Writer Beware writes about the Google lawsuit today. It’s going to court at last.
Google wanted to become a library for out of print books, a noble goal, but in their jeal they grabbed books that were still in print, books that the author had the rights to. Then they posted these books in violation of copyright laws. When this was pointed out to them, what did they say? Tough.
They put my first novel up on Google Books while I still owned the copyright. We all had to go through a lot of rigamarole to get our books down. Some had luck; others didn’t. The courts refused to hear the case, although it was tried in Europe and the courts there found against Google.
University libraries have copies of these illegally obtained books and finally the case is going to court.
It takes a lot of work to write a book. Shouldn’t people get paid for their labor?