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Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and The Internet Archive have joined a coalition co-led by Silicon hot-shot lawyer Gary Reback that aims to take on the Google Book Settlement.

The Wall Street Journal broke the news and say that Amazon.com hasn’t officially confirmed their participation.

Given Mr. Bezos’ views on the Settlement (also courtesy WSJ) it’s pretty likely Amazon will join -

“It doesn’t seem right that you should do something — kind of get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights,” … “You just can’t believe that’s the way it actually works.”

There are several library associations rumored to be planning on joining the coalition including -

1. Special Libraries Association.
2. The New York Library Association.
3. The American Society of Journalists and Authors.

This might be a really big coalition against the Google Book Settlement – however, its not alone.

Protests and Dissent against Google Books Settlement are growing fast

The last few days have seen a steady stream of articles covering protests against the Google Books Settlement -

1. New York Times covered Attorney Scott E. Gant’s filed opposition on the 18th of August -
   

   “This is a predominantly commercial transaction and one that should be undertaken through the normal commercial process, which is negotiation and informed consent,” Mr. Gant said in an interview. Google and its partners are “trying to ram this through so that millions of copyright holders will have no idea that this is happening.”

   “It may be the most fundamental challenge to the settlement yet,” said James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School, a critic of the agreement whose blog tracks filings and commentary related to it.

2. Prof. James Grimmelmann has an excellent blog covering the latest news on the Google Books Settlement. He has also launched a site/wiki to discuss the issue at The Public Index.
3. University of California faculty members also wrote against the settlement and pointed out two interesting things (courtesy Library Journal) -
   

   “We are concerned that the [plaintiff] Authors Guild negotiators likely prioritized maximizing profits over maximizing public access to knowledge.”

   We note that the scholarly books written by academic authors constitute a much more substantial part of the Book Search corpus than the Authors Guild members’ books.

Apparently, everyone has suddenly woken up to the fact that Google will gain sole access to the goldmine of orphaned works.

Closing Thoughts

If a Book Settlement goes through it’d be nice to have the settlement apply to anyone who scans books, not just Google.

From my own personal perspective, making money off of other people’s copyrighted work isn’t ethical – even if they can’t be located. However, if the courts were to decide that’s ok due to some ‘for the greater good’ argument, then permission should be given to anyone who is interested, and not just to one company.   

 Attorney Grant said it better than I could have -

Grant said he was skeptical that the agreement was increasing the public good. “Whenever I hear capitalism proclaiming noble motives,” he said, “something makes me check my wallet.”

Filed under: books Tagged: | amazon vs google, book wars