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Should google be allowed to digitize all books?
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It depends. If they're willing to pay the author or publisher for limited rights, I'd say they can have those rights. But that blanket settlement? No way, it's too broad.
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Don't ever forget Google was collecting emails, passwords, personal info etc. from unsecured WiFi networks as they drove their GoogleMaps vehicles all around the world. Then they pretended they hadn't known exactly what they were collecting, and had collected it by accident. Uh huh.
If you ever go on GoogleMaps, especially in other countries, and look at the pedestrians on the street, or people in their cars, as the Google vehicle is going by, people look hella suspicious. As they ought.
One of the main problems with the (now court-rejected) settlement reached between Google and the Authors' Guild is that the Authors' Guild elected itself to represent the rights of copyright holders without being in any way empowered to do so. This would be as if a developer wanted to buy up all the homes in your town and the chamber of commerce appointed itself to strike a deal on your behalf. The deal concluded by Google and the Guild (and a couple other entities) may or may not be a good one, but in any case, copyright holders should have the ability to opt into or out of the deal, just as the judge in the current ruling held. It shouldn't be fait accompli. Making information widely available on the internet is great, but Google shouldn't be able to subvert authors' rights simply because it's immensely powerful and can find some seemingly legitimate group like the AG to act as its counterparty. Also, there's the issue of so-called "orphaned" works that are still under copyright, although the specific copyright holder is not currently known. To use those works, Google should have to pay a royalty into escrow, but the current deal doesn't have a provision for that.
NO!!**completely not-thought-out-knee-jerk-response
Is this the wave of the future? Will all our libraries be digital and how soon? What happens if you lose power? Then you cannot read? I believe in free libraries but our libraries buy their books. A lot of the books I kept and shipped from Las Vegas are books that are now out of print and unavailable.
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What do you think? I don't trust google. Remember, in their quest to digitize all books, and they make it sound like they just want to share information freely, etc., they want to put ads on the screen, etc. So fuck them.
But citing copyright, antitrust and other concerns, Judge Denny Chin said that the settlement went too far. He said it would have granted Google a “de facto monopoly” and the right to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners.
So unless I'm missing something, boo, Google.