by Google, then you get nothing. So it's probably a good idea to opt in. To opt out, you gotta do this soon, by January 28th. To opt in, you've got till March 2012.
In the future, Google will continue to scan books, in exchange for 63% of any revenue raised from commercial uses. That's any book, published in the US, UK, Canada or Australia.
Key dates and other important bits of jargon and elaborations are contained within the CAL notes.
As for ideological concerns and debates, intellectual contributions and commercial analyses, let's embark on that in a separate discussion. And by all means, let us please do so.
(Important Disclaimer: I'm no legal eagle, so you might want to get yourself a lawyer son, if you're wanting a slightly more reliable interpretation of these proceedings than I've just given you.)
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