Settlement reached Between Google and Publishers but Class Action Suit on Behalf of Authors Continues -
Friday, October 05, 2012
Google and the Association of American Publishers reached a private agreement yesterday. The publishers involved in the settlement are the McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, the Penguin Group, John Wiley & Sons and Simon & Schuster. The deal allows publishers to choose whether to allow Google to digitize their out-of-print books that are still under copyright protection. If Google does so, it will also provide them with a digital copy for their own use.
For books it has digitized, Google allows people to read 20 percent of them online and purchase the entire books from the Google Play store, and it shares revenue with the publishers.
The settlement does not answer the key question at the heart of the litigation between Google and publishers and authors — whether Google is infringing authors' copyrights by digitizing books nor does it answer the issue of orphan works- those that are still under copyright but whose copyright holder or author cannot be found. Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said in a statement. “Google continues to profit from its use of millions of copyright-protected books without regard to authors’ rights, and our class-action lawsuit on behalf of U.S. authors continues."