I have posted a
new summary paper online, this time bringing together the provisions relating to 'inserts'.
In the charmless jargon of the settlement agreement, an insert is a short work contained in a book whose copyright-holder is not the copyright-holder of the insert. Examples of inserts include entire works contained in anthologies and collections: essays, poems, short stories, letters, song lyrics, etc. A foreword or afterword by someone other than a book's author is also an insert. A 'partial insert' is a work of this kind that is not complete in itself, such as a quotation or excerpt.
Authors of inserts get a very raw deal under the settlement agreement. In-copyright inserts in books digitized before 5 May 2009 will attract a very small one-off payment ($15–75 [roughly £9–45], depending on the volume of claims). Excerpts will attract an even smaller payment: never mind the fact that some excerpts can be quite substantial.
No payment will be made for works digitized after 5 May 2009.
The only other payment on offer is a one-off fee for any works included in the projected Institutional Subscription Database. No money is to be paid out for that for at least five years after the settlement is ratified, and there is no guarantee that the 'target' sums suggested, which are very small ($50 [approx £30] for a complete story, poem or essay), can actually be achieved. Or, indeed, that the project will get off the ground. At the moment, the Institutional Subscription Database is little more than vapourware, a fact that too many people are failing to grasp.
Incidentally, under the agreement authors of inserts cannot arrange for their works to be included in the Institutional Subscription Database, without also permitting them to be sold in Print on Demand and PDF copies, etc – for which they will receive no money.
Authors who remain in the settlement class (that is, who do not opt out by 28 Jan) will not be able to have their inserts removed from Google's database (as books, we are told, can be removed): they can only request that their poems, short stories and essays published in multi-author collections be withheld from 'display': no 'snippets' or previews, no online access, or inclusion in Print on Demand, PDF or EPUB editions.
Apparently recognising that the settlement agreement provides hardly any incentive for authors of anthologized pieces to permit these works to be sold, the minds who drafted the settlement came up with a handy bludgeon: the editor of an anthology or similar collection can take a recalcitrant author to arbitration to get the 'no display' attribute changed to 'display'. Even if the author of the insert wins, he or she will still have to pay half the arbitration costs, as well as all his or her legal fees.There is more: if the editor doesn't want to do this, then Google can do it, with the editor's agreement; or if the anthology or collection is an 'orphan work', Google can do it anyway.
Just another nasty little trap, buried in the small print.
In the course of writing this paper on inserts, I also revised the opening passage of my paper
The Google Book Settlement: a survival aid for UK authors. It now contains a fuller account of what does and doesn't fall within the scope of the settlement:
The Amended Google Book Settlement agreement, if accepted by the court, would affect the rights in every printed book published on or before 5 January 2009 in the UK, Canada or Australia. All printed books published in the US and registered with the US Copyright Office on or before the specified date would also fall within its scope. (Note that not all US publications are registered with the Copyright Office.) It will apply to books that have not hitherto been digitized by Google, and authors who have not, so far, had any of their works digitized, as well as those who have.
It will apply not only to book-length works but to any work contained in a book that is not by the book’s main author, including works in anthologies and other multi-author collections. It will apply to illustrations in cases where the owner of the rights to the illustrations also has rights in the book, as author, co-author or publisher. Periodicals are excluded from the definition of 'book', and comic novels are defined as periodicals and also excluded. Graphic novels, however, fall within the scope of the agreement.
For works published after 1978 it is possible to
check online whether they were registered with the US Copyright Office.
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