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Bullish On Books
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The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google[GOOG
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] today announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement that will make millions of books available online.
The agreement—if approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY will benefit readers and researchers, and help authors and publishers distribute their content in digital form by significantly expanding online access to works through Google Book Search.
According to this morning’s release by AAP, “The agreement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright owners, provides an efficient means for them to control how their intellectual property is accessed online and enables them to receive compensation for online access to their works.”
“This historic settlement is a win for everyone,” said Richard Sarnoff, Chairman of the Association of American Publishers. “From our perspective, the agreement creates an innovative framework for the use of copyrighted material in a rapidly digitizing world, serves readers by enabling broader access to a huge trove of hard-to-find books, and benefits the publishing community by establishing an attractive commercial model that offers both control and choice to the rightsholder.”
“Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Today, together with the authors, publishers, and libraries, we have been able to make a great leap in this endeavor,” said Sergey Brin, co-founder & president of technology at Google. “While this agreement is a real win-win for all of us, the real victors are all the readers. The tremendous wealth of knowledge that lies within the books of the world will now be at their fingertips.”
If approved, the agreement will provide:
- More Access to Out-of-Print Books
- Additional Ways to Purchase Copyrighted Books
- Institutional Subscriptions to Millions of Books
- OnlineFree Access From U.S. Libraries
- Compensation to Authors and Publishers and Control Over Access to Their Works
Under the agreement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million. The money will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees.
My colleague, Jim Goldman who covers all things Google for CNBC. Check out his blog post on this story: Google's Copyright Case: Settlement Is A Wake Up Call.
Questions, comments?
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