Tuesday, October 28, 2008

$125 Million Settlement In Authors Guild v. Google

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 28, @10:12AM

from the something-had-to-give dept.
The CourtsBooksGoogleThe Almighty Buck
James Gleick writes"Authors, publishers, and Google are announcing a huge settlement deal today in their lawsuits over the scanning of millions of copyrighted books in library collections. Google has agreed to a huge payout for books that were scanned without permission, but now they'll be allowed to scan the books legitimately. Most important, they'll be able to put millions of books online, including those still in copyright--not just for searching and not just in snippets. There is a groundbreaking new licensing system meant to make the books as widely available as possible while protecting the authors' copyrights and enabling them to share in the revenue. Some will differ, but personally I think this is a wonderful outcome, for readers and for authors alike."

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