Google Book Settlement Stalls

Today, Judge Denny Chin extended the deadline to opt-out of the Google Book Settlement. First, a little history. Several years ago, Google embarked upon an ambitious project to scan every book ever created. Working with several institutional libraries, Google has, thus far, scanned approximately 7 million volumes.

In 2005, the Authors Guild and others commenced a class action against Google alleging that the scanning project infringed upon the individual authors copyright rights. We won't get into the basis for the lawsuit here. In 2008, the parties reached a complicated settlement that addresses Google's prior actions in scanning the 7 million volumes and also grants Google significant rights to continued use of its digital library going forward.

The forward looking aspects of the settlement are unusual. Class action are typically resolved by providing some measure of compensation for prior acts and an agreement that the behavior that led to the class action is not repeated. This settlement is different. The settlement agreement runs 334 pages long (no, that's not a typo) and includes more in attachments (200 pages) than primary text (134 pages). A vast array of rights are implicated in the settlement agreement and a new entity -- the Registry -- is created to administer those rights on behalf of authors.

We represent at least two class members of the Google Book Settlement who received their notice within the last two weeks. We suspect that other clients of ours may be class members, but they have yet to receive any notice. We are pleased that the deadline is extended and thank Gail Steinbeck and Andrew DeVore for their efforts. If you have received a class notice or suspect that you may be a member of the class, we'd be happy to help you understand your rights. We're also interested to know if you have only recently received your notice.

Out of the Mouths of Babes and the Pockets of Authors?

Last month we commented on the introduction of Amazon's new Kindle and its potential impact on the publishing industry. About a week ago, Roy Blount, Jr., president of the Authors Guild commented on the "Read-to-Me" feature that will read Kindle content -- magazines, blogs, books -- aloud. Blount argued that this new feature is no different than an audio book, which authors are separately compensated for. There is apparently no extra compensation from Amazon in light of the "Read-to-Me" feature. He's right to point this out as it does represent another commercial use of the original work. We say commercial to distinguish Kindle from bedtime stories which nobody would suggest requires a royalty payment to the author. We found it strange that there was no technological solution to this problem, so we went to Amazon to see if the site would shed some light. According to the specs, the "Read-to-Me" feature is not available where it is disabled by the rights holder. So that would appear to solve Blount's issue. But this is clearly something that authors and their agents should discuss with either Amazon or the publisher.

UPDATE: We learned that the ability to disable the "Read-to-Me" feature resulted in part from Blount's op-ed piece.