Publish Or Perish! - Google Book Scanning - A solution

If the rights holders are so loath to let Google scan and then publish the books for searching - and displaying partial results or giving the people an opportunity to purchase and download it - then the universal copyright laws that ALL nations have signed (The Berne Commission) should have a new clause inserted that Google (or any other company that intends to do the same)  will notify the copyright holder that it intends to scan those books in copyright but out of print - and if the owner objects THE OWNER must then publish a new run of that book worldwide (10,000 minimum copies) within 6 months and advertise that it is now available again to all the nations (and people) who are part of the copyright treaty- and Google does not get to scan it. If they refuse to publish it - then Google gets to scan it.

If they are SO worried about losing money - then they need to publish it again and make that money. If they refuse to publish - then it shows that the book is really "economically worthless" and it should be in the public domain - or at least parts of it accessible via a public method.

Some of the works being published now will never make it into the public domain for 125 YEARS!  If an author writes a book at age 30, lives to be 80, the copyright still exists for another 75 years = 125 years under copyright. So much for the "limited time" that the original copyright convention had. 125 years out of 2000 is a short time - but since most people die before 80 . . .

Tom Philo