That Sound You Just Heard Was The Other Shoe Dropping

Eugene Volokh posts the Authors Guild email to its members of yesterday's date, regarding Amazon's new Search Inside The Book service. A must read. Regardless of what the specific publishing contracts may provide, it's clear the Guild is philosophically opposed to the idea—even though Amazon is making only limited portions of the books available to individual users, in a format that does not readily lend itself to digital copying and reuse. Says Ernest Miller: "One thing is certain, however. Publishing house lawyers are already drafting language for the standard contracts that will ensure publishers have the right to do this for all future works." Note too the Guild recommends that authors delink their sites from Amazon because it disapproves of the site's Used Books service.