NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

This from The Toronto Star: 

"…rights holders will receive a lump sum payment of between $60 and $300 (all figures U.S.) for each title now on Google Book Search and as much as 63 per cent of future revenues generated from digitized sales. Google is required to contribute an initial $125 million to an independent Book Rights Registry, which will disperse the payments."

And this from an astute commentator:

On the one hand, Google’s Book Search could turn out to be an excellent way of reviving out-of-print texts while providing authors with some revenue. On the other hand, the way that Google went ahead and digitised MILLIONS of books without seeking some sort of consent is appalling, and the idea of a monopoly controlling so much intellectual property is extremely unsettling. The best that an author can expect from all this is to end up a very small cog in a very big machine, and that should worry anyone who is concerned about art and intellectual freedom. When Grady says "The mood among writers is that it’s inevitable…" he might as well quote Star Trek and state the obvious: resistance is futile.

Submitted by DGM (our very own DG Myers?)

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