Death Metal writes to tell us that a growing tide of complaints are being piled at Google's feet in response to a far-reaching settlement that some feel will grant the giant too much power over the "orphan books" they have been scanning into digital format. The settlement could give Google near-exclusivity with respect to the copyright of orphan works — books that the author and publisher have essentially abandoned. They are out of print, and while they remain under copyright, the rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. "Critics say that without the orphan books, no competitor will ever be able to compile the comprehensive online library Google aims to create, giving the company more control than ever over the realm of digital information. And without competition, they say, Google will be able to charge universities and others high prices for access to its database. The settlement, 'takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,' said Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system. 'Google will be a monopoly.'"
The settlement, 'takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and
makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,' said Robert Darnton,
head of the Harvard University library system. 'Google will be a monopoly.'
Your resistance is futile. It perplexes me that you -- a university librarian -- cannot
see what is so obvious to me but I will spoon feed it to you. We live in a capitalistic
society where supply rises to meet demand. I am a ravenous consumer of books and for
sometime have desired an all-encompassing repository of books. You, the writers guilds,
the publishers, the industry as a whole have failed to meet this demand for sometime now.
Unfortunately for you, the early bird gets the worm. The early bird being Google, the worm
being my rewarding eyeballs and possibly pocketbook. I may have been the minority of your
consumers but that has changed and it is no longer you against a few nerds. It's you
against the world. You will lose. Your industry has successfully prevented this. Why,
I'm not quite sure. Greed? Stupidity? There are so many good words to pick from.
You will have to forgive me when I lack sympathy for your position on the books your
archaic publishing system fails to make available to me. Oh no, no one will ever be able
to publish them now! Alas, woe is me. Instead of being permanently unavailable to me,
they will soon be available to everyone... I'm not even going to get into the jump they
see in sales when their books are digitized.
If Google's inevitable monopoly is nigh, why don't you draw up your own business plan to
garner venture capital and get all the universities to back you on it? Google's taking a
risk and in the end, it's going to be good for the end consumer.
Either shit or get off the toilet. You had your chance, you squandered it. This should
have been started almost a decade ago and completed five years ago. I'm sick and tired of the greed factor inhibiting such a useful tool for mankind. As head of an ivy league university library, I would have guessed support for what could well be the modern digital version of Alexandria before it was burned. I'm shocked a librarian would take this stance.
Your rant may well be spot on in terms of the general attitude of librarians. But please note what the man actually said:
The settlement, 'takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,' said Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system. 'Google will be a monopoly
Given that specific bit you quote, the man is concerned about Google being the exclusive source of access to these books; he's not expressing fear that his industry is going away, but that what's replacing it will have less freedom of access. You can debate if that's the case or not, but at least address what the man's talking about.
In the UK, and a few other countries, if you have cash in a bank account and don't touch it for 15 years, the government will seize it and give it away to charity.
That's real actual CASH. Tangible (erm... ok... not entirely) but it's actual property. So why the hell not do that with Imaginary Property that's been 'abandoned'?
Current IP laws do not aim for the benefit of the public or fairness or logic. They only aim for the benefit of corporations by enabling them to extort money from the public, i.e. from humanity.
The initial intention of the law, to benefit inventors, artists, scientists etc. who actually put time and money into the creation of their work has been blown out of proportion, aiming to turn IP into something similar to real estate.
Anyone can have an idea, it doesn't take that much time to do research or write a song. Implying that the products of these efforts should be property forever* is ridiculous.
*I consider 100+ years to be "forever" given that it's longer than the average lifespan.
5, 10, 15 year terms encourage artists, inventors, scientists enough.
The public is what makes a work more valuable by giving its collective attention to it. The current copyright law terms and conditions are overreaching and rob the public.
Actually the initial intention of the law (at least how I read it in the Constitution) is to benefit the public by encouraging artists to create.
The benefit to artists was almost a side-effect, or more a way to get more works into the public domain.
If you think about it--in offering copyright, I am giving up something (the ability to reproduce a work I've seen). What am I giving this up in exchange for?
There is no innate rule that someone who creates something has any right to exclude others from it. This is a gift we give them as a thank you for creating something that will someday belong to us all.
Sometimes I think we should just revoke the right altogether for a few years. Disney's manipulation of the laws for profit has been horrific, they have stolen from all of us more than any copyright infringer. By now, we should own Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and hundreds of other characters.
Every time they are almost out from under copyright, Disney goes back to congress and manipulates the law in order to steal them from us for a few more years.
This is more horrific and evil thievery (at least in volume) than every bit-torrent ever downloaded.
You mean just scanning 7 million of them and putting them online, then getting sued, and throwing enough lawyers at all the publishers to get a settlement where you don't allow in-print works to be accessed, and in exchange they grant you a license for all out-of-print works? That "same way that Google did"?
No, now that Google has put the brunt of their weight and money on the issue, I would dare to say the next person who comes along will simply need to pay for the scanning service and access to the library.
In other words, Google isn't locking anyone out of anything. The only barrier to entry will be the standard "I need money to make money" barrier that has nothing to do with Google.
So they have the power to grant Google access to orphan books whos publishers and authors haven't explicitly authorized it?
How does that work? 'we can grant google this power even though we don't have it, but we can't grant it to anyone else because we don't have it!'
That argument doesn't appear to make a whole lot of sense to me.
This is a basic consequence of class action law suits. When a class action is certified, the representatives who brought the action are assumed (legally speaking) to speak for all members of the class (in this case everyone who holds copyright or publication rights in a book) with respect to the specific court case, and in settlements relating to that case. It's a legal fiction, but a generally accepted one.
In this case, it means that the Writers Guild represents all appropriate rights holders in negotiations with google. They don't represent those rights holders in any other case, so cannot negotiate similar terms with anybody except google; they could only do so in the event that a court certified that it would be in the interests of the class as a whole for them to do so (as happened in the Google case).
If you don't like it, you need to campaign to your representatives for a change in the law regarding class actions.
They aren't co-opting anything. They don't claim copyright on the orphaned books, they simply republish them with the majority of the funds going to the copyright holder (if they can be identified).
Yes, thanks to Google, we will have a single online database with "orphaned" books. As opposed to a non-existent online database of said books. Granted, I would rather have a non-profit government entity to maintain this library, but since librarians are not doing a diddly squat to make it happen, I will gladly accept Google's work.
Saying that Google will have a "monopoly" is dubious, imho. As far as I understand, Google will not own copyright on any of these works, but merely will have a court decision allowing it to display them. How the hell is that bad? Up until now, no one could put these things online. Google effectively breached the wall of copyright, with a clear benefit for the public. It is not even a lesser evil we have to settle for, it is a clear win for everyone...
...Except for publishers, of course, who are afraid of competition from perfectly good books that are free to access. Oh heavenly muses, how will they ever sell new books if anyone can access old books with comparable content? Does it mean they will have to top them? To seek out and publish writings that are superior to the stuff that is 50 years old? Oh boy, what a gloomy future it must be for them, nothing but hard work ahead. Good bye, millions of dollars for sitting on your ass in a hot tub and frying your brain at coke parties.
The first guy to do something always has a monopoly on it, until someone else steps in to do so.
So basically the bitch is, according to slashdot mentality, that since Google is doing it first, they are evil. Forget the fact that no one else is bothering. Forget the fact that it really ISN'T exclusive to Google. Forget the fact that no one is willing to make the investment to do so.
Of course if all goes well and Google goes forward and people use it, we'll see many clones. And the clones will have the distinct advantage that Google already paid for the lawyers and retarded legal battles in an attempt to solve the problem.
But we don't think about that here, on slashdot everything should be free for the taking, regardless of the fact that someone put a rather large amount of effort into it.
Really, slashdot is full of a bunch of freeloaders who use 'freedom' as nothing more than a battle cry for 'Give us everything for Free because we're entitled to it even though we've done nothing to contribute!'
Put the entire population of slashdot on an island where they have to work for themselves and come back in a week. You'll find 20 people alive hiding from the stench of the other million or so dead bodies of people too lazy to find some food or water for themselves. There were entitled to that water you know, because everything should be free.
It also helps to highlight one of the major issues with the long length of copyright in the United States. Given that information is owned by the Public once it is produced and We the Public actually limit our own rights to reproduce a work for a limited period of time in the form of copyright, isn't someone witholding the work or getting this effort tangled up actually a violation of the spirit of the agreement between the creator and the Public?
In that sense, I think what google is doing is Right. In th
Those books are not yours. That's the fundamental thing. THAT PROPERTY IS NOT YOURS. If I am Joe author of a book, and Google scans it, I have every right to demand Google yank it back out. Convenience is not an excuse to violate civil rights.
Not even that, we can't even be sure his estate holds the copyright and if we are sure his estate holds it, he didn't leave any heirs we can't find anyone with power of attorney.
Also: someone wants to read the book and the closest tangible copy is 700 miles away in a University collection.
Well, Joe, it's kinda late now. Let's suppose that I have a boat. Speed boat, pleasure boat, party barge, sailboat, it doesn't matter. I have a boat. I somehow manage to sink the boat. It lies submerged for months, even years. The thing is ABANDONED. Some dude comes out, spends a day or a week floating my wreck off the bottom, and brings it ashore. Do you think I retain any legal right to that boat? Or, how about your car? You fail to maintain it, and it slowly rusts away, with the rain washing your rust streak onto my property. One day, I come out and shovel up all the iron (mostly iron oxide) to haul away to a scrap yard. You think you're going to get any of the salvage money?
Joe Author needs a reality check. Abandoned property is no longer "his".
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday April 06 2009, @12:17PM (#27478109)
Honestly, this seems like Google-bashing for its own sake. Who else is making a serious effort to get a hold of these orphan books and put them out there? Last I checked, absolutely no one.
If the choice is a monopoly over the digitized copy of these books, or letting them fade into obscurity un-digitized, do we really want to choose option B?
Nobody tried to get a hold of these orphan books and put them out there, because such an activity is illegal, or a bad move. Normal companies didn't do it. It is illegal. Publisher surely didn't want to do it, because orphan works are the best. They are not competition(like public domain), and they are not accessible(unlike public domain). When US signed Berne convention, they stopped a very reasonnable system, where the registration obligation prevented the very existence of orphan works. By letting Google monopolize orphan works, one give a bonus to the player that didn't follow the rules. As a society, it is usualy a very bad idea.
If these books are truly orphaned, it would be vastly preferable if Google were able to find it in themselves to donate some of their vast resources to putting the works up on Project Gutenberg.
That would go a long way towards telling the world that their intentions are honest.
If I remember correctly Project Gutenberg only accepts books that are truly in public domain. If this was the case they could just copy the text from Google and put it on their website anyway.
While the creation of such a database would be a good thing, in my mind, I do not think it anyone should have sole control of the works contained there in; at least not for very long. I admire and respect the financial burden such a system will cost to create and maintain, particularity during the starting phases.
However I feel that if Google are to be given any rights over works as the ones mentioned then it should be for a limited time only. Perhaps as a reward for taking the initiate and as way for them to profit from their endeavour. But as I said, only for, say 5-10 years, after that the rights to any such material should be freely available to everyone.
In any regards I would consider any sort of long-term or permanent rights given to Google would be a very bad thing.
However I feel that if Google are to be given any rights over works as the ones mentioned then it should be for a limited time only. Perhaps as a reward for taking the initiate and as way for them to profit from their endeavour. But as I said, only for, say 5-10 years, after that the rights to any such material should be freely available to everyone.
They should not be given any rights at all. They can enforce their control over the contents via licensing.
If I go and digitize and publish one of these orph
The actual complaint as someone further up posted seems to be that Google will have the copyright on the digitized version. If they have copyright on it, you cannot make a new digitized version without at least facing legal confrontation with Google (whether or not you win, it will still be expensive). If these works were worth the legal expense of confronting Google, they would still be in print.
I guess I don't see why Google has a monopoly at all. Does anyone know how Google managed to get exclusive rights to orphaned books especially when, by definition, the owners of the materials weren't present for any negotiations? Why not just open the books up to everyone, including Google. If Google decides to be evil, someone else can pay to have the books scanned and charge whatever they want for them. Alternatively, just put it in the settlement that Google cannot charge for access to the orphaned material.
It really doesn't seem like this should be that hard. There's an audience that wants access to books that no one is expecting royalties on; in an age of unlimited free copying, that should be a no brainer.
The settlement, 'takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,
Funny. It sounds like Google is going to steal the soul of these book and jail them in their databases.
Hehe. There is no logic in this argument. The books are still available at the respective libraries. What is the problem in making them available at other place?
Instead of bashing someone who decides to spend the money to implement a solution, why don't you just compete with them. Scan these books yourself and offer them online.
Oh, you don't have the financial resources to pull that off and you cannot get any backers? Well, I guess you really have nothing to say then.
My reaction to this was similar: We've gone from having in many cases 0 ways to get at these "orphaned" works to having 1 way to get at them. How is that not an improvement? Yes, having 2 or more would be better. But 1 is a heck of a lot better than 0.
Also good would be something similar to what Lessig et al have been arguing for years: if no one is profiting from it, why not put it under CC or into public domain?
What's preventing others from scanning those same books again? Yes, it's a pain in the butt, but that's exactly why Google should be allowed to ask for whatever the market is willing to bear.
The only problem I can see if various ideas [ivanhoffman.com] for the copyright protection of databases come to pass. Then Google could indeed have a perpetual monopoly for their list of orphaned copies.
What's preventing others from scanning those same books again?
Google scanned all those books without asking for permission and only negotiated [license] from [book licensing people] after the fact. If someone else wants to scan those books, they're also going to have to negotiate [license] from [book licensing people].
So Google, AFAIK, is the only organization with a license to do [stuff] with all those orphaned works.
Libraries often compete with one another on collections. They strive to be the foremost collection on some topic, maybe it's 17th century farming techniques, or modern optics. They compete and they gather rich alumni at major universities to donate private works and give them money to expand their very special collections.
Now along comes Google. Scanning books and keeping copyright on works that have been long abandoned. Some Universities were happy to take Google's money to be part of the scanning project, but now some want to turn and bite that hand.
If I can find a long since out of print book that no library has, or at least that no library would dare loan me, online and in a reproducible format - explain to me how that is different from assembling a rare collection in a library? Explain how the term monopoly is used in this context, because I do not think that word means what Senor Darnton from Hahh-vahhd thinks it means.
Google is adding to the diversity of publications in the world, and giving it to mankind. What they are doing, IN ACTUALITY, is removing the monopoly that university libraries once had. So I can see why they might be upset about it.
There are books that no one is printing anymore, we all know this, and most of us have probably wanted one at some time or another. Here is Google putting together a solution, and people are bitching? I understand the general complain of 'monopoly', but as other people have stated they aren't destroying the other books out there. If it's in a library and you don't want to pay Google, go look it up in the library.
As for the other people who are complaining, again, go start a business and start digitizing them yourself. At face value I don't see a problem with this, they have the means to fill a niche that no one else wants/can. Why aren't publishers already doing all this? I should be able to go to a publisher's website and purchase/download any book they have rights to, but they don't, so let Google step in and attempt to create a new market.
So, is Google asserting copyright on the scans of the books whose copyright Google doesn't own? Could I just copy and redistribute Google's scan of the book? After all, I have as much claim to the book as Google, and the scan itself is not a creative work.
- Google isn't charging for access. - Universities do charge for access (or membership). - Why wouldn't libraries find their own copies of orphaned books and include them in their catalog?
What is really in danger here is the university library business model: charge a premium for things that should be open to the public.
Far too many establishments seek to control access to information / and thus knowledge. I for one hope Google scans as many books/papers as possible. At least we'd be able to find them.
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday April 06 2009, @12:47PM (#27478559)
"no competitor will ever be able to compile the comprehensive online library Google aims to create"
Um, why not? If something is *out* of copyright entirely (not merely out of print, but actually in the public domain because the copyright term has expired) what exactly is stopping competitors from copying the same book and putting it on the web? I've seen plenty of examples of 19th-century books done that way [columbia.edu] -- people interested in those works sitting down with a scanner and laboriously scanning each page, then putting them on the web [columbia.edu]. Google a monopoly? Hardly, when every shmoe with a copy of the book and a scanner can duplicate it.
Oh, and university libraries are the *last* people that should be complaining about this, given that they're the ones with huge collections and they COULD HAVE DONE THE SAME THING decades ago, and still could now, if they wanted to serve their customers better. Years ago they should have gotten off their lazy posteriors and scanned *everything* in their library that is out of copyright. EVERYTHING. It means they could put the books in long-term storage (save money on shelf space), preserve the books better (no broken brittle paper or book bindings from further handling), and deliver copies of these old and rare works via interlibrary loan at far less expense and time (and wear-and-tear) than running them through a photocopier over and over again. At the very least they should be doing this only once, and then saving the copy digitally. It's freaking obvious.
Now they want to complain because google is doing their job for them? Sure, there's an important legal difference between "orphan works" and "copyright expired", but, really, why couldn't libraries have pushed for more flexibility with "orphan works" a long time ago? Some kind of broad, general license could have been negotiated. And why haven't they generally made all expired works available electronically, and let google walk into the market unchallenged?
There's hardly grounds for complaining about something they should have been doing a long time ago.
"Now millions of orphan books may get a new legal guardian [nytimes.com]"
Where in the text of the settlement is ownership transferred exclusively to Google?
"Critics say that without the orphan books, no competitor will ever be able to compile the comprehensive online library Google aims to create, giving the company more control than ever over the realm of digital information"
Where in this settlement does it forbid anyone else creating an online archive of orphan works, Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] for instance. Would one source of this spontaneous concern be out of Redmond?
'at least one party nudging its way into the settlement is an Internet-issues oriented group from New York Law School.. But what does raise an eyebrow is the source of New York Law's funding [nytimes.com] on this matter: Microsoft. The chief investigator of the New York Law School project is James Grimmelmann. In an earlier career phase, associate law professor Grimmelmann worked as a programmer for Microsoft'
While the registry's agreement with Google is not exclusive, the registry will be allowed to license to others only the books whose authors and publishers have explicitly authorized it. Since no such authorization is possible for orphan works, only Google would have access to them, so only Google could assemble a truly comprehensive book database.
"No other company can realistically get an equivalent license," said Pamela Samuelson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.
Her analysis of Sony V. Universal is required reading. Other articles can be found here [eserver.org]
But there should be no problem with someone else downloading the material and reselling it or giving it out or copying it.
It's not quite that easy. The original work goes into the public domain, but only the original work. Republications obtain a new copyright on the version of the work. So if Google scanned in a bunch of public domain books and distributed in their own format, they'd probably have a copyright on those digital files.
I say *probably* because a direct scan is likely to be Yet Another Legal Gray Area(TM). The courts might decide that the digital container is sufficient transformation of the work to warrant a new copyright. Or they might decide that it's merely space shifted and deny copyright protection.
For legal advice, please contact a real lawyer. (I just play on on Slashdot. Which is much more interesting than TV.:-P)
"So if Google scanned in a bunch of public domain books and distributed in their own format, they'd probably have a copyright on those digital files."
I don't think simply scanning something is enough to secure copyright - there has to be a creative artistic component before someone can secure copyright. I think the bar is set quite low, but it has to be there.
Just because you and I believe something to be true doesn't mean that a judge will agree. There will likely be quite a few factors that would play into a judge's decision. e.g. Was the scanning process completely automated or where there manual steps? Were any changes made to the layout or format of the text? Were images and/or the cover remade? Does the digital technology count as creativity added to the work?
These questions and many others would likely play a role in any court case. How the judge decides might very well depend on the judge, the phase of the moon, and which way the wind is blowing. Thus unless you're looking to go to court, you must assume that the work is copyrighted. At least until someone is gutsy enough to prove otherwise.
Actually, judges have already agreed, at least with regard to art: Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. [wikipedia.org]. While you are correct that a new court would have to apply precedent to see if scanning books counts as the same thing, everything I know about this field of law says that they don't have a chance in hell of getting a new copyright.
From a practical perspective, there is some danger, because the threat of litigation from a big company can be enough to shut down a small entity just because of the cost of
Google can charge for access, but they can't charge for the work persay.
The phrase you are looking for is per se, it's latin.
Google will be able to provide access to the material, that almost no one else can (since the books are out of print). They are free to sell access to, or to publish, those works (since no one will make a copyright claim against them for these orphaned works).
However, Googoe does NOT have copyright on these works. Anyone else may publish them as well, and Google has no recourse against them, since copyright did not pass to Google.
This is all fine.
Someone could actually copypaste from Google, and publish on their own, and Google would have no legal recourse regarding copyright. However, Google might have recourse based upon their contract with the person who copied from Google... the license contract between Google and the User to access the content might(!) specifically forbid republication, in which case the User could be liable.
No, the implication is that Google has an exclusive right to these books now. And they don't, depending on how you turn the phrase. In the sense that nobody else is ever allowed to get a license, no, it's not exclusive. In the sense that nobody else DOES have one, then yes, it's exclusive. There is something stopping another entity from creating their own anthology: The fact that Google has a license now, and nobody else does.;) Google threw a lot of lawyers and money at the publishers to get this s
The Same Old Story (Score:5, Interesting)
The settlement, 'takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,' said Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system. 'Google will be a monopoly.'
Why is it that books -- of all things -- should be the last thing to be digitized [slashdot.org]?
... I'm not even going to get into the jump they
see in sales when their books are digitized.
Your resistance is futile. It perplexes me that you -- a university librarian -- cannot see what is so obvious to me but I will spoon feed it to you. We live in a capitalistic society where supply rises to meet demand. I am a ravenous consumer of books and for sometime have desired an all-encompassing repository of books. You, the writers guilds, the publishers, the industry as a whole have failed to meet this demand for sometime now. Unfortunately for you, the early bird gets the worm. The early bird being Google, the worm being my rewarding eyeballs and possibly pocketbook. I may have been the minority of your consumers but that has changed and it is no longer you against a few nerds. It's you against the world. You will lose. Your industry has successfully prevented this. Why, I'm not quite sure. Greed? Stupidity? There are so many good words to pick from.
You will have to forgive me when I lack sympathy for your position on the books your archaic publishing system fails to make available to me. Oh no, no one will ever be able to publish them now! Alas, woe is me. Instead of being permanently unavailable to me, they will soon be available to everyone
If Google's inevitable monopoly is nigh, why don't you draw up your own business plan to garner venture capital and get all the universities to back you on it? Google's taking a risk and in the end, it's going to be good for the end consumer.
Either shit or get off the toilet. You had your chance, you squandered it. This should have been started almost a decade ago and completed five years ago. I'm sick and tired of the greed factor inhibiting such a useful tool for mankind. As head of an ivy league university library, I would have guessed support for what could well be the modern digital version of Alexandria before it was burned. I'm shocked a librarian would take this stance.
re-read the section you quote (Score:5, Informative)
Your rant may well be spot on in terms of the general attitude of librarians. But please note what the man actually said:
The settlement, 'takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,' said Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system. 'Google will be a monopoly
Given that specific bit you quote, the man is concerned about Google being the exclusive source of access to these books; he's not expressing fear that his industry is going away, but that what's replacing it will have less freedom of access. You can debate if that's the case or not, but at least address what the man's talking about.
Parent
Re:re-read the section you quote (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a very simple and very obvious solution to all of this.
Let orphan works fall into the public domain.
Yeah, copyright run amok causes problems. We could have told you that before any of this business.
So add book publishers to the list of greedy idiots that handed a technology company a monopoly on a silver platter.
Parent
Re:re-read the section you quote (Score:5, Insightful)
In the UK, and a few other countries, if you have cash in a bank account and don't touch it for 15 years, the government will seize it and give it away to charity.
That's real actual CASH. Tangible (erm ... ok ... not entirely) but it's actual property. So why the hell not do that with Imaginary Property that's been 'abandoned'?
Parent
Re:re-read the section you quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Current IP laws do not aim for the benefit of the public or fairness or logic. They only aim for the benefit of corporations by enabling them to extort money from the public, i.e. from humanity.
The initial intention of the law, to benefit inventors, artists, scientists etc. who actually put time and money into the creation of their work has been blown out of proportion, aiming to turn IP into something similar to real estate.
Anyone can have an idea, it doesn't take that much time to do research or write a song. Implying that the products of these efforts should be property forever* is ridiculous.
*I consider 100+ years to be "forever" given that it's longer than the average lifespan.
5, 10, 15 year terms encourage artists, inventors, scientists enough.
The public is what makes a work more valuable by giving its collective attention to it. The current copyright law terms and conditions are overreaching and rob the public.
Parent
Re:re-read the section you quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the initial intention of the law (at least how I read it in the Constitution) is to benefit the public by encouraging artists to create.
The benefit to artists was almost a side-effect, or more a way to get more works into the public domain.
If you think about it--in offering copyright, I am giving up something (the ability to reproduce a work I've seen). What am I giving this up in exchange for?
There is no innate rule that someone who creates something has any right to exclude others from it. This is a gift we give them as a thank you for creating something that will someday belong to us all.
Sometimes I think we should just revoke the right altogether for a few years. Disney's manipulation of the laws for profit has been horrific, they have stolen from all of us more than any copyright infringer. By now, we should own Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and hundreds of other characters.
Every time they are almost out from under copyright, Disney goes back to congress and manipulates the law in order to steal them from us for a few more years.
This is more horrific and evil thievery (at least in volume) than every bit-torrent ever downloaded.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
[citation needed]
Re:re-read the section you quote (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing from keeping anyone from getting access to these books the same way that Google did...
Parent
Re:re-read the section you quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:re-read the section you quote (Score:5, Insightful)
No, now that Google has put the brunt of their weight and money on the issue, I would dare to say the next person who comes along will simply need to pay for the scanning service and access to the library.
In other words, Google isn't locking anyone out of anything. The only barrier to entry will be the standard "I need money to make money" barrier that has nothing to do with Google.
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Re:The Librarians appear to be correct (Score:5, Insightful)
So they have the power to grant Google access to orphan books whos publishers and authors haven't explicitly authorized it?
How does that work? 'we can grant google this power even though we don't have it, but we can't grant it to anyone else because we don't have it!'
That argument doesn't appear to make a whole lot of sense to me.
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Re:The Librarians appear to be correct (Score:5, Informative)
So they have the power to grant Google access to orphan books whos publishers and authors haven't explicitly authorized it?
How does that work? 'we can grant google this power even though we don't have it, but we can't grant it to anyone else because we don't have it!'
That argument doesn't appear to make a whole lot of sense to me.
This is a basic consequence of class action law suits. When a class action is certified, the representatives who brought the action are assumed (legally speaking) to speak for all members of the class (in this case everyone who holds copyright or publication rights in a book) with respect to the specific court case, and in settlements relating to that case. It's a legal fiction, but a generally accepted one.
In this case, it means that the Writers Guild represents all appropriate rights holders in negotiations with google. They don't represent those rights holders in any other case, so cannot negotiate similar terms with anybody except google; they could only do so in the event that a court certified that it would be in the interests of the class as a whole for them to do so (as happened in the Google case).
If you don't like it, you need to campaign to your representatives for a change in the law regarding class actions.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They aren't co-opting anything. They don't claim copyright on the orphaned books, they simply republish them with the majority of the funds going to the copyright holder (if they can be identified).
Re:re-read the section you quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, thanks to Google, we will have a single online database with "orphaned" books. As opposed to a non-existent online database of said books. Granted, I would rather have a non-profit government entity to maintain this library, but since librarians are not doing a diddly squat to make it happen, I will gladly accept Google's work.
Saying that Google will have a "monopoly" is dubious, imho. As far as I understand, Google will not own copyright on any of these works, but merely will have a court decision allowing it to display them. How the hell is that bad? Up until now, no one could put these things online. Google effectively breached the wall of copyright, with a clear benefit for the public. It is not even a lesser evil we have to settle for, it is a clear win for everyone...
...Except for publishers, of course, who are afraid of competition from perfectly good books that are free to access. Oh heavenly muses, how will they ever sell new books if anyone can access old books with comparable content? Does it mean they will have to top them? To seek out and publish writings that are superior to the stuff that is 50 years old? Oh boy, what a gloomy future it must be for them, nothing but hard work ahead. Good bye, millions of dollars for sitting on your ass in a hot tub and frying your brain at coke parties.
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Re:re-read the section you quote (Score:4, Insightful)
The first guy to do something always has a monopoly on it, until someone else steps in to do so.
So basically the bitch is, according to slashdot mentality, that since Google is doing it first, they are evil. Forget the fact that no one else is bothering. Forget the fact that it really ISN'T exclusive to Google. Forget the fact that no one is willing to make the investment to do so.
Of course if all goes well and Google goes forward and people use it, we'll see many clones. And the clones will have the distinct advantage that Google already paid for the lawyers and retarded legal battles in an attempt to solve the problem.
But we don't think about that here, on slashdot everything should be free for the taking, regardless of the fact that someone put a rather large amount of effort into it.
Really, slashdot is full of a bunch of freeloaders who use 'freedom' as nothing more than a battle cry for 'Give us everything for Free because we're entitled to it even though we've done nothing to contribute!'
Put the entire population of slashdot on an island where they have to work for themselves and come back in a week. You'll find 20 people alive hiding from the stench of the other million or so dead bodies of people too lazy to find some food or water for themselves. There were entitled to that water you know, because everything should be free.
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The right to withold a work (Score:3, Interesting)
It also helps to highlight one of the major issues with the long length of copyright in the United States. Given that information is owned by the Public once it is produced and We the Public actually limit our own rights to reproduce a work for a limited period of time in the form of copyright, isn't someone witholding the work or getting this effort tangled up actually a violation of the spirit of the agreement between the creator and the Public?
In that sense, I think what google is doing is Right. In th
Except that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Those books are not yours. That's the fundamental thing. THAT PROPERTY IS NOT YOURS. If I am Joe author of a book, and Google scans it, I have every right to demand Google yank it back out. Convenience is not an excuse to violate civil rights.
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Re:Except that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Except you died. Your estate wants nothing really to do with your book and the last known publication was 20 years ago.
And now, someone actually wants to read the book...
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Re:Except that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not even that, we can't even be sure his estate holds the copyright and if we are sure his estate holds it, he didn't leave any heirs we can't find anyone with power of attorney.
Also: someone wants to read the book and the closest tangible copy is 700 miles away in a University collection.
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Re:Except that... (Score:4, Funny)
And...who takes the check? What if he died in obscurity without any heirs or known relatives back in 1947?
That would obviously be me then. :-)
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Re:Except that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, Joe, it's kinda late now. Let's suppose that I have a boat. Speed boat, pleasure boat, party barge, sailboat, it doesn't matter. I have a boat. I somehow manage to sink the boat. It lies submerged for months, even years. The thing is ABANDONED. Some dude comes out, spends a day or a week floating my wreck off the bottom, and brings it ashore. Do you think I retain any legal right to that boat? Or, how about your car? You fail to maintain it, and it slowly rusts away, with the rain washing your rust streak onto my property. One day, I come out and shovel up all the iron (mostly iron oxide) to haul away to a scrap yard. You think you're going to get any of the salvage money?
Joe Author needs a reality check. Abandoned property is no longer "his".
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Re:Except that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because his attic is in his house which is still his. It wasn't abandoned. Forgotten, maybe, but not abandoned.
Best I can see you're just not understanding the definition of 'orphaned work.' Let's try it this way...
Let's assume for a moment Greensleeves was still under copyright. Who gets the royalty checks?
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So do it yourself, better.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, this seems like Google-bashing for its own sake. Who else is making a serious effort to get a hold of these orphan books and put them out there? Last I checked, absolutely no one.
If the choice is a monopoly over the digitized copy of these books, or letting them fade into obscurity un-digitized, do we really want to choose option B?
Re:So do it yourself, better.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Normal companies didn't do it. It is illegal.
Publisher surely didn't want to do it, because orphan works are the best. They are not competition(like public domain), and they are not accessible(unlike public domain).
When US signed Berne convention, they stopped a very reasonnable system, where the registration obligation prevented the very existence of orphan works.
By letting Google monopolize orphan works, one give a bonus to the player that didn't follow the rules. As a society, it is usualy a very bad idea.
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Orphaned? (Score:5, Insightful)
That would go a long way towards telling the world that their intentions are honest.
Re:Orphaned? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Orphaned? (Score:4, Interesting)
They have a few exceptions where the copyright holder has made a deal with them, like Bruce Sterling's Hacker Crackdown.
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Conflicted (Score:5, Interesting)
However I feel that if Google are to be given any rights over works as the ones mentioned then it should be for a limited time only. Perhaps as a reward for taking the initiate and as way for them to profit from their endeavour. But as I said, only for, say 5-10 years, after that the rights to any such material should be freely available to everyone.
In any regards I would consider any sort of long-term or permanent rights given to Google would be a very bad thing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They should not be given any rights at all. They can enforce their control over the contents via licensing.
If I go and digitize and publish one of these orph
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that a monopoly of one is better than a monopoly of zero...
Re:I would say.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess I don't see why Google has a monopoly at all. Does anyone know how Google managed to get exclusive rights to orphaned books especially when, by definition, the owners of the materials weren't present for any negotiations? Why not just open the books up to everyone, including Google. If Google decides to be evil, someone else can pay to have the books scanned and charge whatever they want for them. Alternatively, just put it in the settlement that Google cannot charge for access to the orphaned material.
It really doesn't seem like this should be that hard. There's an audience that wants access to books that no one is expecting royalties on; in an age of unlimited free copying, that should be a no brainer.
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Souls... (Score:5, Insightful)
The settlement, 'takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,
Funny. It sounds like Google is going to steal the soul of these book and jail them in their databases. Hehe. There is no logic in this argument. The books are still available at the respective libraries. What is the problem in making them available at other place?
If you have a problem with this, then compete! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, you don't have the financial resources to pull that off and you cannot get any backers? Well, I guess you really have nothing to say then.
Nothing to see here...move along.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My reaction to this was similar: We've gone from having in many cases 0 ways to get at these "orphaned" works to having 1 way to get at them. How is that not an improvement? Yes, having 2 or more would be better. But 1 is a heck of a lot better than 0.
Also good would be something similar to what Lessig et al have been arguing for years: if no one is profiting from it, why not put it under CC or into public domain?
I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's preventing others from scanning those same books again? Yes, it's a pain in the butt, but that's exactly why Google should be allowed to ask for whatever the market is willing to bear.
The only problem I can see if various ideas [ivanhoffman.com] for the copyright protection of databases come to pass. Then Google could indeed have a perpetual monopoly for their list of orphaned copies.
Re: (Score:3)
What's preventing others from scanning those same books again?
Google scanned all those books without asking for permission and only negotiated [license] from [book licensing people] after the fact. If someone else wants to scan those books, they're also going to have to negotiate [license] from [book licensing people].
So Google, AFAIK, is the only organization with a license to do [stuff] with all those orphaned works.
Interesting that a librarian should say this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now along comes Google. Scanning books and keeping copyright on works that have been long abandoned. Some Universities were happy to take Google's money to be part of the scanning project, but now some want to turn and bite that hand.
If I can find a long since out of print book that no library has, or at least that no library would dare loan me, online and in a reproducible format - explain to me how that is different from assembling a rare collection in a library? Explain how the term monopoly is used in this context, because I do not think that word means what Senor Darnton from Hahh-vahhd thinks it means.
Google is adding to the diversity of publications in the world, and giving it to mankind. What they are doing, IN ACTUALITY, is removing the monopoly that university libraries once had. So I can see why they might be upset about it.
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the other people who are complaining, again, go start a business and start digitizing them yourself. At face value I don't see a problem with this, they have the means to fill a niche that no one else wants/can. Why aren't publishers already doing all this? I should be able to go to a publisher's website and purchase/download any book they have rights to, but they don't, so let Google step in and attempt to create a new market.
explain (Score:4, Interesting)
So, is Google asserting copyright on the scans of the books whose copyright Google doesn't own? Could I just copy and redistribute Google's scan of the book? After all, I have as much claim to the book as Google, and the scan itself is not a creative work.
Still better then universities (Score:5, Insightful)
What a load of FUD!
- Google isn't charging for access.
- Universities do charge for access (or membership).
- Why wouldn't libraries find their own copies of orphaned books and include them in their catalog?
What is really in danger here is the university library business model: charge a premium for things that should be open to the public.
Far too many establishments seek to control access to information / and thus knowledge. I for one hope Google scans as many books/papers as possible. At least we'd be able to find them.
Why no competition? (Score:5, Insightful)
"no competitor will ever be able to compile the comprehensive online library Google aims to create"
Um, why not? If something is *out* of copyright entirely (not merely out of print, but actually in the public domain because the copyright term has expired) what exactly is stopping competitors from copying the same book and putting it on the web? I've seen plenty of examples of 19th-century books done that way [columbia.edu] -- people interested in those works sitting down with a scanner and laboriously scanning each page, then putting them on the web [columbia.edu]. Google a monopoly? Hardly, when every shmoe with a copy of the book and a scanner can duplicate it.
Oh, and university libraries are the *last* people that should be complaining about this, given that they're the ones with huge collections and they COULD HAVE DONE THE SAME THING decades ago, and still could now, if they wanted to serve their customers better. Years ago they should have gotten off their lazy posteriors and scanned *everything* in their library that is out of copyright. EVERYTHING. It means they could put the books in long-term storage (save money on shelf space), preserve the books better (no broken brittle paper or book bindings from further handling), and deliver copies of these old and rare works via interlibrary loan at far less expense and time (and wear-and-tear) than running them through a photocopier over and over again. At the very least they should be doing this only once, and then saving the copy digitally. It's freaking obvious.
Now they want to complain because google is doing their job for them? Sure, there's an important legal difference between "orphan works" and "copyright expired", but, really, why couldn't libraries have pushed for more flexibility with "orphan works" a long time ago? Some kind of broad, general license could have been negotiated. And why haven't they generally made all expired works available electronically, and let google walk into the market unchallenged?
There's hardly grounds for complaining about something they should have been doing a long time ago.
source of criticism .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where in the text of the settlement is ownership transferred exclusively to Google?
"Critics say that without the orphan books, no competitor will ever be able to compile the comprehensive online library Google aims to create, giving the company more control than ever over the realm of digital information"
Where in this settlement does it forbid anyone else creating an online archive of orphan works, Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] for instance. Would one source of this spontaneous concern be out of Redmond?
'at least one party nudging its way into the settlement is an Internet-issues oriented group from New York Law School
Going w/ Prof. Samuelson on this one (Score:3, Informative)
While the registry's agreement with Google is not exclusive, the registry will be allowed to license to others only the books whose authors and publishers have explicitly authorized it. Since no such authorization is possible for orphan works, only Google would have access to them, so only Google could assemble a truly comprehensive book database.
"No other company can realistically get an equivalent license," said Pamela Samuelson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.
Her analysis of Sony V. Universal is required reading. Other articles can be found here [eserver.org]
Re:Google will own the books? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not quite that easy. The original work goes into the public domain, but only the original work. Republications obtain a new copyright on the version of the work. So if Google scanned in a bunch of public domain books and distributed in their own format, they'd probably have a copyright on those digital files.
I say *probably* because a direct scan is likely to be Yet Another Legal Gray Area(TM). The courts might decide that the digital container is sufficient transformation of the work to warrant a new copyright. Or they might decide that it's merely space shifted and deny copyright protection.
For legal advice, please contact a real lawyer. (I just play on on Slashdot. Which is much more interesting than TV. :-P)
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Re:Google will own the books? (Score:4, Informative)
"So if Google scanned in a bunch of public domain books and distributed in their own format, they'd probably have a copyright on those digital files."
I don't think simply scanning something is enough to secure copyright - there has to be a creative artistic component before someone can secure copyright. I think the bar is set quite low, but it has to be there.
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Re:Google will own the books? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you and I believe something to be true doesn't mean that a judge will agree. There will likely be quite a few factors that would play into a judge's decision. e.g. Was the scanning process completely automated or where there manual steps? Were any changes made to the layout or format of the text? Were images and/or the cover remade? Does the digital technology count as creativity added to the work?
These questions and many others would likely play a role in any court case. How the judge decides might very well depend on the judge, the phase of the moon, and which way the wind is blowing. Thus unless you're looking to go to court, you must assume that the work is copyrighted. At least until someone is gutsy enough to prove otherwise.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
From a practical perspective, there is some danger, because the threat of litigation from a big company can be enough to shut down a small entity just because of the cost of
Re:Google will own the books? (Score:4, Informative)
The phrase you are looking for is per se, it's latin.
Google will be able to provide access to the material, that almost no one else can (since the books are out of print). They are free to sell access to, or to publish, those works (since no one will make a copyright claim against them for these orphaned works).
However, Googoe does NOT have copyright on these works. Anyone else may publish them as well, and Google has no recourse against them, since copyright did not pass to Google.
This is all fine.
Someone could actually copypaste from Google, and publish on their own, and Google would have no legal recourse regarding copyright. However, Google might have recourse based upon their contract with the person who copied from Google... the license contract between Google and the User to access the content might(!) specifically forbid republication, in which case the User could be liable.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)