Tags: Google Book Search Settlement, Books, Libraries, Publishers, Copyright, Digitization

One of the most significant developments in the history of books, as well perhaps in the history of copyright, is the massive digitization project that Google, Inc. has undertaken in partnership with more than forty major research libraries and thirty thousand publishers. Google has already scanned and digitized the contents of more than ten million books. Approximately two million are books that are both in-print and in-copyright, the publishers of which may have agreed to participate in the Google Book Search (GBS) Partner Program. Two million others are books that Google believes to be in the public domain. At least six million are books that are in-copyright, but out-of-print. Google has not indicated the upper bounds of the GBS corpus of books, but expectations are that it will grow much larger.

Google Book Search and the Future of Books in Cyberspace.pdf