Will Books.Google.com Be Blocked in Canada?
Martyn Daniels, of the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland, comments on the GBS settlement thusly:
Again we have long argued for a rights clearing house but not one that is tied to an act such as this. Some may say that the industry has opted for the easy route and one that means that they can effectively abdicate from the job it should have done long ago. So out of print but in copyright books become fair game and the question is who owns what, what happens to rights reversals, how do royalties get paid and to whom and who is the seller
Martyn also parsed the argreement in his post and revealed this:
International users
Because this agreement resolves a United States lawsuit, it directly affects only those users who access Book Search in the U.S.; anywhere else, the Book Search experience won’t change. Going forward, we hope to work with international industry groups and individual rightsholders to expand the benefits of this agreement to users around the world.
Earlier today I wondered how the book publishing industry would handle the Book Registry seeing the industry has a pretty poor record so far. I also wondered how Google would enforce territorial rights in light of google.com being easily accessed from Canada. Martyn’s post answers that second question — denial.
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