Quote:
Originally Posted by temple5
I Google scanned books that are still under copywrite (I assume that exists for books) without paying the owners, why would anyone think they would be allowed to release that for free?
For older books, transcripts, maps etc should be fine but books you can still buy on Amazon, why would that be ok to release those books for free?
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The article said that books still for sale aren't part of this. The article also said how Google scanning and asking for forgiveness after is what lead to the solution of the class-action lawsuit - where Google would offer the entire library to institutions, charge a nominal fee for out-of-print books, and keep the money in escrow until the author steps up to claim the moneys they were owed from the sales.
The reason it fell through was that some people felt it was too much of a monopoly on books (even though the Kindle store on Amazon has the lion's share of ebook market) by Google, some felt they were going to overcharge too much to institutions for access in the future, and some felt that Google shouldn't be profiting at all from their efforts.