Slashdot Log In
Publishers Thank Google for Book Sales
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Oct 07, 2006 05:37 PM
from the we-heart-exposure dept.
from the we-heart-exposure dept.
eldavojohn writes "A few book publishers are actually thanking Google for an apparent rise in sales due to Google's scan plan. Google is busy defending itself against authors and publishers that have brought lawsuits for ignoring copyrights. The director of the Oxford University Press said, 'Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers.' It seems to work in favor of the smaller publishers: 'Walter de Gruyter/Mouton-De Gruyter, a German publisher, said its encyclopedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the 'buy this book' Google link.' Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?"
Related Stories
[+]
Google Subpoenas Microsoft & Yahoo 164 comments
eldavojohn writes "Mercury News is running a story reporting that Google has filed subpoenas with Microsoft and Yahoo, in relation to their legal battles with publishers and authors. Google faces charges of massive copyright infringement surrounding its online book project. The company claims that Microsoft and Yahoo have taken the exact same steps in acquiring print-related rights. Google therefore wants to show that 'everyone is doing it.'" From the article: "McGraw-Hill Cos. and the Authors Guild, along with other publishers and authors, contend that a Google project to digitize the libraries of four major U.S. universities, as well as portions of the New York Public Library and Oxford University's libraries, ignores the rights of copyright holders in favor of Google's economic self-interest ... Is the library of the future going to be open? Or will it be controlled by a couple of big corporate players?"
[+]
News: Big Ten Schools Recommit to Google Books Project 95 comments
CNN reports that twelve major universities around the country have agreed to have substantial portions of their libraries included in the Google Books project. Around ten million volumes are expected to be included in the project. Participating schools include the University of Chicago and the 11 universities in the Big Ten athletic conference: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin. "The committee said Google will scan and index materials 'in a manner consistent with copyright law.' Google generally makes available the full text of books in the public domain and limited portions of copyrighted books. Several other universities, including Harvard and California, already have signed up to let Google scan their libraries. "
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes -- both.
The fact that Google's book search increases book sales in no way diminishes the fact that Google is violating the authors/publishers copyright. If those publishers are intelligent, they will give permission for Google to do this; but they have a right to not give that permission.
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Incorrect. They were granted the privilege.
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, even if they could agree on something en masse, free-thinkers are highly outnumbered by sheep who'd rather just get on with their lives, and vote for whoever hasn't pissed them off this year.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Opting out should not be a
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Greed is the reason so much of past art exists.
But many people do it for the love of it.
In a world with the internet, those people are able to do it, do it right, do it cheaply, and get both the word and the finished product out to the masses easily. This means that the amount of content without the need for copyright is growing exponentially - and while some of it sucks, a lot of it is very good.
Just look at the Creative Commons database.
Should copyright be abolished? Hells naw. Is it infected with "It's mine and mine forever" syndrome? Unfortunately, yes. Maybe copyright needed to be 95 years at some point. It doesn't now. It shouldn't even be past its original 14-28 year limit.
And, just so's you know, I don't believe it should be transferable, or be able to be owned by a non-individual (read: company). Though, my reasons for these are partially philosphical, and only partially based on policy physics.
The reason: if a group with enough cash to be an influencial lobbyist posesses a copyright, it is in their best interests to expand copyright until it's doing more harm than good, as we have seen in every major industrialized company.
Want proof of harm? Look at the popularity of illegal filesharing. It exists, continues to exist, and will exist for a very long time, because there is a demand for it - or more specifically, for content - stretching back as far as 95 years - that can be obtained by illegal sharing. The demand for old IP combined with profitability of old IP is not an incentive towards creativity; it's incentive for stagnancy. How many rereleases of "Snow White" has Disney spent time and money on, for example?
Remember that IP law is there to ensure continued creativity of the content and scientific industries. If it's doing something other than that, you can be assured that it's promoting economic inefficiency (money going where it's not needed, in this case).
If, on the other hand, after 14 years, copyrighted works are released into the public domain, illegal sharing no longer has the kind of demand it once had. It will still be the go-to source for anything older than 14 years, but people are happy to buy the more recent stuff; most people assume that if it comes from the source, it's of higher quality.
The other bit that gives me the non-transferrable and non-individual restrictions is artist compensation. Look at what the RIAA's member companies do to their artists, and tell me that RIAA ownership of copyright is even close to reasonable. The artists get a nickel, and the recording industry gets the lion's share. Spun the other way around, where the artist owns his work, the record company would be forced to properly compensate their artists, or the artists would walk, taking their entire library of content with them.
Like I said, philosophical and policy based.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Another incorrect assertion. Rights are things that we accept exist regardless of anything the government or anyone else wants to say about it. Copyright is not one of these things. Free speech is a constitutional right, and as such falls between the two areas. It took the constitution to grant this creation, but as we hold it higher than the government or anyone else, its still a right. Property ownership is as a natural right -- almost all creatures, not just humans, have this sense of what is 'theirs' and what isn't. Locke would say that the forest belongs to no one, but once he has felled a tree, the log is his.
Privileges are things that exist only when the government or another higher power says you can have it. Copyright falls under this category, despite the presence of 'right' in the compound. You'll note that before copyright existed, many forms of art and publication still existed -- but Plato never enjoyed the privilege of copyright.
In short, rights define the rules around which a government may exist. The government defines the rules around which privileges may exist. There is a definite chain of command here, and rights are most certainly at the top of the list.
~Rebecca
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I see your point, but I disagree. Your definitions of rights and privileges imply that rights are super-legal (or extra-legal?). I'm arguing that copyright is a right in exactly the same way that freedom of speech is a right: by legal protection. The GP seems to be claiming that all 'rights' are actually privileges that are legally protected (and I tend to ag
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This really adds no value to your arguement as I already said
rkcallaghan wrote:
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and I could put a bullet in your brainpan with impunity.
But I could stop you from copying what I wrote, by force if necessary.
Without government you would only have the "rights" that you could defend for yourself. If someone bigger, stronger, and meaner came along your "right" to life, liberty, and property would disappear completely. The difference between what you believe to be a natural right and what you would label mere privilege exists only in your mind. Society determines what "rights" its members have, as is evidenced by the fact that different societies have different sets of "rights."
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bah. Read this comment from the last Google Book Search Slashdot discussion. [slashdot.org] It boils down to the fact that not all copying is infringement. "For example, the courts have ruled that it is perfectly legal to copy every image you can find on the internet, and store those images, for the purpose of providing a thumbnail image of those images for profit. That is because what is being sold is meta-data about where you can find an image, not the images themselves. The courts have also ruled that making low quality copies of porn images and making them available is illegal, because the intent was for people to just look at the images and the effect upon the market was to deprive the copyright holders of business."
At least some publishers believe it increases sales, and it's certainly not a clear cut case of copyright infringement.
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
obviously this idea simply isn't enough. Publishers don't care that their copyright is being violated, they just want some extra money without doing much work.
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Take copyright out of the question. Not wanting people to preview your material is stupid business practice, and bad for consumers and the public.
Google Book Search provides online what book stores already can in RL.
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, I'd assume the higher number of people previewing it would, for good books, increase sales. Impulse buying is far more rampant in online shopping.
One thing that would probably solve the issue is allowing publishers a hand in the process. Give them certain leeway as to what pages are available as a preview. That way, they can pick the good parts of the book and not reveal any plot. I don't think they should have pure control over it, though, so maybe 50% chosen pages vs. 50% random/Google pages would be a good mix. Google, to appease publishers, could provide data back to them. They could even show different previews to each user and give them stats back of how each preview affected the buyers as well as demographics related to the sales. That's something a conventional book store cannot provide!
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure copyright holders agree with you. That's why they want google to pay for their copy, just as bookstores and libraries are required to pay for each copy in their inventories.
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Interesting)
But the publishers aren't selling them "in stores" a la consignment. They are selling them *to* the stores. They've already made their money, and are no longer part of the equation.
Libraries are a bit trickier, but for the most part they buy their books, too, and so again, what is their complaint? One particular copy can cycle itself through the system as much as possible.
The issue here is that Google has not bought these books, and even if they had, are they allowed to make a digital copy available (such that infinite copies can be made.) The first issue is easy - Google ought to pay these publishers either a licensing fee or some one-time fee to display their product freely. And Google ought to do that as goodwill, because they are essentially acting as a bookstore, but on consignment instead - which is where the legal ambiguity steps in. If Google acted more as your typical brick and mortar bookstore, this wouldn't be an issue at all.
Parent
Actually, bookstores *are* consignment shops (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, authors share the risk. They only get royalties on books that customers actually buy, not on copies *shipped to* bookstores.
Even more fun, the bookstore gets as much of the total retail price of the book -- about 50% -- as the publisher and author combined.
It's a sick system, especially for the authors, which is why so many of us (I've written three books) are starting to look into alternative publishing and distribution channels.
- Robin
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference is, your friend does not increase his market share every time he lets someone search through a book. Neither is your friend selling advertising on the walls of the room into which he escorts you to take his book. Nor is he capturing your search request in a database for cross-reference with other search requests from people in your zipcode later on.
Google profits from your search. Your friend allows your search out of charity.
If Google wants to include my copyrighted content as part of their profit-making venture, they can pay me. I'm a poor starving writer (or maybe I'm Stephen King, it doesn't matter), and Google is a super-mega-global-corporation (or maybe their a mom-and-pop store, it doesn't matter), and if they want to use my stuff to make some scratch, I'll take my percentage, thanks very much. If my price is too high, we can negotiate. If it's still too high, we can walk away and talk about doing business another day. That's Business. And Google is in Business.
Google plays up the peace-love-understanding-happy-hippie-new-age-new
Parent
Or? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does everyone think this is an "or" question? Copyright isn't about generating profits, for the copyright holder or anyone else. It's about control of making copies. Money is a common motive for wanting such control, but is almost irrelevant to the law.
Re:Or? (Score:4, Interesting)
And here is the rub.
While google is only displaying excerpts, they are making digital copies of the entire book to drive their searches. And those copies are likely dupicated multiple times within their infrastructure.
If they only took excerpts and made them searchable, then they would likely be well within fair use and the authors and publishers couldn't touch them. But they are doing much more than that.
This is the same legal hole that MP3.com found themselves in several years ago. They were providing streaming music to people who could prove that they already owned the CDs. This way you could listen to your CD collection while at work, etc. (This was pre-iPod). In order to drive this system, however, they made digital copies of tens of thousands of cds. They only made the digital versions available to people who alredy owned the CD, but they were still found to be infringing because they made the copies in their own database in the first place.
Now, if you want my opinion, this is bs, and copyright law and the fair use doctrine needs to be adjusted to allow this kind of use.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No problems there. In order to scan the book, they have to buy it. In my understanding, after buying a copyrighted work, I can do with it whatever I please, under what is called the First Sale Doctrine in the US.
Of course, copyright disallows me to redistribute my personal copy, but that is not what Google is
Uh,,,, Both (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Uh,,,, Both (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that's why they used OR and not XOR
Parent
Increase sales or violate IP... (Score:5, Insightful)
Strict Copyright Does Benefit Someone (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're forgetting the lawyers.
The lawyers who, on what is surely a completely unrelated note, make up most of the "we" actually creating the legislation.
both? (Score:2)
It's probably both. But the way US copyright law works, you don't really get a definitive answer anywhere but the courts, and they can pull that "definitive" answer out of their robes.
Coffee Is for Closers! (Score:2)
Google shouldn't be able to transmit copies of content without the copyright holder allowing that, but when they do so and make money for those holders (without reducing money those holders make elsewhere), they won't get many complaints.
Of course, while copyrights stop copying well past the length
Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not, however, what is upsetting the the authors and book publishers. What upsets them is that google is allowing other people to search, which is fairly clearly fair use, given how much is displayed. They want a cut of the money stream, of any possible monetization of their works, even though that is not what copyright entitles them to.
(Counting this as a copyright violation is going to be horrendous once we have AI...)
Can you say "false dichotomy"? (Score:3, Insightful)
If authors had any sense, they'd be jumping onto the anti-copyright bandwagon. Such laws were, we're told repeatedly, created to give authors and artists control over their creations, and to guarantee them income from sales. More and more, the actual effect is to take away the creators' control, giving control and profits primarily to their corporate masters.
This story just illustrates that some authors have figured out that it helps to let their readers know what's available. And the copyright question basically asks whether a publisher has the right to block communication between an author and the audience.
Maybe we do need some sort of copyright laws. But authors don't need the current copyright laws. That's what's keeping most of them poor.
The programmer's answer (Score:5, Funny)
Publishers Thank Google for Book Sales (Score:5, Insightful)
When I walk into a bookstore, I can peruse books before buying.
Now, I can peruse books via Google before buying.
In the first, I can physically handle books. In the second, I can electronically handle books.
The only difference I see between the two, is that, via Google, I don't have to leave home to peruse, and buy, books.
Here's what google should do; (Score:3, Interesting)
At the end of the month, every publisher that didn't gets dropepd from the index. If they want back in (because, for example, they discover their competition is getting hundreds of click-throughs with 40% or more sales) they have to pay Google either a BIG up-front payment or a percentage of all future sales.
It's funny, but most places make you pay heaps for advertising. Especially for well-targeted and effective advertising that leads to a high percentage of sales. I never understood why google feels they have to give it away free.
A whole encyclopedia? (Score:4, Funny)
> encyclopedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing
> in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the 'buy this
> book' Google link.'
Can someone provide a link to this book? I would, oddly enough, like to buy it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Following the summary for link #1, I got this: http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN3110082012&i d=c3zrJD0TPekC&dq=Enzyklop%C3%A4die+des+M%C3%A4rch ens [google.com]
Maybe that's the one you're looking for.
Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
The slashdottitude of "unauthorized copying of books/music/videos/software is just free marketing" is in direct contradiction to the letter and intent of modern copyright law, and even if it does help sales, that's a decision for the copyright holder to make.
900lb elephant (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Let it be up to each publisher then (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought that's what they had to do already..?
Some existing partners:
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/partners.html [google.com]
How to become a partner (and searchable):
https://books.google.com/partner/signon?apply=Clic k+Here+to+Apply [google.com]
A more general thought on copyright in this age... (Score:3, Insightful)
The slowness and expense of both of these methods, and more specifically, the lack of technological anticipation in the current copyright (and patent) regimes, make for some interesting times, given the perfect granularity with which digital technology can reproduce most copyrighted works.
Both of the above factors ought to (and in some corners have) given rise to a wholesale re-examination of the purposes and methods of copyright protection in the US. Having worked in one house of the US Federal legislature, I can tell you that is not really one 'corner' where the re-examination has either been thorough, thoughtful, or disconnected from moneyed (or copyrighted, if you will), interests.
In the end though, I hold out hope that our laws can and will accomodate our practices. It makes no sense to make an outlaw of most citizens if (and this is a substantial and debatable 'if') there is negligible harm in their current practices.
It should be obvious that I feel the submittor's question presents a false choice.
cleetus
It's like a "backup" copy to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Case in point: I was writing a research paper this week, and needed to search through a book for a specific name. As this book didn't have an index, I wasn't too enthused about looking through it page-by-page for one bit of information, so I fired up Google books and, bingo - got the name, page number, and some more information as well.
More importantly, however, was a second case. As I was about to turn in the paper, I realized I hadn't completed a reference and needed to find a page number in a book I didn't have with me. I first thought I was screwed, but then fired up Google books and, once again, bingo - I got precisely what I needed even though my book was 25 miles away at the time.
Google adds value to books. I'll still buy just as many books as before - probably more, as now it's easier for me to find books I'm interested in - and makes the books I own much more "user friendly". Great service.
I don't think they're violating copyright (Score:3, Informative)
I think most copyright laws have a clause in it that you can use excerpts from a book but not a whole book as long as you note the source of your information with the excerpt. This means that I can use a page out of a book and use it in my essay without having to pay copyrights for the whole book (would become even more expensive for students and other academia) or even copy it from the library aka from a book I don't own myself.
The same happens here. Google gives you the possibility to search for a phrase, displays which book it comes from and a small portion of the book where the phrase is displayed. It's not like they are giving the whole book to you as soon as you find the phrase. They don't steal the book, they get it out of the library, scan it in, OCR it and then if they find a phrase in that book you search for, they display you the particular page, but not the whole book. Just like I can go to the library, scan/copy the whole book (if I have money enough for paper/copies) and then use a single page in my essay.
Strapping on my aluminum foil deflector beanie (Score:5, Interesting)
Google may even get funding from the government to do this, or to give special fulltext database access to investigators.
The Supreme Court will back them up because the use will be declared to be necessary to the needs of law enforcement and national security.
Fair use rights are dead (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact that there are so many slashdotters who seem to have blindly accepted the "if I reproduce anything of the text it is copyright violation" is amazing. If here on Slashdot there are that many people who have accepted the death of fair use rights I worry that effectively we really have already lost them.
Google Books is actually two programs (Score:3, Informative)
Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?"
Most people seem to be unaware that Google Books is actually two programs, which were originally named Google Publisher and Google Library. Google Publisher contains books submitted by the publisher, and the publisher has granted Google the right to display some percentage of the book, and are listed as Limited Preview in the Google search results. This increases sales but does not violate copyright, presuming that the publisher's contract with the author allows then to advertise in this method (if not, that's between the author and publisher).
Google Library, on the other hand, are from books borrowed from libraries, scanned by Google, without permission from the copyright holder. If a Google Library book is in the public domain (mainly US books prior to 1923, or foreign books prior to 1909), the entire book is displayed, and is listed as Full View in the Google search results, this is unlikely to increase sales, and does not violate copyright. Google Library books not in the public domain (actually, some are in public domain due to copyright holders not making the required copyright renewal, but Google is not interested in doing the research), then the book is only displayed in Snippet View, 3 lines per search hit. The snippets themselves would not violate copyright, as they are small enough that they would likely qualify as fair use, no matter what. However, what the publishers and authors (represented by the Author's Guild) are claiming, is that any complete digital scan without the permission of the copyright holder, for whatever purpose (especially one when the book is borrowed rather than purchased) is a copyright infringement. Google is arguing that since they are not using the books directly, but simply using the scans to provide fair use snippets, it meets enough of the 4 rules the courts use to determine fair use. Most of the books in snippet view are out of print, so it's not likely that snippet view increases sales anywhere near the amount a limited preview does. IANAL, but I think the publishers and especially the authors will win a pyrrhic victory should the courts decide in their favor.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, you are looking for "corn turds" - maybe you would like to visit our sponser, the "organic corn growers association."
(lol - I was trying to get a real ad link... aparently Google tactfully refrains from referer ads with certain words in the search ;-)