On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Gwern Branwen <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 3:34 AM, Carcharoth <[email protected]> > wrote: >> It seems a settlement has been reached between Google Books and those >> taking action against it. Anyone here know what this means in terms of >> what we do and how we use Google Books? >> >> http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/ >> >> Carcharoth > > I can't speak to the issues of exclusivity everyone was worrying > about, but it seems to be a win for Google Books in respect to orphan > works: > > http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/#3 > > "# In-copyright but out-of-print books > > Out-of-print books aren’t actively being published or sold, so > the only way to procure one is to track it down in a library or used > bookstore. When this agreement is approved, every out-of-print book > that we digitize will become available online for preview and > purchase, unless its author or publisher chooses to "turn off" that > title. We believe it will be a tremendous boon to the publishing > industry to enable authors and publishers to earn money from volumes > they might have thought were gone forever from the marketplace." > > Notice that it's opt-out, which for a real orphan work means no one > will opt-out. Preview is better than nothing, for us. (It was > unrealistic to expect Google to be able to offer full downloads.)
My question would be: if Google can charge for full downloads of their scans of orphan (out-of-print) works still in copyright, can others do the same? If I had a copy of a work still in copyright but out-of-print, and scanned it, and sold the scans, and then stopped if the publisher contact me (i.e. asked for it to be "switched off") what am I doing differently to what Google are doing? For me, the exciting thing is being able to get full downloads, even if at a price, rather than ordering through a rare or secondhand book website. Dunno what that Google price will be though... Carcharoth _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
