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Here's another news story that is relevant to this week's reading. A Federal judge has set a new deadline of November 9 for Google to submit a new agreement to obtain the rights to million of out-of-print books. Read about the entire story here. The government had to step in and intervene after legal opponents of the $125 million deal said that it violated anti-trust laws. The problem started back in 2003 when Google wanted to scan, index and sell millions of copyrighted books on its website. Shortly thereafter, several lawyers and publishers stepped up wanting their share of the profits. To learn more about how the deal started, click here.
We live in very interesting times, indeed. I love how the publishers and lawyers show up when a possibility of profit surfaces. Lets be clear, these are books that the publishers had deemed not worth doing the physical publishing, so there is zero revenue being generated for the publisher or the authors. Now Google is willing to invest in the cost of creating searchable digital copies, and the publishers/lawyers want their part (and I'm assuming that they are going to contribute to the cost of digitizing). Anyone remember the story of the Little Red Hen? Seems appropriate. I mean, it's not as if the publisher didn't get their investment back from the cost of every book sold (that DIDN'T go to the authors). If they signed the traditional "first publishing right," well, they got their crack at it and need to either contribute to this new project, if they expect to benefit from whatever profits that might come from this. We need our 14 year limit again!
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