Google Wants All World’s Books and Pay All the Authors
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — Google has been making progress with its Google Book Search project, having scanned and indexed 7 million volumes, but that is just the beginning, if a settlement with authors and publishers is approved by a U.S. Federal court in Manhattan.
We sat down with Google spokesperson Gabriel Stricker who explained the process and what the approval will mean for users of Google and authors of “orphan” books which are out of print but still have copyright protection.
While amount of money for authors in the settlement is just $60 per title, there will be other fees in the form of sharing in e-commerce, search and advertising.
Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch wrote about the pending settlement and payment to authors back in February.
A settlement is expected soon, but there are objections, including Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive founder, who wrote an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post titled “Book Grab.” His article is getting quite a lot attention including this piece on the WSJ.com
So just how does Google scan all those books? The company declined to provide a demonstration to Beet.TV. Stephen Shankland at CNET News.com wrote a post a couple weeks back which reveals the process in diagrams filed by Google for a patent.
Andy Plesser, Executive Producer