GOOGLE BOOK SETTLEMENT: MAKING SENSE OF THE LITIGATION

This is my first post in an attempt to understand and inform my readers of the Google Book Settlement in which the Author's Guild sued Google for their work to digitize millions of books. According to the court documents available on the Author's Guild resource page, the Author's Guild is "the nation's largest organization of book authors, which has as its primary purpose to advocate for and support the copyright and contractual interest of published writers." On the other hand, in this court document, Google is described as "a major Internet search engine...that provides access to commercial and other sites on the internet."

The crux of the problem seems to be that Google in creating "archives" of books wants to be able to use them as they wish. Unfortunately, this means that Google can "reproduce and retain for its own commercial use a digital copy of the libraries' archives". If I understand it right, Google is digitizing these books and they want to control how the digital archive they are creating is going to be used. And, they want to be sure that if they decide to sell electronic or digital versions of the books they digitize they can do so because they have put in the technology, effort, and manpower to do so.

Obviously, they want to cut out the middle man which is the Author's Guild and here is where the problems start. Everyone wants a piece of this new pie, but no one is willing to share the costs of creating the pie, or the costs of making sure the pie eaters obtain what it is they are looking for as well.