So this is a harbinger of things to come: A man from Halifax, Nova Scotia, accidentally discovered that a family history he compiled ended up among the books that had been scanned into the Google Books archive. And he was not happy about it one bit.

It turns out that the book had ended up in the libraries of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and had been scanned into Google Books after the university joined Google's Library Project to digitize the collections of 20 major libraries.

According to the Madison Capital Times, the Halifax man only discovered his book was in the Google archive when he was doing an Internet search in May. He was furious—and called it copyright infringment, which, technically, it is. He also was concerned because, as he told the Capital Times, he had promised family members who had contributed to the book that their personal information would "not be permanently stored electronically."

What happened to the man's book, and how this could affect other rights-holders, after the jump.

Google has since removed the book at his request. The settlement Google has drafted with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers—and which is pending approval by a New York judge—says owners holding the copyrights to books that Google has already digitized may either accept $60 in payment from Google to keep their books in the archive, or may request to have the book removed. The deadline to stake a claim to the $60 is January 5. The deadline for requesting removal is April 5, 2011.

The settlement is scheduled to receive a ruling in October. If approved, these terms will apply to all copyright holders of books that have already been scanned.

"Think about that," the man told the The Capital Times. "If I hadn't stumbled across this information, by April 5, 2011, Google would have had the digital rights to my book."