I’m dithering about the Google Books Settlement.

Naturally. I use the internet constantly, I love social media, I’m an info junkie. So, inevitably, what is possibly the most important development in the relationship between books and digital media so far has taken me completely by surprise and I’m scrambling to catch up. I suck.

A few thoughts on that score:

The reason I don’t know about this is that the whole thing seemed lengthy, legalistic, and boring. It is, in fact, lengthy, legalistic, boring, and really important. (See also: I suck.) 

Cory Doctorow and Jay Lake (among others) have written cogently about why the Settlement is Not A Good Thing. I’m about to dive into a wad of thick, jargon-filled explanation, but at the moment, my main feeling is that Google have – probably inadvertently – done a bad thing. In an attempt to do a very good thing – to preserve and provide access to a whole host of texts which are vanishing and rotting – they have fallen nose-first into the tricksome business of reforming copyright and made life easier for any large company wishing to steamroller a small rights holder.

Way to go, fellas. I suck. But you suck bigtime.

Actually, what I suspect this points up is that Google have not cottoned on to how much effect they have and in what a web of consequence such powerful entities live. They really need to get a handle on that. May I suggest, therefore, that Google execs buy a bunch of copies of Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback and read it cover to cover a few times? Or, you know. They could read it online.

My inclination at the moment is to opt out. It’s profoundly unlikely that I will bring my own case against Google. That does not seem like a sensible thing to do. However, I don’t want to be pressured into accepting a deal I don’t like. I don’t want to signal acceptance of Google’s hamhanded rights grab. I don’t think that this deal, which may turn out to shape the landscape of electronic books and rights for the next little while, has been properly examined. I think it may suck.

I’m also not one hundred percent comfortable with being represented in a case in the US by the Author’s Guild. I realise it’s an aspect of US law that a class action suit is binding upon a class of persons, by definition. I’m just not happy about being told that my interests in a defining moment in publishing are represented by someone I have no contact with. The Guild feels that the Settlement is a good deal for authors, and that may be the case in terms of the immediate consequences – bringing out-of-print and small run books to an audience – but I’m not sure that the larger picture is positive. At the same time, I don’t know enough yet to make firm conclusions. Fortunately, I just got extra time to learn.

This ‘library model’ of electronic publishing is one of the ways the industry might survive in a world of eBooks; rather than buying individual books, you subscribe to a library and use your internet connection to access any book in the list. In that case, of course, Google have just stolen the march on conventional publishers. They’re occupying the space which is one way for publishing to continue into a paperless age. I don’t actually think we’re entering a paperless age at this point – apart from anything else, I don’t think we need to be more dependent than we already are on the small supply of rare earths which are required to make hi tech gear. (Guess what? They mostly come from places which are messed up.) That said, this is potentially a really smooth bit of corporate jujitsu and an utterly nasty thing to do. Don’t be evil? Hm.

On that note, though, this is another reason I’m wondering whether I’ll just opt out: there’s no particular reason I have to allow Google to be my online library host. I could host for myself. I could assume that – if this is a real arena for eBooks and so on – Random House will rapidly enter the game to compete for space in the business.

This deal is being bruited as the only game in town, and either it’s not or it shouldn’t be.

And finally, if anyone was going to gain the right to give access to out-of-print books, to brush aside copyright for orphaned texts and so on, why should it be Google? Why should it be a company at all? If the contention is that these books are a natural resource, why are we allowing a corporate entity to assert exclusive mining rights?

More when I have a clue what I’m talking about.