Word: booking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some of the protest centers on a new, nonprofit Book Rights Registry that the settlement would create. The registry would find authors or their heirs and pay them for the use of their newly digitized writing, whether a blockbuster novel, a poem included in an anthology or liner notes for a long-ago blues album...
...even as the amount to be paid out and how it would be distributed remains an issue, the DOJ is fretting about the arrangement, saying it appears to create a price-fixing structure, it could stifle competition, and it may give Google exclusive rights over so-called orphan books whose copyright holders can't be found. The company plans to become a digital book seller; millions of scanned books, or snippets of them, have already vastly expanded its vaunted Web search engine, the company's prime business. S(ee pictures of work and life at Google...
...faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology who has raised concerns about the deal, called it an "extremely significant case" for the future of digital publishing. "The logic of the agreement, I think, is going to put Google in a very privileged position in the digital book market...
...intercontinental brawl. Hundreds of authors and publishers from the Netherlands to New Zealand have written to U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin, some expressing astonishment and outrage. France and Germany have protested; German Chancellor Angela Merkel singled out Google for criticism in a podcast this month. (Read about the book price war among Amazon, Walmart and Target...
Fueled by writers, the debate has plenty of rhetorical flourishes. One incensed objector called Google a "Dickensian street pickpocket." The Open Book Alliance, a coalition that includes goliath rival Microsoft as well as the National Writers Union, likened Google to industrialist John D. Rockefeller and compared the settlement to a monopoly cartel controlling the future of digital publishing. "They have worked very hard to create the impression that this is like a freight train, and if you want to stand in front of it, you'll get run over," Gary Reback, an antitrust attorney who penned the legal brief...