A group of 21 professors from the University of California have submitted a comment on the proposed Google Books settlement. Among other issues, the faculty are concerned the settlement does not provide support for academic author's "open access preferences". From the comment:
... For books in copyright with identified rights holders, the proposed settlement agreement envisions
several options for authors and publishers to commercially benefit from revenues generated from
uses of the Book Search corpus. They can, for example, sign up for the [Book Rights Registry] and share in the
revenues generated by use of the corpus that Google will share with the BRR. However, the
agreement does not explicitly acknowledge that academic authors might want to make their books,
particularly out-of-print books, freely available by dedicating their books to the public domain or
making them available under a Creative Commons or other open access license. We think it is
especially likely that academic authors of orphan books would favor public domain or Creative
Commons-type licensing if it were possible for them to make such a choice through a convenient
mechanism. We are concerned that the BRR will have an institutional bias against facilitating these
kinds of unfettered public interest, open access alternatives. The notices some of us received from
Google as members of the author class do not, for example, mention either public domain dedication
or Creative Commons licenses as alternatives to registration for payouts from Google through the
BRR. ...
Academic
authors may well want to terminate transfers of copyright to publishers in order to make their works
more accessible through public domain dedication or Creative Commons-type licensing. The
proposed settlement agreement, which governs only the relationship between rights holders and
Google, does not address the potential for authors to recapture copyright and may create the
perception that the BRR stands between authors and registered rights holders. Although the
relationship between authors and rights holders is beyond the scope of the proposed settlement
agreement, it would be reassuring if the agreement referenced the possibility that authors might
recapture copyright and make their books available on an open access basis. The BRR could create
tools that would assist authors to complete such transactions. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 8/20/2009 06:14:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
