Melville House Books

It’s been a long, hard-fought battle in a terrain that’s new and alien to all concerned, but yesterday, Google Inc. agreed to pay $125 million to settle two different copyright lawsuits brought against it by authors and publishers over the company’s ongoing scanning of books in its Google Books project. The settlement — which you can review here, at the website of the Association of American Publishers, one of the main litigants in the case — “will use $34.5 million of the settlement fund to create a registry program to compensate rights holders,” while “another $45 million will be used to compensate authors whose works have already been scanned without permission,” according to a report on Bloomberg News by Eric Larson. “If an author does not want his or her book to be included in the program, they can absolutely opt out,” says Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond. The settlement is a “clear victory for copyright owners,” says one commentator. It “brings books and printed matter into the 21st century,” says another. In a Wall Street Journal report by Jeffrey Trachtenberg, AAP co-chairman Richard Sarnoff says, “What this does is breathe new life into millions of books without jeopardizing rights holders.” The deal is still pending final approval from a federal judge.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.