All Google books prior to 1/5/2009 will be involved in a newly created service similar to the Copyright Clearance Center called the Books Rights Registry (BRR) beginning October 28, 2009. Users will have some access either as a preview, purchase, subscription or general full public access. If the book is in the public domain, you will be able to see 100% of it. If the book is in copyright and not available (not in print) you will be able to se 20% of it. If the book is in copyright you will be able to obtain a bibliography and option to purchase in the price range of $0 - $30. With the purchase you will have full text perpetual access. ALL services will accommodate visually impaired. The institutional subscription can allow the purchase of all books in the library catalog/database and make available to authorized users. The institution will be allowed to print up to 20 pages. The institution, depending on its size will be able to provide access of 1 terminal per library. A community college can provide 1 terminal per 4,000 FTE's and a university can provide 1 terminal for every 10,000 FTE's. All Google participating libraries get a digital copy and are released from terms of the BRR. The University of Michigan is a participating library in the Google books project. They opted out of some of the agreement and will be selling as many as 400,000 titles scanned from their collection via Amazon. Institutional subscribers will also receive a significant discount.
There are potential for new collaborative levels for quality, productivity and innovation but the Google books case will also create new classes of libraries which may lead to new classes of library users. New classes of libraries:
Fully participating libraries - provide free access to Google Books scanned Cooperating libraries - Some public access will be available Public Domain libraries - subscription based access For Sale libraries - direct sales of eBooks Opt Out libraries - users will be on their own to obtain access
Other concerns are with the monopoly of eBooks Google may acquire plus the amount of advertising which may be splashed on the screen. Google has also been found to monitor activity of users and their book selections and searches. Part of the revenue plan is tracking customer behavior. Thus, there is a host of potential problems not the least is with copyright. If you have a book you purchased via Google books, can you lend it? User privacy, intellectual freedom, increasing the digital divide, and monopolistic/antitrust issues remain.
Google estimates there are 120 million titles with 165 manifestations. (U.S. books is slightly less than half of this number based on counts from the MARC 260 field only).
Decision deadline is 9/4/2009. Fear is if Google loses the case, then Fair Use may be damaged in the settlement. There will also be hearing beginning October 7,2009.
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