Will Google Books become a monopoly text archive provider?
Robert Darnton is just the latest scholar to suggest this - this time in the NY Review of Books. But there’s a key assertion made which I don’t quite follow:
Most book authors and publishers who own US copyrights are automatically covered by the settlement. They can opt out of it; but whatever they do, no new digitizing enterprise can get off the ground without winning their assent one by one, a practical impossibility, or without becoming mired down in another class action suit. If approved by the court—a process that could take as much as two years—the settlement will give Google control over the digitizing of virtually all books covered by copyright in the United States.
How is the position of a potential digitizer of orphaned copyright works (whether a commercial or not for profit venture) worse than before the Google suit? Google has set up a third party body that potential future entrants to the market can work with and has shown that it is possible to reach an agreement with publishers, at least in the US (something that was hitherto supposed to be entirely impractical). So if Google is successful they will encourage others to enter the market and if they are not commercially successful someone else may take up the challenge. Perhaps if it isn’t a commercial proposition Google could even be persuaded to hand over Google Books to a non-profit?
As I understand it nothing in the existing ruling gives Google a perpetual exclusive right to do what they are doing - they are just the only people to have tried (and they may be the only organization with the vision, the money and the technological skills to succeed).
Am I missing something?