Steinbecks and Guthries Give Google Settlement Thumbs Up
Perhaps the slow journey to an end to the ongoing negotiations around the Google settlement will soon reach its end. At least if you put stock in the influence of the heirs of novelist John Steinbeck and musician and author Woody Guthrie. Both parties have submitted statements reversing their previous stances against the settlement, saying that the revised settlement, submitted to a New York district Court this past November, according to The New York Times.
Gail Steinbeck, wife of the author’s son, had originally sent a letter to influential authors upon the announcement of the original settlement, urging them to speak out against the settlement’s terms. Arlo Guthrie, Woody Guthrie’s son, among others, responded to this letter. Now, Gail Steinbeck says, “the majority of the problems that we found to be troubling have been addressed.”
Here’s more from The New York Times:
In an e-mail message to fellow authors cited in Thursday’s statement from the Author’s Guild, Ms. Steinbeck wrote that the revision “meets our standards of control over the intellectual properties that would otherwise remain at risk were we to stay out of the settlement.” She added that neither the Steinbeck nor Guthrie families would “initiate a separate lawsuit against Google.”
