Word: agreements
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Critics of Google's book-searching agreement with publishers and authors were cheered last week when antitrust regulators in the Justice Department set their sights on the search giant's publishing deal, demanding more information...
...issue is a $125 million settlement agreement reached last October that gives Google the right to make millions of books available for reading - and purchase - on the Internet. Under the pact, a Book Rights Registry will be set up that will allow publishers and authors to register their work and get paid for their titles through institutional subscriptions, ad fees and book sales. Google will retain 37% of the revenue, with the remainder going to the registry to be distributed to authors and publishers. The deal effectively gives authors and publishers control over their work in the digital world...
...agreement, which must still get federal court approval, was aimed at ending two lawsuits filed in 2005 against Google by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Basically, authors and publishers had complained that the Web-searching king had broken copyright laws when it scanned millions of books from university and research libraries and made snippets of their content available online...
...complex settlement agreement, which took three years to hammer out and spans 135 pages excluding attachments, Google will be allowed to show up to 20% of the books' text online at no charge to Web surfers. But the part of the settlement that deals with so-called orphan books - which refers to out-of-print books whose authors and publishers are unknown - is what's ruffling the most feathers in the literary henhouse. The deal gives Google an exclusive license to publish and profit from these orphans, which means it won't face legal action if an author or owner...
Although competitors could scan orphans, they would not be protected from copyright suits as Google is under the agreement. "They'd face lawsuits all over the place," making the risk too big, said Darnton...