Quote:
Originally Posted by paulckennedy
Can someone please explain to this LAYMAN what is exactly wrong with the Google Book Settlement?.
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There are several problems with the Google Book Settlement. I'm told that there are some legal technicalities that the agreement will break.
But the big two isssues for me are:
1. The agreement allows Google to copy and profit from the work (pre-2005, I think) of anyone who doesn't explicitly ask them not to.
2. The agreement gives only Google this right. No-one else can copy/store/search/sell in-copyright (pre 2005) works without explicit permission from the copyright holders.
It puts a massive hole in the copyright laws, in favour of only Google.
Orphan works are a problem. Tracking down rights holders is tricky, and sometimes impossible. But the solution to orphan works is to change the law, not to give a single corporation a privileged position.
Orphan works can only be properly tackled by re-negotiating the Berne convention. But the US government could do one thing unilaterally that would eliminate the problem of about 2/7th of orphan works in the US - reduce the copyright term to lifetime + 50 years instead of the current lifetime + 70 years, and apply it to all post-1922 works.