Members of the University of California's Academic Council and the chair of the Academic Senate’s Committee on Libraries and Scholarly Communication have submitted a letter about the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Here's an excerpt:
We have three main concerns about the proposed settlement agreement. First, to maximize access to knowledge, prices should be reasonable. Unfortunately, the proposed settlement agreement contains inadequate checks and balances to prevent price gouging and unduly restrictive terms for purchasers of books and institutional subscribers. Second, the agreement does not contemplate or make provision for open access choices that have in recent years become common among academic authorial communities, especially with regard to out of print books. The settlement agreement only contemplates that authors would monetize their books and related metadata through the Book Rights Registry (BRR). This is especially worrisome as to the millions of out of print, and likely orphan, books. Third, the agreement contemplates some monitoring of user queries and uses of books in the Book Search corpus that negatively impinge on significant privacy interests of authors and readers and undermine fundamental academic freedom principles.
Read more about it at "U.C. Professors Seek Changes to Google Books Deal."
