Ashley Grayson literary agency blog
commentary on the settlement:
It is a major manipulation of the marketplace that effectively diminishes your ability to earn money from your works in significant new markets. In time, these new markets may become the only markets, so this is serious.
....
It establishes a single electronic rights clearing house, the Book Rights Registry (BRR), with an entitlement to a percentage of the electronic income of all works. This amounts to a mandated electronics rights agency that every author is required to pay, but no author can question.
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Publishing consultants are already promising a gold rush of new business based on “content” with no recognition of “authors” in the business model.
It also points out that among the representative authors, not a single novelist was included. And "deadline for an action you might want to take is May 5, 2009."
Hmmmm.
I haven't got any conclusions. It does look like "hey, let's legislate new ways of dealing with tech!" done by people who don't understand the tech or the long-term implications.
While I think some aspects of copyright as it stands are ridiculous, I don't think the solutions involve *more* gov't-appointed agencies taking control of content.