Just two weeks ago I gave a presentation where I said sometimes we needed a legal process to sort out thorny issues, and cited the Google Book Search case where publishers were suing the search engine giant for reproducing copyrighted works given to them by major university libraries without obtaining the permission of copyright owners.

Well, today it seems that process has worked, and a settlement has been reached among publishers, libraries and Google. (Learn more here at the site of a Copyright Alliance member, the Association of American Publishers.) I won’t go into the details of the agreement; you can read the press release, statement by AAP Chairman Richard Sarnoff and FAQ online. Instead I’ll discuss the possible impact of this agreement assuming it is accepted by the court.

Under this system, access and payment is streamlined. For example, Google will fund the creation of a Book Rights Registry, in which it will be easier for any of us to gain access to printed works, whether in the public domain or under copyright. More importantly to writers (I confess a bias in that area), it will help empower those authors and their publishers to maintain their rights over online use of works, and provide an efficient means to be compensated for any online use.

Back before Google announced their deal with the libraries at the Universities of California, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Stanford to reproduce their works and thus have both Google and the libraries maintain a digital copy, Google had gone to the Frankfurt Book Fair and announced a deal with major publishers to do this through the free market, with appropriate fees paid. They apparently quickly grew tired of that approach and instead chose the free approach the libraries offered, turning their backs on the very publishers they had been wooing.

It is refreshing to see we are finally where we should have been several years ago, developing a marketplace solution that allows copyright owners to grant access in return for compensation and allows those seeking access to written works to obtain it. I should also note that the libraries above participated in the talks and thus are presumably satisfied at the access this agreement gives to their patrons and others interested in access to works both copyrighted and public domain.

We see this model occasionally in the world of copyright, where rights clearances is a significant transaction cost so a system is set up to streamline it. The Copyright Clearance Center comes to mind as one example. You also occasionally hear advocacy groups that do not represent copyright owners or creators advocate for essentially compulsory licensing regimes that would be of tremendous benefit to the users they profess to support (in the short-run anyway) but would significantly dilute the rights of the creators, and thus hurt users in the long run.

Voluntary arrangements like this, where copyright owners have flexibility, are far superior, and frankly can’t be compared to a compulsory model. Here the rightsholder still can largely determine his or her own fate. I hope this system works as anticipated, and can be a model for future litigation involving massive infringement of creators’ rights, noting that rightsholders have every right to push litigation to a court verdict if they feel that is the best approach.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 10:17 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright law, internet, licensing, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.