Textile Book Authors – Do you know about the GBS?

GBS is the abbreviation for the Google Book Settlement which has far reaching ramifications for authors of books written in the English language that were published before 2009.

"The Google Book Settlement could easily be the twenty-first century's most important shift in how we deal with copyright in the world of publishing."

                    Google Monster - Asaf Hanuka

Background:

• The Google Book Search project - for the past few years, Google has been scanning millions of books in the collections of major research libraries. The goal was to index the books' contents in order to provide snippets of information and to make up to 20 percent of the book available in response to search queries.
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• However, in addition to the rare and out-of-print works that were digitized, millions of copyrighted works were digitized as well. The Author's Guild and the Association of American Publishers along with a few authors and publishers sued.
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• Google decided to settle out of court and in response to variety of complaints, a new GBS version (now known as GBS 2.0) was produced. This version is now in process of being evaluated by a judge.
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• Authors that "claim their books" are entitled to receive a licensing fee of $60 per book.
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• There are many that think this settlement has many disturbing elements, including collection of detailed records about reading habits, no protection from censorship or alteration of book content.

The following article gives a lot of detail about the ins and outs of the suit and its ramifications:

5 Ways the Google Book Settlement will Change the Future of Reading
http://io9.com/5501426/5-ways-the-google-book-settlement-will-change-the-future-of-reading?skyline=true&s=i

Saving the World from Google: Public and private interests band together to fight a deal that, they say, would destroy competition on the internet - Tom McNichol
http://www.callawyer.com/story.cfm?eid=908042&evid=1


INFORMATION from GOOGLE:

Google Book Settlement - This is the settlement administration website for the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement. From this site you can claim your books - the form must be completed on or before March 31, 2011. (NOTE: the deadline for filing an objection to the settlement has already passed)
http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/

FAQs about the Google Book Settlement
http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/help/bin/answer.py?answer=118704&hl=en

The Future of Google Books: Our Groundbreaking Agreement with Authors and Publishers
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/