Authors Guild, AAP, Google Reach Settlement in Copyright Case

Posted Tuesday, Oct 28, 2008

On Tuesday, October 28, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google announced a settlement agreement in a class-action suit brought by book authors and the Authors Guild and a separate lawsuit filed by five publishers representing AAP's membership. The lawsuits, filed in fall 2005, challenged Google's plan to digitize, search, and show snippets of in-copyright books and to share digital copies with libraries without the explicit permission of the copyright owner. The agreement is subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Calling the agreement a landmark settlement, AAP said in a statement:

 

If approved by the court, the agreement would provide:

More Access to Out-of-Print Books -- Generating greater exposure for millions of in-copyright works, including hard-to-find out-of-print books, by enabling readers in the U.S. to search these works and preview them online;

Additional Ways to Purchase Copyrighted Books -- Building off publishers' and authors' current efforts and further expanding the electronic market for copyrighted books in the U.S., by offering users the ability to purchase online access to many in-copyright books;

Institutional Subscriptions to Millions of Books Online -- Offering a means for U.S. colleges, universities, and other organizations to obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the world's most renowned libraries;

Free Access From U.S. Libraries -- Providing free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries; and

Compensation to Authors and Publishers and Control Over Access to Their Works -- Distributing payments earned from online access provided by Google and, prospectively, from similar programs that may be established by other providers, through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry that will also locate rightsholders, collect and maintain accurate rightsholder information, and provide a way for rightsholders to request inclusion in or exclusion from the project.

As part of the settlement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million that will be used to establish a Book Rights Registry to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees. U.S. copyright holders whose works have already been digitized will be able to register and receive compensation from institutional subscriptions, book sales, ad revenues, and other possible revenue models, as well as a cash payment.

Publishers participating in the AAP suit are the McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group (USA), John Wiley & Sons, and Simon & Schuster. Libraries at the universities of California, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Stanford also provided input into the settlement. They, and other U.S. libraries, are expected to make their collections available through the project.

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