Word: settlements
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...tangle of issues: how to create new markets for old books without shortchanging authors; how to nurture new technology without stifling competition; and how to preserve all that when one company - in this case, Google - is pioneering the revolution and could profit handsomely. One commentator, who supports the original settlement, has called it "the World Series of antitrust." (See nine e-readers to gawk...
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...
...original settlement appeared to be a fait accompli until last summer, when a sleepy copyright case, Authors Guild et al. vs. Google Inc., erupted into an 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...
Authors are on both sides of the barricades. Opponents of the settlement include silver-maned folk singer Arlo Guthrie and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, author of the so-called torture memos for President George W. Bush. The settlement counts The Joy Luck Club author Amy Tan and noir crime novelist Elmore Leonard among its supporters. The deal has many other supporters as well, from disability rights groups to Dr. Seuss Enterprises and the National Grange...
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...