My reading on this is that you will be able to purchase on-line access to books that are out of print, but still covered by copyright. The copyright holder will receive payment. This would address problems like the Miss Channer book, allowing an individual to buy a digital copy of an out of print, but still under copyright book, and the publisher to profit, without having to actually print another run of the book. Books that are public domain (copyright expired) seem to be available for free to read on the internet at Google books. In fact, I just went to google books, searched "lace" and see that there are a number of public domain books that have been scanned in their entirety that can be read for free on line. Some are very hard to buy, like the second edition, 1869, of the Palliser book. According to Google Books these will continue to be available for free. I don't think the University of Arizona site would be affected, since Google and the Digital Archives are doing exactly the same thing, namely making public domain books available to the public. In fact, this could be very advantageous to the research community. In many cases, the scanning of the public domain books has been done by librarians to make the books available to everyone, much in the same spirit as Tess and the Professor. Tess and the Prof. don't own the copyright to the books they scan and neither does Google. The controversy seems to be related to works that are covered by copyright, but out of print, and the fact that the copyright holder must opt out of the agreement by a certain date (rather than opting in) and if they don't opt out of the agreement, they would not be able to individually negotiate the terms of the digitalizing of their copyright covered work, but would have to accept the settlement amount. If the book is still in print and freely available on the open market google would direct you to where you could buy the book. In the case of lace books that are rarely republished, this could be a very advantageous development. But if the author (like Alex, for instance) thinks she may wish to republish the book herself, she should be very aware of the requirements for opting out of the settlement which include specific dates by which she must do so. Devon
In a message dated 10/5/2009 11:47:04 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: Try going to: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/#4 in there it clearly states this: Online access Once this agreement has been approved, you'll be able to purchase full online access to millions of books. This means you can read an entire book from any Internet-connected computer, simply by logging in to your Book Search account, and it will remain on your electronic bookshelf, so you can come back and access it whenever you want in the future. purchase online access?! - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]
