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Tim O'Reilly on the Google Library Project

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Sep 29, 2005 03:15 PM
from the stuff-to-read dept.
Businesses Google The Internet
dkleinsc writes "The New York Times is running an op-ed piece(free registration required) by Tim O'Reilly arguing that the Google Library Project is a good thing for authors in general, and suggests a lawsuit by the Author's Guild against Google is acting against authors' best interest."
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[+] Your Rights Online: $125 Million Settlement In Authors Guild v. Google 238 comments
James Gleick writes "Authors, publishers, and Google are announcing a huge settlement deal today in their lawsuits over the scanning of millions of copyrighted books in library collections. Google has agreed to a huge payout for books that were scanned without permission, but now they'll be allowed to scan the books legitimately. Most important, they'll be able to put millions of books online, including those still in copyright — not just for searching and not just in snippets. There is a groundbreaking new licensing system meant to make the books as widely available as possible while protecting the authors' copyrights and enabling them to share in the revenue. Some will differ, but personally I think this is a wonderful outcome, for readers and for authors alike."
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Tim O'Reilly on the Google Library Project 50 Comments More /

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  • Author's Guild Stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)

    by geomon (78680) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:16PM (#13679342) Homepage Journal
    Since their suit was announced, I have wondered why the Author's Guild would object to MORE access to their works by offering snippets to Google Print. Obviously there is much to be lost by publishers who, like the RIAA, act as gatekeepers on published works. If the Author's Guild really likes the current system, then why do so few works circulate more than 5,000 copies? Wouldn't their members be better served with wider distribution?

    The Author's Guild looks like just another out-of-touch union that is trying to straddle the fence on this issue so as to not piss off their benefactors in publishing. Perhaps they are secretly hoping their suit will fail.

    • Re:Author's Guild Stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)

      by capt.Hij (318203) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:25PM (#13679441) Homepage Journal
      You shouldn't assume from the name that organization is really about representing authors. In this case, though, they [authorsguild.org] do not seem to be astroturf. If you check out their "talking points" they seem not to know the difference between scanning and publishing nor the difference between searching and publishing.
      • I don't believe the law differentiates between scanning and publishing (see the my.mp3.com case and the four factors [wikipedia.org] of US fair use law).

        If, in fact, US law doesn't differentiate, then Google would have to negotiate a license with the Author's Guild, which would be in the author's best interests (not that they necessarily need to charge Google money, but they would have more control, have a bigger seat at the table, ...)

      • They're ignorant Luddites. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by doublem (118724) on Thursday September 29 2005, @04:03PM (#13679727) Homepage Journal
        I just sent them the following e-mail:

        To: staff@authorsguild.org
        Subject: Google Lawsuit

        http://www.authorsguild.org/news/charity_handy_tal king.htm [authorsguild.org]

        Let me imagine a moment that I'm a publisher, or Writer's Guild.

        Let me further imagine that a corporation wants to offer a free search engine, to make it easier for potential customers to search for and find the works written by the writers I represent.

        I'll continue this pleasant little thought experiment by assuming they don't want to charge me or my writers any money. We don't even have to sign up.

        It's not unlike what Amazon.com does for the books it sells, except this corporation wants to not only make the entire book searchable, while only making small segments available to readers, but offer a selection of purchase options, so potential readers will be even MORE likely to purchase the books.

        What do I do?

        Do I thank them for offering this free service that will only pour more money into the pockets of the writers I represent?

        Do I start making arrangements to get them electronic copies of the books, so the writers I represent can get into the index that much sooner?

        Oh, I know, I'll sue. I'll ignore all the long term benefits, and try to kill the project by blackmailing the corporation with a lawsuit and demands that THEY pay ME for providing a service to MY writers!

        Brilliant.

        I selecting the last option, I've guaranteed that the up and coming writers will never look twice at me or the organization I represent, assuming it's nothing but a club for Luddites, afraid of technology and more interested in scraping up a few pennies here and there than in actually turning a profit.

    • Re:Author's Guild Stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)

      by qbzzt (11136) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:27PM (#13679456)
      Obviously there is much to be lost by publishers who, like the RIAA, act as gatekeepers on published works. If the Author's Guild really likes the current system, then why do so few works circulate more than 5,000 copies? Wouldn't their members be better served with wider distribution?

      Depends on who their members are, especially the more influential ones. If they are mostly authors whose books get published at 50,000 copies, then they have every reason to prefer the current system with gate keepers. It prevents competition.
      • If they are mostly authors whose books get published at 50,000 copies, then they have every reason to prefer the current system with gate keepers. It prevents competition.

        I'd guess this is the real motivation. The Screen Actors Guild and other groups like to shit on their members whenever they have the audacity to stray too far from the Reservation.
      • Depends on who their members are, especially the more influential ones. If they are mostly authors whose books get published at 50,000 copies, then they have every reason to prefer the current system with gate keepers. It prevents competition.

        Most books, like most music, that so many are so extremely keen on downloading, is mostly junk. Yes, the McDonalds of writing/music: Unite in extending the concept if "junk food". Most with a small audience has something to say, and they often tell it well.

    • To be honest, I doubt that the real issue is what the Author's Guild is really saying it is. Anyone with basic reading ability and knowledge of copyright law knows this is a doomed suit to begin with.

      But consider what winning would mean... If they won, you could not index books without the copyright holder's consent. Which I'm sure they would be happy to give for a modest, recurring, license fee.

      Lets be honest here, if most of the people in the Guild circulate fewer than 5,000 copies of their works, they ar
      • How is it so cut-and-dry? Is there no gray area in the interpretation of Fair Use law?
        • Unfortunately, you may have a point. It might be tough to prove that Google's scheme is legal. The problem is that current copyright laws were written before online indexing was a possibility, so this area is very fuzzy.

          However, it's blatantly obvious that such an index is a huge benefit to the public, to the authors, to their publishers and to google. It's a win/win/win/win situation. Keeping in mind that copyright is supposed to be a system enhances the public benefit, Congress should pass a law which e

        • Incredible! Tell me what right do you, or a mega-corporation such as Google, Inc, have to provide the full content of a copyrighted book available on the web - even if it is just for searching or indexing purposes?

          Ever hear of Public Domain? Fair Use? Copyright is something granted to a creator with the understanding that their work, is actually the property of the public, part of our culture, and that their ability to restrict copies is given solely to allow them to profit from their endeavors.

          This is

    • Perhaps they are secretly hoping their suit will fail.

      I've read the talking points they have online.

      They're convinced that this is a BAD thing, and want Google to pay a license fee to them for the right to index the books in question.

      They want Google, to pay them, to provide a free service to their writers.

      They're a bunch of scared Luddites, trying to kill something they don't understand, and if they can't kill it, milk it for all the cash they can.

      It's just another scum sucking parasite organization.

  • Safari (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mysqlrocks (783488) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:18PM (#13679372) Homepage Journal
    Of course Tim O'Reilly is going to in favor of the Google Library Project. O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf [oreilly.com] is already putting the content of books online (for a fee though).

    • Re:Safari (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nessak (9218)
      True, and I have spent a fair amount of money through Safari. What I like is that it lets me pick and choose what I need instead of buying an pricey book for only one chapter. The result: I get what I need, O'Reilly makes money, and the book authors make money. The best of both worlds.

      Making books searchable (and buyable) will result in more money for everyone, not less. This is what Safari has shown.
      • It doesn't directly help O'Reilly to make their competitor's books available

        Right now the online book business is pretty small. O'Reilly could be considered a leader (if not the leader) in the online book market. They have a lot to gain if they can ride the wave as the market expands. Yes, there is a risk that someone else could beat them but they have a distinct advantage as early movers. If the market grows, everybody in the market wins especially the leaders.

        • Re:Safari (Score:4, Insightful)

          by skribble (98873) <scott@NosPAm.mydogateit.com> on Thursday September 29 2005, @04:50PM (#13680168) Homepage
          O'Reilly could be considered a leader (if not the leader) in the online book market.

          Ok... I just need to jump in here. Safari != O'Reilly Safari is a joint venture by Pearson Education (AW, PTR, Sams...) and O'Reilly (with Microsoft Press and others publishers adding their content to the mix later).

          Also, Tim (and many other publishers) realize that the Google thing will do is help sales of books. Some of the best selling books are available for free online. People on a whole love real books... dead trees and all... after staring at a computer screen for a few hours reading, many people, once they've decided that the content will satisfy their needs/desires will fork over the money for hard copy of the book.

          In fact... the only thing such a service does is weed out the worst material (after all if you read a couple of pages of crap you aren't going to buy that book are you?).

          A final note... publishers really aren't afraid of competition from self publishing/small publishing (whatever). probably 90% of all self/small published books are published that way because a big publisher turned the book/author away to begin with. This isn't to say that everything published by big publishers is golden (it isn't... by a long shot), but in general I'd say ~ 80% of what you get from big publishing companies is actually quite good, while ~80% of everything else out there sucks.

  • The access to literature this will bring is double edged; searchability will make the entire published works of man into some kind of uber cliffs notes. In the end there will still be those that understand what Melville was writing and those that read a book about fighting a whale.

  • Safari (Score:3, Informative)

    by truthsearch (249536) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:23PM (#13679413) Homepage Journal
    Note that O'Reilly has their own electronic book service called Safari. Most of their own books, and those of a few affiliated publishers, can be completely read online and fully searched. It's very handy considering reference material can become outdated so quickly. So rather than spend $100 on 2 paper books you can look at 5 at a time for one year of their service. And you can change what's on your "bookshelf" every month.

    They have a lot to gain by people getting used to electronic books.

  • This produces and interesting situation... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BattleRat (536161) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:23PM (#13679415)
    The author suggests that the main issue at hand is that the "whole work" must be digitized and stored (the writer's main sticking point). When a Google books search is conducted, only snippets (a couple of sentences) would be displayed. Ok, but through some recursive Googling lead to disclosure of the entire work? While I agree that it's easier to go to the library and check out the book, there is a way to circumvent the system. I am not a lawyer, but this does have some perceivable holes.

    • Ok, but through some recursive Googling lead to disclosure of the entire work?

      Sure, provided you change you IP address every five paragraphs.

      While I agree that it's easier to go to the library and check out the book, there is a way to circumvent the system.

      Sure, you could build a system, and recreate the book, but for the time and expense it is cheaper just to buy a copy and OCR it. If you're planning to illegally copy a work, or illegally redistribute it en masse, it is not like google print is the

    • Trust me, google has thought of this :) I believe they track you via IP (or perhaps cookies?) to determine how many pages of a given book you've looked at.
    • As mentioned in this CNN article [cnn.com], "Under Google's strictures, readers can see just five pages at a time of publisher-submitted titles -- and no more than 20 percent of an entire book through multiple searches. For books in the public domain, they can read the entire book online."

      They are not even making the full contents available, so refresh the page and change your IP all you want, you will never see more than 20 percent of the book.

      What would seem to make more sense is for Google to only scan this

      • Re:This produces and interesting situation... (Score:4, Informative)

        by doublem (118724) on Thursday September 29 2005, @04:19PM (#13679914) Homepage Journal
        What would seem to make more sense is for Google to only scan this 20 percent of the text that they will use and not the full text

        I was under the impression that the 20% would be determined by what portion of a book most frequently matched a given search criteria.

        Alternately, they may be saying that only 20% will made available to a given IP address. If that's the case, then creative use of a few proxy servers can get you the whole book.

        Of course, most books worth pirating have already been scanned and OCRed, and can be found in various file sharing networks already. The fact that the Author's Guild is going after Google for this only makes sense when you realize they want Google to pay them a licensing fee to offer this service.

        Yep, they want Google top pay THEM for offering a Service that will make THEIR writers more money.

    • Re:This produces and interesting situation... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by HuguesT (84078) on Thursday September 29 2005, @05:19PM (#13680361)
      Doesn't matter for this suit. That they are not disclosing the full content of what they have scanned is of no importance. What is important is that Google itself has scanned the books without permission, and still has the data.

      The Google defense ("but we are not showing the whole books!") doesn't cut much mustard. It is as if *you* scanned a whole lot of books at the library and thought you could get away scott free because you don't plan to share what you've scanned with anybody.
  • Resistance is futile, you will be put online....

    Time for people to get into the 21st century
  • It's just a guess on my part, but my guess is that the Author's Guild is not very technologically literate. Their opposition seems somewhat Luddite inspired.

  • Google may be many things... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by winkydink (650484) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:28PM (#13679462) Homepage Journal
    but they are not stupid. When considering this plan, I'm sure they anticipated the objection & litigation, but after consulting with their attorneys, they must have reached the conclusion that their position is defensible, and therefore winnable. It will be an interesting court case, that's for sure.

  • Copyrighted works are a harsh business commodity. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sheetrock (152993) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:33PM (#13679495) Homepage Journal
    Google is attempting to provide an experience which enhances the ability to search within books -- thereby increasing one's ability to discover and purchase books. It is a subset of the functionality that you would get by purchasing or borrowing from a library the entire book (or even browsing one in a bookstore) because the service limits the number of pages you can fetch and intentionally leaves a number of pages out.

    No doubt there are two problems with this: the first seems to be that authors (to the best of my knowledge) haven't been asked either piecemeal or via organizations like the Authors' Guild for permission. The second is that Google will no doubt be making money as a result of providing this service and everybody else wants a cut.

    However, we have reached an unfortunate point with copyright and fair use where we'd rather halt innovation than admit that copyright holders' expectations have reached a point of making it cost- and time-prohibitive to meet their demands and are to the point of stagnating not only the public domain but technologies and services that deliver or even touch upon copyrighted content. In this sense, creating a scenario that is not unlike the movie industry's dire predictions about the VCR in the early 80s.

    It would be best, of course, for Google to attempt to work out an amiable solution with authors without crippling their service to an unreasonable extent, but I feel that the intent of fair use (if not its prevailing interpretation) falls in their favor... as does the bottom-line for both Google and the membership of the Authors' Guild.

  • The guy who made soft cover high quality technical books the norm in Computer Science. I know they're not cheap, but compare with Don Knuth's (admitted classic) hard cover ones. He's got the right idea, the Author's Guild is thinking like the RIAA or the MPAA, and yet their argument is a hundred times weaker - no one is going to P2P their books!

  • I disagree, it was in the authors interests (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NigelJohnstone (242811) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:34PM (#13679511)
    They obviously want an 'opt-in' system, because that reduces the number of books competing to just the current commercial books, and removes possible public domain, orphan works and smaller publishers authors.

    Joe public on the other hand, *is* best served by 'opt-out' because that includes orphaned work & possible public domain books.

    So they want Google to index their books ,just not index everyone elses. That's what the lawsuit is about, getting an opt-in to reduce the number of competing works. All the 'copyright infringment / worried about security / worried about snippet size' claims are just bollocks that make no sense. Since Google has offered them an opt out, if they were truely worried, they could just flag their books as opt out and that would end it.

    They lied, Google called them on their lie and now they will go to court and look real dumb. By giving them the opt-out Google has outmaneuvered them. So now they will lose, but if they could win it, it would have be in their interests.

    They will say "we are worried about Google scanning our books", Google will say "but we are not going to scan your books, because as soon as we realised you didn't want that, we took you off the list", end of case.

  • Time to Buy More Google Stock (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:46PM (#13679600)
    Time to buy more google stock I suspect. Consider the following:

    1: Google digitizes a significant percentage of the books in print and actually makes them searchable. This is a significant undertaking that very few other companies can even consider doing, although Microsoft will certainly try in order to keep up with Google.

    2: People actually use this index, finding out about books in their areas of interest they never knew existed before. (And that was always the true magic of P2P music sharing. Finding performances of your favorite song by artists you never knew recorded it, or songs by your favorite artist you never knew existed in the first place. There was no way to ever find stuff like this before.)

    3: Google becomes even more popular than before. PROFIT from AdWords and other synergies.

    4: Google acquires Project Gutenberg and expands on their free, public domain, efforts. PROFIT - at least if you're associated with PG.

    5: Public Domain is strengthened for all of us because works in PD are now more accessable to everyone. PROFIT - more traffic to Google to get these works, and society overall is richer!

    6: For books still under copyright and in print, Google becomes the biggest referrer to purchasers to Amazon and Barnes & Nobel, which are now only one click away. PROFIT!

    7: With everything already digitized, the moment the Author's Guild gets away from giving themselves a self-induced colonoscopy, Google starts selling full e-books of everything they already have digitized. PROFIT to Google, AND THE AUTHORS!

    Yup, pull in that truck and load up my stock!

  • The problem is with google digitizing the entire book. I don't think author's guild is craping about showing snippets or even digitizing summary of the book. The way google is making this thing work is to scan entire book and store it in their database. Really, usually copyright holder is publisher and if publisher gives permission to google to store the book then what can Author's guild crap about?

  • O'Reilly Bookshelf (Score:3, Insightful)

    by totallygeek (263191) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:47PM (#13679607) Homepage
    But, yet, you cannot post the O'Reilly Bookshelf to your website...

  • my objection... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheSHAD0W (258774) on Thursday September 29 2005, @04:06PM (#13679767) Homepage
    If I were an author, and worried about my IP rights, my only objection would be that although they're providing me a service by allowing searches to bring up my book and thereby advertising it, any security problem might expose my work and allow it to be downloaded freely. Depending on how Google structured their service, it might even prevent me from asserting my IP rights against people redistributing the work. I don't know whether the Author's Guild is worried about this issue or is just completely hidebound, but it's something to think about.

  • Quote of the Month (Score:3, Funny)

    by StoryMan (130421) * on Thursday September 29 2005, @04:14PM (#13679861)
    "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy."

    A-fucking-men.

    Write that down and stick it up the tight-suited asses of the golf-loving, lexus-driving, greedy-mother-fucking-artist-screwing RIAA executives and tell them to go blow a taco.

  • Fair Use Rights (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rydia (556444) on Thursday September 29 2005, @04:29PM (#13680028)
    There seems to be a bit (hah!) of confusion regarding Fair Use Rights. People seem to think that it means that you can just copy part of something and that's all hunky-dorey, which it isn't. Fair use is a doctrine (though in the past 3 decades codified) which describes an exception to the basic copyright. What Google is doing here isn't directly covered under section 108 of the copyright act (archival/library copying) is therefore definitely not solid. Those that fall outside the exemption were dealt with by a 4-4 Supreme Court tie in Williams & Wilkins Co. v. United States. A big mess.

    Additionally, the reproduction of works must be targetted, and fair use doesn't extend to research that is done for commercial purpose. So google would have to make sure that any research that was done with its engine was not-for-profit and for educational purpose. From section 108 of the copyright act: "[applicable if] the reproduction or distribution is made without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage." So not only is copying for a commercial purpose a violation (ala Texaco), the section that defines copyright also includes as part of the balance "(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole." Harper & Row in particular ruled that 300 words was enough for infringement if the words were important and there was a significant economic impact either to the benefit of the infringer or detriment of the rightsholder.

    There really needs to be some education about copyright laws before fair use doctrine gets thrown around as a justification for copying world+dog. People seem to think variously that there's a constitutional right, a blanket gaurantee of it, no limitations on it, and a hard and fast rule for its application. The response to all of those beliefs is a very emphatic NO.
    • Google isn't making books available for free. You can't simply browse through an entire book with their service. If you want more than an excerpt you'll still have to go to the publisher and buy it.

    • Re:do as i say... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by no reason to be here (218628) on Thursday September 29 2005, @03:27PM (#13679458) Homepage
      I'm still waiting for Mr O'Reilly to make all his books available for free.

      You obviously do not understand what the true intention of the Google Library Project is. That's ok, though, as a lot of people don't. It is not an attempt to put the full test of every book on line so that you can access the full text for free. It is an attempt to make a fully searchable database of every book. It's main beneficiary will not be cheap bastards who think everything should be free, but rather scholars doing research: they'll have, ostensibly, only one database that they will have to search. The people who actually have the most to lose from this are companies that currently provide database services of this sort (like ABI/Inform) to university libraries.

      As such, O'Reilly is not in any way being a hypocritic if he supports Google's efforts in this particular enterprise.
      • Not only that, but O'Reilly already has a service [oreilly.com] that allows his books to be searched just like Google wants to do.

        So not only is he not a hypocrit, but he beat google to it.
    • I'm still waiting for Mr O'Reilly to make all his books available for free. (and not just the ones that are reprints of unix man pages).

      Hey, man pages are for free, so why can't I make some quick bucks?

      Sincerely (sort of)
      Mr O'Reilly

    • You've got it backwards. They're not trying to protect their rights. The guild wants to limit citizens' rights. They don't like fair use rights. They can only lobby against fair use so strongly today because their money easily influences our politicians. I agree they should be concerned about Google completely indexing books. But they should work with Google to ensure nothing beyond fair use is allowed. Instead they're trying to stop Google completely.

      This isn't about the rights of the members of the
        • I read books all the time without paying a dime for them. The full copies and everything. Hundreds of books, over and over, and many authors have lost many sales of books because of it. I'm also not in the least ashamed of it. Am I a crook?

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