Posted by: Nicholas Clee in Google on Jun 23, 2009
Michael Healy, formerly of Nielsen and now head of the Book Industry Study Group, is expected to be Executive Director of the proposed Book Rights Registry, set up as a result of the Google Books Settlement. Not unnaturally, he is an enthusiast of the Google Books project. In an interview, summarised here, he says:
The Book Rights Registry introduces into the environment an unprecedented degree of control to authors, publishers and other rightsholders on how their copyrights are exploited and distributed in this new digital world.
The settlement will turn, Healy says, "every public library in this country into a world-class research facility. You have to see the revolutionary character of that."