Google Agrees Book Copyright Deal

Google has agreed a copyright deal, including paying $125 million to settle long standing lawsuits brought against them. These lawsuits were brought against Google over their plan to use copyright material online in Google books. While this has been agreed by the American Authors and Publishers, it has yet to be approved by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The settlement has been described by the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and Googfle themselves as groundbreaking and will "dramatically expand access to books in the US, particularly those out of print but still in copyright"

The agreement will allow people in the US to read up to 20% of most out of print books completely free and given the option to purchase the volume online, with the ability for Authors and copyright holders to opt out of this agreement if they so choose.

For those books that are still available in print, people will be able to find these books, and purchase them online, while some may be previewed if a publisher has signed Google's partnership program.

There will be institutional subscriptions for academic or government organisations allowing members access to millions of books.

Additionally there will be a rights registry enabling rights holders and authors the access to register their work and be renumerated for any revenue generated from their books through this scheme.

One of Googles founders, Sergey Brin announced:

"Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Today, together with the authors, publishers, and libraries, we have been able to make a great leap in this endeavour,"

"While this agreement is a real win-win for all of us, the real victors are all the readers. The tremendous wealth of knowledge that lies within the books of the world will now be at their fingertips."