Important copyright announcement from GOOGLE

Discussion in 'General' started by Ron Goldstein, Feb 2, 2009.

  1. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    An urgent message to all you budding authors out there.

    In yesterday's Sunday Times I spotted this announcement from GOOGLE and thought a timely reminder would be of assistance to any writers on this forum.

    The first cut off date quoted is May 5, 2009
     

    Attached Files:

  2. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

  3. Passchendaele_Baby

    Passchendaele_Baby Grandads Little Girl

    wooooo....
    all those legal terms send my head spinning...
     
  4. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Pardon my simplemindedness, but in plain English how does this affect us?
     
  5. Paul Reed

    Paul Reed Ubique

    Interesting, if it happens then Google will have the right to publish my books and I will get nothing, it seems! Unless I am prepared to fund an action against them...
     
  6. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    FAQs: FAQs - Google Book Settlement

    Be interesting to see what they intend to do with scanned books post-settlement.
    If it's primarily to build a search system that directs people to books more accurately then that wouldn't cause too many ripples, but they don't seem to be quite such a 'wholesome' company post-sale.

    We'll see - lots of blogging building on it but not much hard info out there yet. The writers guild seem quite intrigued & positive. Looks like there'll maybe be a rights system more like music publishing? If that was arranged fairly then this could be good for authors while making stuff more easily available for the rest of us.
    WGGB - News - Google Books settlement

    Maybe it could be entwined with bringing publishing of hard copies on demand forward, something that could free up a lot of out of print stuff while at the same time giving the authors their share.

    Fingers crossed. Looks quite complex.
     
  7. PeterG

    PeterG Senior Member

    Sad to see that Google has caved in and has been ripped off to the tune of 80 million dollars. Court action might have dragged on for years.

    By scanning key samples of books (Google had already reluctantly agreed not to scan the full text) authors get tremendous free publicity. The Google archive will be maintained in perpetuity and the works of many obscure authors would not be otherwise preserved.

    Microsoft and Google are the golden milch-cows of the 21st century, irresistible to the American culture of suing everything in sight.
     
  8. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek

    I always thought as soon as you wrote something it was automatically your own copyright.
     

Share This Page