Everybody’s talking about the proposed Google copyright settlement with publishers over Google’s massive digitizing project. The best summary are at The Millions, which examines how the Google settlement can change the literary landscape, and at EFF, which offers a readers guide to the issue.

I’ve certainly not read the whole thing, which comes out to hundreds of pages. But what’s troubling me about the whole thing continues to be that access to the digitized material within Google Book Search is restricted outside the U.S.; even though many countries have much less restrictive copyright laws than the U.S., Google seemingly throws up a blanket wall denying access to non-U.S. users to full content. The cumbersome solution is to go through a proxy server that mimics a U.S. IP address.

Google already considers any book published before 1923 as out of copyright and offers a PDF download of those books. But that PDF download link of pre-1923 titles is magically hidden if you access Google Book Search from many (most? all?) countries outside the United States. I know that is true for Argentina (despite copyright in Argentina only extends 50 years after the death of the author) and I’ve read that access is not available in Australia. There must be many more countries in this list.

With the new copyright settlement, Google will make available access to books still in copyright but out-of-print. As a former librarian, I applaud that strategy. (Publishers have a legitimate concern, but – really – publishers should have been out in front of digital access to out-of-print titles much earlier anyway.) Google will provide subscription-based institutional access to this resource (which I suspect will cost a pretty penny) and individuals can purchase the rights to access the books online.

The section of the agreement titled Other Potential Commercial Uses offers insight into future, and it looks to be a very bright future:

In the future, Google and the Registry may agree to develop other Access Uses, including consumer subscriptions (similar in concept to the institutional subscriptions); print on demand Books; custom publishing (per-page pricing of content for course packets or other forms of custom publishing for the educational and professional markets); PDF downloads (consumers would be able to download a PDF version of a Book); and summaries, abstracts or compilations of Books. Rightsholders will be notified, either directly or through the Registry’s website, of all new commercial uses that Google is authorized to make, and will have an opportunity at any time to exclude their Books from any or all of these uses.

It’s unclear to me whether any of this will be accessible to international users. I fear that it may not, particularly since even now not even public domain books are accessible everywhere via Google Book Search outside the U.S.

A serious need

There is a serious need, particularly in developing countries, for access to information – especially scholarly books and research. Already, an enormous amounts of research material and scholarship is cut off from the most of the world. Online access to books – whether for free or fee – is a significant need for readers in every country. If Google can’t make that happen, then individual publishers need to do so.

Meanwhile, those of us down here in the Southern Cone and elsewhere will continue to hunt for U.S.-based proxy servers to access that restricted content. But that only works for those of us with the technological wits to do so.