Which brings us to the other point, made by Mike Perry, who claims that I was grossly inaccurate in saying that opponents of the Books Search agreement have been unsuccessful in getting actual writers or publishers to explain how they might be harmed by Google's efforts. He points out--accurately--that opposition to the Google Books has been stronger outside the United States than inside, and he's right that I probably should have looked more outside the country. But Perry's main example is a letter signed by 2,000 German authors objecting to the Google settlement. You can go ahead and read the letter, a master work of high falutin' rhetoric about the rights of authors from which I absolutely can't deduce exactly what harm the folks who signed the letter actually expect.
Is it worth mentioning, by the way, that Perry's own Inkling Books business seems to consist partly (judging by the titles listed on Perry's website) of reprinting no-longer-copyrighted works, which, thanks to Google, are now available for free online? I'd say so.
I'm convinced that many of the authors who oppose Book Search outside the US completely misunderstand the terms. They think that unless they opt out, they give Google the right to publish their work for a token fee. This is completely false. The moment rights holders want to get out of Book Search, they can, simply by asking that their work be excluded. The only thing that the settlement prevents is an author or publisher having Google include a book in its database, wait a few years until plenty of people have seen it, and then sue for copyright violations. All the people who imagine that Google is stealing their rights should take a careful look at the opposition in the US from people who have actually looked at the settlement carefully, and comes not from those who are afraid that Google will pay authors too little but those who are afraid that the database will cost (and therefore, pay authors and publishers) too much.
