AGs Don't Like Google Books Deal, What About Readers?

18.09.2009
Five state attorneys general have joined the opposition to the Google Books settlement, but what the deal means to readers isn't clear. Access to more books sounds great, but will it be?

The five AGs, from Missouri, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Washington, have varied reasons for their opposition, ranging from anti-monopoly to how money owed missing authors should be handled. The attorneys general are relatively late arrivals to the case, which already involves the U.S. Justice Department . A hearing will be held Oct. 7.

I have been staying away from writing about the ongoing controversy about how plans to compensate authors of out-of-print but still-in-copyright books it plans to offer online.

As the author of two such books, I won't concern myself with the 5-cents-a-year they might generate in payments from the Books Rights Registry that is created by the proposed settlement.

What does it mean for readers?

While I am happy that more and more of the world's content will be , I wonder about the value of letting Google control and monetize it. Google didn't write any of these books, it's just scanning them.