Constitutional Law

Google Publishing Settlement Would Re-Write Nation's Copyright System

The Volokh Conspiracy's Jonathan Adler notes recent commentary exploring a legal settlement that if approved by a federal court, would grant Google vast power to control digital publishing rights. Lynn Chu, with Writers Representatives LLC, maintains that if the legal framework were approved by a federal court, it 'would permit Google to post out-of-print books for reading, sales, institutional licensing, ad sales, and other publishing exploitations,' by the online search engine giant. Chu notes that the settlement is fashioned between Google and only a 'handful of authors and publishers,' but would cover every author and publisher in the nation.  

Chu writes that:

There is nothing more individual in the world than a book, an author, a publisher, and the value of a contract. The aging baby boomers now flacking the settlement dome seem to understand that PDF scanning (how Google and everyone else digitizes books) isn't rocket science; it's cheap and easy. Books will be digitized without Google. But the Google settlement sets in amber today's overhyped role of the Internet, ruled by that great and magnificent Oz – Google.

 

Chu says the court should reject the Google settlement:

We already have a good system. It's called the system of private property and free contract, designed for dispersed, autonomous individuals – not command-and-control centers. The U.S. Constitution grants authors small monopolies in their own copyrights. Author market power is talent-based and individual, not collective. The class action seeks to wipe all this out – just for Google. But U.S. law does not grant any single publisher monopoly power to herd all of us into its list.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on March 30, 2009 (boomark / email).