Has Google Created the iTunes of Book Distribution?

Recently Google filed a settlement agreement, http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/,
in response to the class action lawsuit brought against them by authors and publishers that began back in 2005.

The court has not approved anything yet, but there does appear to be significant support for the settlement by the various players. I just want to reflect on the significance of what we may be seeing with this settlement that I will refer to as the launch of the iTunes for publishing. The process for Google has played out since 2004 when they announced the digital scanning project in conjunction with a number of high profile libraries. Lots of skepticism has followed along with conjecture about what Google hoped to accomplish. There was similar response when Amazon was losing millions in the early years or when Apple was pushing iTunes. From a business model these radical projects don’t make sense. But the business model is about dominating the distribution network and eventually controlling the standard for a market segment. So I predict this will become the iBooks for the distribution of published material and it will probably be good for all.

The shakeout will be interesting to watch. Publishers will benefit, but hopefully more fairly. The real winners will be the Book Rights owners especially the ones who can’t keep their books in print. The creation of a Book Rights Registry has the potential to become the standard for licensing and provide a mechanism for revenue distribution to copyright holders. But the real victory should be libraries and especially university libraries. We could finally see a universal digital library where scholars can efficiently access text from all published works. Would that not be the ultimate collaboration with great potential benefit to all scholarly activities?