What do the Google Settlement (see earlier post) and corporate sponsorship have to do with each other? They're connecting in my mind.
Turns out that May 5, 2009 is the day that authors and publishers have to choose whether to "opt out" of the Google Settlement. It's not a simple problem, but it has a pretty simple answer. Higher education institutions like UC are not going to start proceedings against Google in the courts, so why reserve the right to do so?
Does this mean we don't care? Absolutely not. An ANR publication represents more than just information, it's an icon of who we are. The same is true for a web site.
Along with some others in ANR, I've been thinking about how we maintain our "brand" identity in this new environment. If you've been to Google Books, you'll see that our publications appear, often in close proxmity to other brands and certainly under the Google banner.
What about in our web space? Does the logo of a corporate sponsor undermine our values? What about a live link?
It's making my head spin, but in a good way. It's good because we're protecting something that is real. We continue to ask "Is this true?" Not only do we ask, we act to find out.
Recently, Google announced that a settlement had been reached with a large group of authors and publishers who were suing the giant search engine because it had scanned and indexed large numbers of books, including library collections from major universities. Many of these books were still protected by copyright. If you want to see how this works, go to http://books.google.com/ and search for a book. Not only can you see some pages from the book, you see search terms highlighted in the text.
Anyway, the news of the settlement is huge and has major implications for publishing, copyright, and on and on. What doesn't Google impact these days!
Google's own internal Blog has a pretty good description here....
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-chapter-for-google-book-search.html
In our own way, ANR is playing a role in this soap opera. Check out the "Google Books" search widget on the ANR catalog site.
On the other hand, the settlement raises ongoing questions about just what exactly constitutes a copy. Suffice it to say that the biggest battles will be about money. Unless someone out there is writing the first book in a block buster series about a Wizard Farm Advisor going off to school at Nuthatches School at the end of an invisible high speed rail link to West Davis, I don't think one of our books will be the topic........no matter how good it is!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Bob
