A response to Terry: Authors Guild v. Google Settlement: Official Notice
NOTE: This is NOT about design: it is an answer to Terry Love's request for
understanding of the recent agreement with Google to compensate authors.
This is relevant to those of us who publish a lot. Many of you should simply
hit the delete key now. This is only for people whose publications have
been scanned or otherwise distributed by Google in ways you might consider a
violation of copyright. For those who think the copyright restrictions are
evil, you might also find this document relevant.)
Evidently Australia didn't explain the agreement in Simple Language. The
Author's Guild in the U.S. (I am a member) has done a great job of
explaining it. I think this is a magnificent agreement, making lots of
heretofore lost publications available and also providing a source of income
for authors -- it could be much more than the figure Terry mentioned.
I paste the description of the agreement below. (The text below refers to a
PDF attachment. If you are interested in it, write me (at [log in to unmask]) and
I will email it to you. The PhD-Design List sever will not permit PDF
attachments to be distributed.)
Warning. When I logged on to the website to register my works, I discovered
that Google had an amazing collection of my works, including book chapters,
journal articles, and even what I thought were unpublished technical
reports. I was supposed to go through each item and answer some questions
about each, with a horrible website that had to refresh after every answer.
I finally gave up. I never even got to my books, which was the whole reason
for registering. So for those who are prolific, you will have to suffer a
bit to get any gains.
Don
Donald A. Norman
Breed Professor of Design, Northwestern University
Co-Director MMM Program. MBA + MEM: Operations+Design, Co-Director Segal
Design Institute
www.jnd.org
Visiting Distinguished Professor
Department of Industrial Design
KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
------------------------------------------------------
The following is a message sent by the Authors Guild to all its members.
Since the settlement affects authors who are not members of the Authors
Guild as well, we are sending it to all non-Authors Guild members in our
database.
*******************************
Please see the attached document for your official notice of the $125
million settlement in Authors Guild v. Google. We encourage you to read it.
The settlement strengthens authors' rights and will, if approved by the
court, result in millions of dollars of payments to authors. At least $45
million will be paid to authors and publishers to release claims for books
that are scanned by Google by May 5th of this year. But that's not the most
significant part of the settlement, in our view. We expect the licensing
that this settlement would enable, particularly of out-of-print books, will
result in far more revenues for authors over the coming years.
The settlement covers essentially all in-copyright books that were published
by January 5, 2009. (Some authors have told us that they think of the
settlement as covering only books for adults or nonfiction books. This is
incorrect. Books of all types are covered by the settlement.)
We think it's in the strong interest of authors of all books, whether in
print or out of print, to go to www.googlebooksettlement.com and claim their
books. Here are some of the benefits of doing so:
1. If you file your claim by January 5, 2010, and a book in which you have a
copyright interest is scanned by Google before May 5, 2009, you will be
entitled to a small share (at least $60 per book, but up to $300, depending
on the number of claims) in a pool of at least $45 million that Google is
paying to release claims for works that were scanned without rightsholder
permission.
2. By registering, you'll be able to share in potential revenues for uses of
your works under several new licensing programs that the settlement enables.
Here are examples of licensing revenues you may be entitled to share in:
A. Revenues from printing out pages from your works at terminals in public
libraries.
B. Revenues from ads that may appear near "previews" of your works at
books.google.com.
C. Revenues from sales of special online editions of your works.
D. Revenues from institutional subscriptions that may include your works.
Important note: Only out-of-print books will be included in these programs
by default. In-print books will be included only where rightsholders
affirmatively elect to do so.
3. By registering, you'll automatically enroll in the new Book Rights
Registry, which will give you a considerable amount of control over the
rights to your works, including your right to withdraw your work from the
licensing programs described above.
The important thing is to assert your rights. It's easiest to do so by
setting up an account at www.googlebooksettlement.com, the official
settlement website. Once you're logged in, it's generally most efficient to
claim your works by searching the database of titles by your name.
There are many more details, which the attached document spells out. For
those who would like more information, we'll soon be announcing a new series
of phone-in seminars. You will receive that e-mail later this week.
Please feel free to forward and post this message: non-Guild members are
entitled to the same advantages of the settlement as Guild members.
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Terence
Love
Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2009 6:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Google document digitisation - only $60 for copyright owners?
Hello,
Please can anyone provide a layperson's guide to the recent Google
settlement about Google digitising copyrighted books and images for Google
to sell?
First glance over the info from the Australian Copyright Agency suggests
Google only offers the copyright owner $60 in compensation for Google to
sell the digitised version of a document in what ever way they want.
This would seem to have some serious long term financial and moral
attribution implications for designers, design researchers, authors, book
publishers, journal publishers, artists and design owners.
Best regards,
Terry
|
