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Google is now offering a way for authors and publishers to offer content for free under the Creative Commons license on Google Books. Rightsholders who want to distribute their books can let users download, use, and share them.

If rightsholders are already part of Google's partner program, they can make their book available under CC by updating their account settings. Otherwise, they can sign up to be a partner. There are seven different CC licenses to choose from, and usage permissions vary among them.

"Creative Commons licenses make it easier for authors and publishers to tell readers whether and how they can use copyrighted books," says Google Books Associate Product Manager Xian Ke. "You can grant your readers the right to share the work or to modify and remix it. You can decide whether commercial use is okay. There's even a license to dedicate your book to the public domain."

Books that have been made available under a CC license have been marked with a matching logo on the book's left hand navigation bar. Users can download the books and share them freely.

"And if the rightsholder has chosen to allow people to modify their work, readers can even create a mashup--say, translating the book into Esperanto, donning a black beret, and performing the whole thing to music on YouTube," says Ke. "In return, people who download these books agree to use the work only in ways specified by the license, like giving proper credit to the author on any remixes or further public distributions."

Google says representatives of the Book Rights Registry intend to allow rightsholders to distribute CC-licensed works for free, pending court approval of a settlement. As authors and publishers tell Gogle which works they want to share on Google books under the CC licenses, Google will turn on the option to restrict the search to books that can be shared.