On the other hand I can understand Google selling them as many of the Public domain works that are free in their entirety on Google books are already being sold on ABEbooks by others as I found to my dismay after buying one. I did get a refund in the end.
In the US it is perfectly legal for multiple sellers to sell, or give away, public domain works. As Google is not yet publishing print books that I know of, I assume you paid for a print copy from ABE. Printing is not free, in fact it is often very expensive.
I do agree authors should be contacted & due royalties paid, but I do feel some works that are unlikely to ever be reprinted are better scanned and made available, if sold though royalties should be paid.
No matter what you personally feel, according to US copyright law it is illegal to reprint copyrighted books without the prior consent of the copyright owner. In fact, most of the "orphan works," having been initially published after 1923, are not all that rare. Many are widely available on the used market.
As Google's whole plan is _not_ to notify individual copyright owners--again, they've refused to tell me whether my works have been scanned unless I first sign their contract regarding compensation for any that were scanned--it follows that many copyright owners will not be able to collect royalties on those works.
Furthermore, the contract Google is trying to impose on _all_ authors who do not explicitly withdraw their consent, is pretty negative. They are only paying $60 per copyrighted work scanned to compensate for copyright violation, whereas the court award in a suit is typically around $75,000. For multiple printings and formats of the same book (hardcover, paperback), the $60 applies to all together--you don't even get $60 apiece for them. There is absolutely no guarantee whatever of the dollar amount any copyright owner will make. Meanwhile, copyright owners will also actually have to _pay_ for each work to be in the Google "registry" (after a fixed amount of seed money is used up). Since the amount they will have to keep paying to remain "in the system" is not disclosed, then they could end up paying more than they make. Again, they have to consent now, without knowing that. If they quit paying, they effectively hand over their copyrights to Google permanently. Google's contract applies to the _entire copyright term of the work_. There is no negotiation of terms, and no ability whatever to withdraw once the default period for "opting out" is up. The opt-out deadline was extended from May 2009 to September 4, 2009. In other words, it's not far away.
I should add that the Google contract applies to _every copyright holder in every country that signed the Berne agreement_. Not just those in the US. I gather there have been some protests from countries in the EU but I don't know a lot about that.
Again, I'm rooting for the Justice Department. Fran Lavolta Press New book on 1820s clothing! http://www.lavoltapress.com _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
