5 ms·

Federal judge rejects Google book monopoly

• RexRollman 16y ago
  Although I personally can appreciate what Google was trying to do here, even if it was self serving, I have to say that I agree with the judge. Hopefully, this setback will make Google come up with a better plan.
• deleted 16y ago
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  • TillE 16y ago
    I agree with all that, but I still think the notion that you could bargain away someone else's copyrights via a settlement to a class action lawsuit is insane. At least that's how I understand it. A bunch of publishers sued Google, and they wanted to negotiate terms for essentially all authors everywhere. No, sorry. It really shouldn't work like that.
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      • dantheman 16y ago
        Or congress will carve out an exception say that copyright doesn't apply to books when used in search, and that search engines and archives can display X amount of the work per search, and an official orphaned works list can be maintained by the LOC and when a work is orphaned it enters the public domain. Copyright, and IP in general, is a farce and full of weird exceptions and rules.
  • gojomo 16y ago
    To whatever extent this disincentivizes Google from scanning, it also incentivizes others, who now can make the argument such scanning-for-indexing-and-preservation is legal without Author's Guild approval, and can try models other than the Google-financed rights-clearinghouse. Disclosure: I work the Internet Archive, a key part of the 'Open Content Alliance' that opposed the Google Books Settlement, but I don't work on any of the book-related projects and I only speak for myself here.
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      • gojomo 16y ago
        Well, the settlement would have given Google a bonanza, but made things harder for others (by conceding both a key fair use point, and a budget for more litigation, to the Author's Guild). Whether that bonanza for Google would have been a net win for total books scanned is hard to tell. It doesn't have to be a company; you mentioned the government, and the nonprofit I work for (Internet Archive/archive.org) has a large book-scanning effort. It's also not that hard to do in a distributed, at-home fashion; see the following on DIY efforts and how to upload scans to archive.org: http://onthecommons.org/diy-book-scanning-takes http://onthecommons.org/diy-book-scanning-takes http://blog.archive.org/2011/03/14/book-scan-wizard-software-now-supports-internet-archive-uploads/ http://blog.archive.org/2011/03/14/book-scan-wizard-software... Further, the total number of books that need scanning (as opposed to being born digital) is pretty close to capped, given the rise of born-digital versions and ebooks. Google itself estimated the total number of unique "printed and bound" materials recently as only 146 million: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/08/books-of-world-stand-up-and-be-counted.html http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/08/books-of-world-stand-... Google's scanned over 15 million with no guarantee of the ability to sell them or legal victory. Other libraries have scanned hundreds of thousands more. Scanning is definitely happening faster than new print-only books are being created. Clearing up the situation with 'orphan works' would help. A victory for Google and others on the matter of fair-use scanning for indexing and excerpting (without sales) would help, too. As you note, the scanning is still "cheap compared to the rest of the operations". So it was never the case that Google needed a big economic incentive, or nothing would get done by Google or anyone else. That everything will be scanned is now a lock; it's just how fast and whether one company will dominate that's an open issue.
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      • itswindy 16y ago
        Sure it is expensive, but once you make Google the 'owner' it's over for a lot of things. That's too high of a price. And it wouldn't hurt Larry and Sergey to give a bit of money back to the society to scan these books without Google holding the copyright ;)
  • warrenwilkinson 16y ago
    Governments have often censored literature, suppressed ideas and even burned books. I'd rather private businesses be involved.
• yanw 16y ago
  Just to balance this article a bit; here is an excerpt from the judgment pointing to the many potential benefits to this deal: The benefits of Google's book project are many. Books will become more accessible. Libraries, schools, researchers, and disadvantaged populations will gain access to far more books. Digitization will facilitate the conversion of books to Braille and audio formats, increasing access for individuals with disabilities. Authors and publishers will benefit as well, as new audiences will be generated and new sources of income created. Older books -- particularly out-of-print books, many of which are falling apart buried in library stacks -- will be preserved and given new life.
• kragen 16y ago
  What would be awesome would be if Google fights these guys in court and wins, getting a decision that what they do to web pages is legal to do to books, too.
  • gojomo 16y ago
    Indeed! Google started by arguing that scanning/indexing/showing-snippets was legal, then switched to 'settle in a way that gives us the pole position and lays mines for everyone behind us'. They should get back to arguing the fair-use principle.
• itg 16y ago
  "In his ruling, Chin hinted that he would look more favorably on an "opt-in" settlement—e.g. one that applied only to those authors and publishers who explicitly chose to accept it." Seems reasonable. The whole opt-out design gave too much power to google, and everybody already knows what a massive pain it is to get in touch with google if a problem arises.
  • ghshephard 16y ago
    The problem, of course, is that the works most likely to benefit from the settlement, those that are orphaned or abandoned, will have no-one to opt-in for them. Works that aren't orphaned have already opted in - just go to amazon.com. :-)
• coliveira 16y ago
  I understand that people want access to information, but what Google is trying to do is completely against copyright law. Copyright, as the name says, is a right given to someone over a property (an intellectual property). You cannot remove that right by just advertising that you should opt out if you don't want that to happen. The debate has to be much bigger than this, and if necessary copyright law needs to be changed so that other uses are possible by anyone (not just Google).
  • ghshephard 16y ago
    I fail to understand (conceptually) how this is any different than what ASCAP has already negotiated with songwriters, composers, lyricists and music publishers . Do you oppose what Pandora does? See: http://www.ascap.com/licensing/about.html http://www.ascap.com/licensing/about.html A brief excerpt: "It is impossible for individual composers and publishers to monitor the hundreds of thousands of businesses that use music. It would be equally difficult, time consuming and expensive for business owners to locate and negotiate with all the owners of the music that might be used. There is a simple, fast and reasonably priced alternative. Through ASCAP, in one simple transaction, businesses can obtain the right to perform the millions of songs created or owned by more than 400,000 of America's and hundreds of thousands of the world's best songwriters, composers, lyricists and publishers. Founded in 1914, and still owned by and managed for its writer and publisher members, ASCAP grants businesses the permission they need to perform music publicly. The money collected is distributed, after deducting operating costs (currently 11.3%), directly to ASCAP members and to affiliated foreign performing rights organizations for their members. "
    • bugsy 16y ago
      "what ASCAP has already negotiated with songwriters, composers, lyricists and music publishers" There is a huge difference. ASCAP represents ASCAP members, who choose to join the organization. ASCAP then becomes a legal agent regarding collecting royalties for the musician. Many musicians join BMI instead. But crucially, many do not join either organization. Neither organization is a publisher, they are a music licensing organization that works for its members. For this to be comparable, ASCAP would become the representative of musicians whether they want that or not, and would be able to publish musician's works without permission. That is certainly not what ASCAP does now.
• ghshephard 16y ago
  The FSF brought up some real concerns about Google having a lockhold on the intellectual property rights of all these materials (though they never convinced me why a Company like Microsoft, or Yahoo couldn't just negotiate the same deal with the Authors Guild and AAP). The idea of this being okay under an "Opt-In" basis is idiotic. The entire rationale behind the "Opt-Out" approach was _the only people who cared_ would be the ones most capable and likely to opt out. The 99% of abandoned or orphaned works that have nobody to speak to, or nobody to find - would automatically return to the public domain where they belong. For those Naysayers - how do you propose we prevent losing all those orphaned works to decay, and, just as importantly, make them accessible to the entire world - that's what Google was offering. In an ideal world, we'd have a sane copyright system which would terminate author's copyrights after some reasonable period of time unless they (or their estate) renewed their copy rights. That way, give an author, say, 20 years of exclusive rights, renewable for up to 40 more years (in 20 year increments) or 20 after their death, whichever is longer. In that world - You could copy all the books, and, when the ISBN indicated it's copyright was expired - it would become searchable. That _certainly_ will inspire authors to create new works - An author creating a material would be guaranteed income for them and their estate for a minimum of 60 years (presuming they die the very next day), or potentially more than 100 years - but, at the same time, means that works return to the public domain once nobody cares, creating a richer creative commons. The problem with _this_ world is that copyrights continue for insane periods of time because a few content owners (of the hundreds of thousands who have created content) - have successfully lobbied for stretching out the copyright windows on ALL WORKS - not just the ones that people care about and are extracting economic value from, without thinking of the negative impacts on the creative commons. Thanks Disney. (Ironically one who very effectively mines the creative commons for their own works) Remember, the purpose of copyrights and patents is not to create some monopolistic/locked-in intellectual property blackhole, rather, in the United States at least, it is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Emphasis on "promote the progress" and "securing for limited time" Hopefully today's decision was a not big step backwards - in an ideal world, this settlement is modified such that it's available to all content archivers/searchers, such that they will have access to the same terms as Google, and we'll be able to truly "Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts."
• deadcyclo 16y ago
  I think this illustrates how screwed up copyright has become. I dream of a world where copyright lasts for 14 years or the copyright holder dies, which ever comes last. Thus an individual can retain copyright for life. If he or she dies before 14 years have passed the heirs will benefit for however much of the 14 years are left. Corporations would never hold a copyright for longer than 14 years. I'm convinced that this would be a fair system for everyone and would return copyright to its original intention; to promote creativity and writing rather than being a corporate cash machine that screwes everybody other than the large corporations.
  • moultano 16y ago
    In your system could corporations own copyrights? In that case how long would the copyright last? What about works by many authors? (Mostly agree with you, but the devil is in the details.)
    • deadcyclo 16y ago
      No problem with many authors, simply expire when the last author dies. Corporations I sort of already said something about. However I must admit I like how things work in the Norwegian equivalent of copyright: You can transfer "copyright" to corporations, but if, and only if there is an employee relationship (either you are employed or working as an independent contractor). This for example means that as a student you retain full "copyright" to all of your work (master thesis etc.), but as a professor it can be transfered to the university. In addition you always retain your "ideal rights" no matter what, even if the rest of the "copyright" is transfered to your employee. I don't think american copyright has an equivalent to this. Basically it means that no matter what you have 1) the right to be identified as the creator and 2) the right to deny derivative works to be associated to you. This means that if somebody makes a movie based on your book you can say "Hey, this movie completely misses the point, I don't want to be associated to it in any shape or form" and the creator of the movie cannot use your name at all. This does however mean that there is no such thing as public domain in Norway, since there is no way of giving up your "ideal rights". Even if you put something out there under terms that in the US would be public domain, you cannot give up your right to be identified as the creator or your right to not be associated with derivative works.
• bugsy 16y ago
  Glad it's been rejected. Google is wanting to circumvent US copyright law by creating law through the civil courts. The civil courts are not the appropriate venue to change copyright law. In addition, the idea of seizure of out of print or allegedly orphaned works, which has been promoted as a cause in conjunction with articles about this case, disturbs me. Someone can start selling my out of print publications just because I choose not to publish them for any reason? Well then, why shouldn't I also be able to stroll on into Google then and take home any orphan computers they have that they aren't currently using. Or head into my neighbor's garage and collect the orphan tools there that he has forgotten about. If someone wants to publish an in-copyright work, they need the explicit permission of the copyright holder. The issue of "can't be found" is not relevant because they are not even trying. Instead they set up a clearing house that collects money and which the author then has to take-or-leave regarding royalties, with no negotiation possible, and if they don't fill out all the right paperwork they get nothing. Why should I be forced to submit to a bureaucracy of some organization I don't like and don't want anything to do with because some judge has decreed them my agent for working with Google Book sales? Glad the judge said no to that nonsense.
  • yonran 16y ago
    Google already has advocated for orphan works legislation. You can search for David Drummond's arguments on Google. The settlement was entirely consistent with Google's previous statements regarding legislation. As for your "orphan computer" analogy, in fact, there _are_ abandoned property laws that give the owner a reasonable opportunity to make claims to the property. In my state, you're supposed to bring property to the police station, and if no one claims it for a few months, it's yours. The proposed nonprofit registry was supposed to be similar for intellectual property.
• gluejar 16y ago
  The photo leading this article is really gratuitous. Do we really need to look at a cute librarianish book stamper to get us interested in serious issues?