"It will make it possible for users to read a far greater collection of books, including many still under copyright protection."
"According to Dan Clancy, the engineering director for Google book search, every month users view at least 10 pages of more than half of the one million out-of-copyright books that Google has scanned into its servers."
"For readers who might want to buy digital access to an individual scanned book, Mr. Clancy said, Google was likely to sell at least half of the books for $5.99 or less. Students and faculty at universities who subscribe to the database will be able to get the full contents of all the books free."
"The settlement may give new life to copyrighted out-of-print books in a digital form and allow writers to make money from titles that had been out of commercial circulation for years. Of the seven million books Google has scanned so far, about five million are in this category."
"Revenue will be generated through advertising sales on pages where previews of scanned books appear, through subscriptions by libraries and others to a database of all the scanned books in Google's collection, and through sales to consumers of digital access to copyrighted books. Google will take 37 percent of this revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors."
"Just what kind of commercial opportunity the settlement represents is unknown, but few expect it to generate significant profits for any individual author. Even Google does not necessarily expect the book program to contribute significantly to its bottom line."
Rich reports some criticisms of the settlement, but they seem small beer. That readers might decide to pass up a book based on a few pages of its text might just as likely be encouraged to read the whole thing. More telling was the concern of some libraries that the charges would price them out of the market for the service.
To me, the settlement seems like a good deal for most people, short of the abolition of copyright. Publishers are likely to suffer in the long run as the market for printed books continues to shrink.
