The Google Book Settlement and I

I’ve spent most of this morn­ing read­ing through some doc­u­ment­a­tion sent to me by John Jarrold, my agent, con­cern­ing the Google Book Settlement. Google is in the pro­cess of digit­ising books. It began this, and has con­tin­ued to do so, largely without the per­mis­sion of rights holders.

The issues are com­plex. Even the sum­mary I read con­tained sev­eral state­ments to the effect that we simply won’t how aspects of the agree­ment will be inter­preted until they are tested in a court. Adding to the com­plex­ity is a mish-mash of UK and US jur­is­dic­tional problems.

Overall, I don’t think Google’s actions are legal; opt­ing in to the set­tle­ment will sug­gest I agree with the legit­im­isa­tion of an illegal act, which I don’t. It rep­res­ents a fun­da­mental change to copy­right law that puts the onus on rights hold­ers to defend them­selves against behemothic entities.

If you’d like to know more, here is the Google Book Settlement Page; and here is a sum­mary by Gillian Spraggs.