Quote:
Originally Posted by ebookrights
AFAIK the agreement isn't approved, yet. So if you find any books that should not appear yet appearing on the store, please report back.
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The agreement's been approved by the ASA; the court hasn't signed off, and some fairly substantial papers have been filed against it, including one from the US DoJ. Google's attempt to convert "everything we scanned for search purposes" into saleable ebooks, minus whatever tiny handful get specific opt-outs from the copyright owners, may not work at all.
The settlement turns copyright law on its head, changing it from "grant permission to copy/sell to whomever you like" to "you must let a company know if you don't want them to sell your works." If it's accepted the legal precedent would be tremendous... would potentially allow any company to start selling ebooks, with a nice disclaimer of "we'll remove any that the authors ask us not to carry."
How would we know if there are "books that should not appear?" (FWIW, I don't see any books that I know aren't available elsewhere as ebooks, like Harry Potter or Farenheit 541.)
The listings are just baffling. I see covers from one year & publisher, with a later publication date and different publisher, and prices are all over the place.
IDIC Epidemic, a Star Trek novel by Jean Lorrah... cover is from the 1988 Pocket Books edition (so I suspect is not included in purchase); Googlebook listing says published by Simon & Schuster 2000; copyright page inside says © 1990 Paramount Pictures.
(What, exactly, did S&S copyright in 2000? Their layout--which isn't used in the digital version, which has line breaks between paragraphs? A new cover that we don't see here?)
I'd be more sympathetic to claims of "theft" for filesharing if publishers and retailers weren't collaborating in "fraud" by giving conflicting & inaccurate info to customers.
I'm unwilling to click "buy now;" I have no idea what I'd be purchasing, and can't find any info about that.