Big news: the Steinbeck and Guthrie families are going to opt in to the amended settlement. The Steinbecks were the lead party in winning the four-month delay and Arlo Guthrie was the lead objector in one of the major author-side filings. This is a significant coup for the settlement’s proponents. Here’s the story from the New York Times and the Publishers Weekly version. A shiny new donkey for whoever brings me the official Authors Guild press release or the “letter shared with PW” sent by Gail Steinbeck.
Google tries to buy everyone off and/or outspend them. They apparently bought Arlo Guthrie off with a clause about music notation and outspent the Steinbecks. Leaving millions of the rest of us copyright holders in the lurch.
Google tries to buy everyone off and/or outspend them. They apparently bought Arlo Guthrie off with a clause about music notation and outspent the Steinbecks.
Or else, Google cut private side deals with both of them, as the Settlement allowed publishers in the AAP to do.
Pity most of the rest of us aren’t powerful enough to get personal deals from Google.
This is not really such a ‘significant coup’.
The Steinbeck estate are not objectors.
‘The Palladin Group for John Steinbeck and Thomas Myles Steinbeck’ head the list of authors and estates on whose behalf Andrew DeVore requested the four-month extension of the original 5 May deadline.
No one representing the Steinbeck estate signed up to the objection that Andrew DeVore sent to the court on behalf of Arlo Guthrie, Julia Wright, Catherine Ryan Hyde and Eugene Linden.
I note Gail Steinbeck’s statement in her email: ‘Our literary agents are trying to wrest away control over the works of John Steinbeck from my husband and our niece.’ Presumably the agents in question are the Palladin Group.
As for Arlo Guthrie, who is an objector: the statement made to the court on his behalf by his daughter Annie Guthrie makes it clear that the display of musical notation and tablature was a big concern for them. I had been wondering if the Guthries would stay in the fight after the settlement was amended to exclude musical notation from the definition of ‘inserts’ and change the definition of book to exclude books more than 20% made up of musical notation.
The most interesting thing about this is the timing, and how it is being ‘spun’.