Authors Guild & Google

As just about everyone probably knows, the Authors Guild has sued Google for systematic copyright infringement. Bully for the AG. They're right and this is an important issue. Let the negotiations for the brave new copyright world begin.

Unfortunately, the Guild hasn't finished spearheading its criminally flawed settlement of the freelancers' class action against databases and publishers. Before meaningful negotiations proceed over the avant-garde issues presented by the Google case, the UnSettlement must go down. If the Guild and their brethren authors' associations succeed in establishing a court-enforced principle that our rights can be given away forever by default, then the landscape of the future is as grim as it gets.