The Times‘ Media Decoder blog provides a brief update on the ongoing efforts to reach a settlement in the Google Books case. For those of you who haven’t been following this story, Google is attempting to scan millions of out-of-print books into a ginormous digital library. The federal government, along with publishers, authors, and others, has blocked this initiative out of legitimate concerns that Google would have a monopoly over access to these digital books. The parties are now trying to reach a settlement. Most of the post is about the judge in the case setting a deadline for a settlement agreement, but the last graf contains an interesting tidbit. Under the current draft of the settlement, Google will be required to create audio editions of every book it scans. That would be a huge boon to readers who are blind or visually impaired. What’s not clear is whether the audiobooks will be available for free. The deadline for an agreement is November 9th, so hopefully we’ll have more details soon.
