India Objects To Google Book Settlement

angry tapir writes "About 15 Indian authors and publishers, and two Indian organizations, have submitted their objections to Google's plan to scan and sell books online. Google's proposed settlement of a US lawsuit turns copyright law on its head, according to Siddharth Arya, legal counsel for the Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation, which licenses reproduction rights to books and other publications."

Re:This is atrocious!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yes. It seems atrocious when there are local prints of any and all books (including new ones) on which no royalties are paid to the publishers. Heck, we just crank up our local presses, and print off any books we want or need... If you doubt me, walk on the indian roads where they sell books on streets, and you'll find most new books, not the publisher print, but local for a fraction of the price. Thank you come again.

Re:This is atrocious!

[gavcam]

actually a crore is 10 million

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore

Re:Wait - Sell?

[biryokumaru]

Yes, they plan on selling/presently do sell the print-on-demand versions, very cheaply. I haven't had to pay to view any text on Google Books over the internet, though, so I imagine that should remain free indefinitely.

the reason it's opt-out

[bcrowell]

The reason it's opt-out is that there's a huge number of orphaned works out there whose copyrights are still valid but that can't be bought legally because they're out of print. The authors are probably dead, and the publishers aren't interested in communicating with anyone about the works, because the amount of money they could get out of it wouldn't be worth their time. Therefore it can't be opt-in. The copyright regime is having the effect of making these books permanently unavailable, which isn't doing the authors (or their heirs or their readers) any good. If copyright terms were more reasonable, it wouldn't be such a big problem, but congress has basically decided to keep extending copyrights so that they never expire. That's what's created this huge class of orphaned works. The only way to deal with the problem is to make it opt-out.

Some authors are complaining, after the class-action suit is all over, that it's unfair and they weren't consulted. Well, sorry, but that's how a class-action suit works. They have to make a certain legal effort to notify you as a member of the class, but if you don't see a notification, you're out of luck, and the settlement applies to you just like everyone else. Boo hoo. Go ahead and opt out.

Re:Deciding

[Dare nMc]

using their creations for profit without even giving them notice.

you'll get notice, google will send you the greater of 63% of Revenues Earned in Google Book Search [googlebooksettlement.com] or $60. At that point you can just take your money, and either let it keep coming, or opt out and send your book back into obscurity.