Criticism
The Open Book Alliance – whose members include American Society of Journalists and Authors, Internet Archive, Amazon, Yahoo, National Writers Union and New York Library Association among others – maintain the deal would create a de facto exclusive license for Google because the deal grants no rights to the BRR to license books to competitors – copyright owners will have to license Google’s competitors voluntarily, while Google gets an involuntary, virtual compulsory license through class action process. As a result, only Google receives a license to “orphan books”, whose owners won’t show up to license competitors and which comprise an estimated 70% of books. In short, the settlement all but guarantees that Google would have permanent competitive advantages around comprehensiveness and cost. This is one reason why the Department of Justice is investigating the proposed deal and numerous non-profit organizations, academics and other stakeholders have condemned it.
Pam Samuelson, UC Berkeley Professor of Law says "Libraries everywhere are terrified that Google will engage in price-gouging when setting prices for institutional subscriptions to "the works"
Read more about this topic: Book Rights Registry
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)