Some encouraging news! The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google have just announced a settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search. The agreement, reached after two years of negotiations, would resolve a class-action lawsuit brought by book authors and the Authors Guild, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by five large publishers as representatives of the AAP’s membership. The class action is subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Under the agreement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million. The money will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees. The settlement agreement resolves Authors Guild v. Google, a class-action suit filed on September 20, 2005 by the Authors Guild and certain authors, and a suit filed on October 19, 2005 by five major publisher-members of the Association of American Publishers: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE: MHP); Pearson Education, Inc. and Penguin Group (USA) Inc., both part of Pearson (LSE: PSON; NYSE: PSO); John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (NYSE: JWa and JWb); and Simon & Schuster, Inc. part of CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A and CBS). These lawsuits challenged Google’s plan to digitize, search, and show snippets of in-copyright books and to share digital copies with libraries without the explicit permission of the copyright owner. Holders worldwide of U.S. copyrights can register their works with the Book Rights Registry and receive compensation from institutional subscriptions, book sales, ad revenues and other possible revenue models, as well as a cash payment if their works have already been digitized. For more information on the settlement, including FAQs and remarks from AAP Chairman Richard Sarnoff, please see http://www.publishers.org