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Google Businesses The Internet

Second Google Suit Over Print Library Project 354

Posted by Zonk from the can't-get-a-second-in-to-scan dept.
linumax writes "The Association of American Publishers, an organization of book publishers including Pearson Plc's Penguin unit and McGraw-Hill sued Google over its plan to create a digital Web library of printed books. The Association of American Publishers sued Wednesday after talks broke down with Google over copyright issues raised by the Google Print Library Project. Publishers say Google will infringe copyrights unless it gets advance permission for the scanning. The suit is the second by the publishing industry against Google's library plans and underscores the worries sparked by Google's expansion beyond Web search." From the article: "Google, which is working with five of the world's great libraries (Stanford, Harvard and Michigan university libraries, the New York Public Library and the Bodleian library in Oxford) to digitise their collections, stopped scanning copyrighted books in August after protests from publishers. However, it intends to resume its work next month."
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Second Google Suit Over Print Library Project More

Second Google Suit Over Print Library Project

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  • Won't matter for long (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:29AM (#13836277) Homepage Journal
    We are mere months (maybe a year) away from the ability to completely scan any book and convert it accurately to text based PDF in under an hour. It will likely be F/OSS software that does it, released ostensibly to save old books in the public domain.

    When this happens, books will end up on P2P just like movies, music, porn, and images. Just as P2P helps people find interesting musicians and performers, it will help people find interesting writers and authors.

    No one can stop it. The big delay was caused by lack of available hardware to handle the intensive scanning and converting. We've seen software that can use a webcam or cellcam to scan documents quickly. This is processor performance driven. PCs aren't getting slower.

    5 huge libraries and a multibillion dollar corporation can not compete with hundreds of millions of end users volunteering a few hours a year to copy their favorite books. The entire published collection of books for the last hundred years could be online by 2007.

    Google should be embraced by publishers, not sued. Google could track interest, topically sort similar novel(list)s, and provide a great research tool and froogle-to-buy source.

    If the RIAA had iTunes before Napster, who knows where we'd be. If the MPAA embraced e-distribution at a reasonable price and quality, the same is true.

    People don't become pirates for financial reasons of theft, but of supply and demand. Hundreds of millions of BT users would rather pay $1 than waste hundreds of hours on low quality, low speed, high risk piracy.

    • Re:Won't matter for long (Score:4, Informative)

      by MaestroSartori ( 146297 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:37AM (#13836375) Homepage
      We are mere months (maybe a year) away from the ability to completely scan any book and convert it accurately to text based PDF in under an hour. It will likely be F/OSS software that does it, released ostensibly to save old books in the public domain.

      When this happens, books will end up on P2P just like movies, music, porn, and images. Just as P2P helps people find interesting musicians and performers, it will help people find interesting writers and authors.


      We're already practically there. Books already appear on P2P just like all of everything else. I downloaded a book just this weekend in fact, completely infringing the copyright in the process. I don't feel a shred of guilt, however, because I can't buy the book I want here yet (hardback only, paperback release date seems to vary between some time next month up to a year away). It's the 11th book in a series, I have 1-10 sitting on the shelf, but I'm not gonna buy a completely oversized hardback to continue the series.

      So yeah, I'm guilty as sin. But who am I really hurting, since I have the cash in my pocket and am willing to exchange it for something that just doesn't exist yet? And which I 100% guaranteed *will* buy when it does?

      • Re:Won't matter for long (Score:5, Funny)

        by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:50AM (#13836545)
        It's the 11th book in a series, I have 1-10 sitting on the shelf, but I'm not gonna buy a completely oversized hardback to continue the series.

        If you are talking about Wheel of Time, I have found that it's much easier just reading the plot summaries or the stuff at book-a-minute [rinkworks.com]. After all, nothing much has happened lately :). At least the number 10 [rinkworks.com] is pretty darn accurate.
        • I wish I'd stopped after Lord of Chaos. That one was absolutely fantastic (perhaps Jordan's "masterwork") but since then. . . meh. Booooooring.

          Potential spoilers below.

          I personally believe that Jordan got called out on the Demandred/Taim thread, and wrenched the wheel around because of the forums "getting it right". As such, he lost control and the muses now punish him.

          Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is far superior epic fantasy anyway. 3 more weeks till Feast For Crows!!!! *drools*

      • So yeah, I'm guilty as sin. But who am I really hurting, since I have the cash in my pocket and am willing to exchange it for something that just doesn't exist yet? And which I 100% guaranteed *will* buy when it does?

        You are justifying what you already know is wrong. If you wanted to read the book, drop the damn cash for it. It's 20 bucks at most borders, hardly enough to break you, and it's not like R Jordan doesn't deserve it.

        And the book is awsome, btw. Well worth the money.
      • You are directly hurting the author by stealing his book. Just because it isn't available in the format you desire (i.e., price), doesn't give you the right to steal it. It's still theft. Authors are paid royalties based on the purchase price of the books. Hardcover books are the ones that really pay the rent, for those authors lucky enough to get into hardcover. This is exactly the same as you lifting the book off the rack at the bookstore and walking out with it.

        I'm working on a book myself, hoping to bec
        • Every contract I've seen for book publishing offered significantly higher commissions for paperback than hardcover. 50% higher. Plus paperbacks have a higher release volume, more outlets and are more available as a replacement for lost books.

          The best commissions come in reprint licensing for groups or retail direct editions (50% commissions).

          Hard cover advances can be high, but if you don't earn your advance in sales, it comes out of your paperback commissions.
    • Considering that writers are the least paid of all professions, this would pretty much put an end to writing professionally if what you say comes to pass. Remember that few authors make more than 20 grand a year, and that includes the majority of best selling authors as well.

      This is why publishers are against google, as well as all the authors. They already make only pennies an hour when you figure out the time it takes to write a book versus the money paid. To have to give everything away for free? That wo

      • Re:Won't matter for long (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:54AM (#13836593) Homepage Journal
        I get paid $450 for a 6000 word story publicly in small media formats. 6000 words taken 2-3 hours to finalize.

        I could get about 4 cents per word for some online zines, or $240 for 3 hours.

        I know many authors who make well over $50,000 per year working 25 hours a week and never selling a novel.

        Novel:Story::CD:Concert

        You make good money on stories and series, not novels.
        • I know several best selling authors. All of them make less than 20K a year on their writing. They write novels, not articles. We're talking about novels, not articles.
      • Considering that writers are the least paid of all professions, this would pretty much put an end to writing professionally if what you say comes to pass.

        That doesn't make any sense. Think about it: The vast majority of writers get paid almost nothing, and yet there are tens of thousands of people out there who want to be writers. People write for a variety of reasons, but hardly anyone writes purely to get rich. People write because they need a creative outlet, because they have a story to tell, becaus

        • Re:Won't matter for long (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Banner ( 17158 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @11:03AM (#13836689) Journal
          Yes, and most of those writers suck. Look at the internet, it's full of complete crap when it comes to stories. So how do you pick out the good ones? It's simple, publishing houses don't print garbage, they print stuff that they've first vetted and feel people are willing to pay to read.

          You see, publishing houses act as a big filter, filtering out the bad stuff and making it easy to find the good stuff. There are thousands of people who want to play pro sports too. Doesn't mean they're any good at it.
          • So following that line of logic. How is it we are able to fish out the good FOSS projects from the crap? Is there a publisher telling you which ones are good? No ... the community has built its own methods (FreshMeat, etc) for deciding what is good and for making it known.

            How do teenagers know which kids in highschool are the cool kids? Are the teachers standing out in the hallways pointing them out? No ... the community has built its own methods (cliques, etc) for deciding who is popular and making them

          • It's simple, publishing houses don't print garbage,

            It's obvious you can't read, because the shelves of Barnes & Noble are chock full of obvious counterexamples.
      • If you think that's flamebait, it sure goes to show you don't know what debate is all about.

      • Considering that writers are the least paid of all professions, this would pretty much put an end to writing professionally if what you say comes to pass.

        Well, there is no way no-holds-barred book copying will ever become legal, so don't worry about it. But I hope there is still some way to harness the advantages of digital media - economy, searchability, and easy distribution - for all the information currently trapped in books. You might balk at the assertion that information is "trapped" in books, bu

      • Considering that writers are the least paid of all professions, this would pretty much put an end to writing professionally if what you say comes to pass. Remember that few authors make more than 20 grand a year, and that includes the majority of best selling authors as well.

        Authors that make less than $20k/year simply don't write good books. I can't see many people jumping at the chance to read a bad book just because they can get it for free.

        This is why publishers are against google, as well as all

      • This is why publishers are against google, as well as all the authors. They already make only pennies an hour when you figure out the time it takes to write a book versus the money paid. To have to give everything away for free? That would drive the entire publishing business under.

        But the system only gives small amounts out for free, helping the user search through a book while stopping them from reading the whole thing.

        As I enjoy reading, as this is clearly not an aid to piracy, as this clearly doesn'

    • As an Author, I agree (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @11:00AM (#13836657)
      We are mere months (maybe a year) away from the ability to completely scan any book and convert it accurately to text based PDF in under an hour. It will likely be F/OSS software that does it, released ostensibly to save old books in the public domain.

      When this happens, books will end up on P2P just like movies, music, porn, and images. Just as P2P helps people find interesting musicians and performers, it will help people find interesting writers and authors.

      As an author, I couldn't agree more.

      Most people want to curl up with a good book and read in comfort, lying in bed, on their couch, in their recliner (cracking fire and comfortable cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate optional). A few folks don't mind sitting in front of a computer to read, but the rest of us like good old fashioned, physical books in our hands, and what Google is doing is not only NOT a threat to the sale of traditional bound books, it is a boon.

      What it isn't a boon for is old guard publishers having a stranglehold on exposure anymore, meaning that self-published, POD, and other less traditional forms of publishing gain more leverage in attracting interested eyes, without having to somehow get ahold of that coveted shelf space in a brick-and-mortor store.

      Not that I don't covet that for my novel (I do), but the more accessible the information is to those looking for it, the more people will buy the physical version of the book.

      The AAR has its head up its ass, and win-or-lose on this particular lawsuit, they and their constituents are going to lose bigtime if they don't update their mentality to fit with the technological reality of today, and begin exploiting the opportunities it offers.
      • Even technical books have benefit in dead-tree form. I greatly prefer my reference manuals to sit on my desk when I'm programming, as opposed to having to switch between my IDE and browser/documents.

      • Re:As an Author, I agree (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dada21 ( 163177 ) *
        As a published author without a novel, I'm in a "unique" situation. I've been shopping out my completed novel for 2 months now with 2 publishers interested. I'll likely lose both opportunities as both offered decent advances for "first publish rights" but I want to release the novel freely on P2P and ebook sites.

        I'm offering to negotiate zero advance for a higher percentage (2.5% more) and control over online first publishing. My published friends and editors I know said its suicide. Yet I know the nove
    • RIAA, MPAA... AAP - why do all evil organizations have double A's in their names? :-)
    • While hundreds of millions of songs have been downloaded and shared, only a few hundred thousand book files have been. There simply isn't the demand for books and literature that there is for music files.

      For example, I scanned and OCR'ed several of my favorite books and made the files available on Kazaa. Years later, there hasn't been one single download of the book files in ASCII that I've put on Kazaa. People simply aren't interested.

      The published book format is a culture
      • It's funny though - I'd bet that the reason you haven't had any downloads of your favorite books is twofold:

        1. The books you find to be "favorite" either aren't mainstream enough, or people don't have the same tastes. This, of course, is debatable on so many different levels, and isn't my key argument.

        2. The few people (like myself) who have searched for books, get disappointed when they can't find exactly what they want, when they want it (as opposed to MP3 files, of which there is an almost limitless s
    • I think the point is not books being available or not, but rather the player/ viewer.

      For music, you have your MP3 player or burn a CD -- the user experience is pretty much the same as for other music media. For movies, you can make a VCD or watch it on the computer itself, the user experience is not as good as a regular cable or satt show or DVD, but somewhat comparable. For books, though, maybe some people could use a PDA, but it's just not a comparable experience to a real book that you can carry anywhere

    • What the publishers are really up in arms about is losing money over new books.

      In the google blog, it was noted that at any given time only 20% of all books are in print, 20% are in the public domain. That leaves 60% that are not in print, and aren't in the public doamin.

      What Google is doing is giving people access to those books in a limited manner so they can discover the information they need in a book they couldn't easily access (out of print).

      What the publishers see is:

      Booming market for

  • So...... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by hcob$ ( 766699 )
    One of the bigges online collections of data will be violating copywrights by copying information provided by libraries...

    Guess we need to outlaw coppiers in libraries...
    • We could post statements on the copy machines letting people know what are and what are violations of copyright law. This is already done at many, if not most, major universities. It is legal to copy articles for your own use. As a professor, however, you are limited in what you can make copies of to distribute to your class. As far as I can remember, these posted statements have been on copy machines since at least the 80's at Georgia Tech.
    • The issue isn't so simple. How many copies can you make in an hour? Hell, how many copies can you make on a library copier in a day? Take that number and you could distribute an exponentially greater number of copies digitally. God forbid you torrent share a book.

      The level to which the copying can be taken and purposely distributed without consent is vastly different when it becomes digital.

  • A Pyrrhic victory (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'll be very surprised if Google win, and when they lose they'll move to an opt-in system. And the publishers who don't join will soon realise the mistake they've made and join anyway. Or haemorrhage authors to publishers who allow their books to be found.

    This is a monumental waste of money.

  • I mean, just because it's online, it's not something of a 'public library'? How so? Do libraries have to get permission from every single publisher of every single piece of media they release? I think not. Why? Because they're not using the content in their own works. THAT is where infringement would be applicable. In Google's case, you're purely and simply going to see the content of the book, including copyrights and credits. So, again, how is this different from a library? I'd say they're very much in th

    • Re:How is this different from a library? (Score:5, Informative)

      by GreenPhreak ( 60944 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @11:05AM (#13836711)
      What no one seems to understand here is that just because Google is scanning all of these books, the end-user can NOT see all of the text of a given book. Unlike the online information that Google indexs, where one can search and then connect to the full webpage of any search hits, the library project will only make available the search quotation and the sentence or so around it for context.

      For example, if I were to look up: "JubJub Bird", it would return something like this:

      -----------
      Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
      "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"
      -----------

      Now is this giving away the entire contents of this copyrighted work? No. It is merely giving the searcher a hint of where to look for more information. In order to give away all of the information in a copyrighted text, one would have to know exactly what to search in sentence after sentence of that text. So it really isn't giving away anything. It most assuredly isn't giving away more information that Amazon.com does when you can open up the book and look at a few sample pages.

      In the same way that Google offers a searchable catalog of online web information, it will now offer a super-catalog search for library contents. I, for one, think that this will be an invaluable resource for anyone who does academic research, or a person who merely wants to know all of the references on a particular subject and relevant resources. Have some forsight, publishers of the world! This will only increase your profits when people purchase relevant texts to their interests.

                                                                                    greenphreak

  • Who cares? (Score:3, Funny)

    by casualsax3 ( 875131 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:33AM (#13836328)
    Books are so 20th century. It it's not made of pixels I won't look at it.

  • hwah?, Pat Schroeder on point? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayaguNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:34AM (#13836339) Journal

    I once almost collided with Pat Schroeder crossing the street in downtown Denver. Maybe I should have (we were both on foot, btw).

    I'm surprised Pat Schroeder is involved with or leading the charge in attempts to throttle Google. She offers tepid reasoning (probably not enough prep time spent with handlers) (from the article) :

    • if Google can make digital copies of the books, ANYONE can make digital copies. (duh). So, exactly what it the concern about this? I haven't heard of any pirating of books. And, people have been making copies of books forever. Guess what?, copying a book would far EXCEED the cost of buying one!
    • She argued that Google's plan to have libraries scan the full text of books goes far beyond the analogy of creating a digital version of a card catalogue, pointing out that "If Google wants a card catalogue they can scan the book's front page for full bibliographic data."

      She's right! This does go far beyond creating a digital version of a card catalog! Google's super-sized revved up digital card catalog qualifies as a godsend to the publishing industry.

    The ability to do Google indexed book searches will spur reading, and sales, not muffle it. How many slashdot readers have been thankful for the Amazon.com feature of letting you peek inside their books? Many times this has been the feature giving me the final nudge to buy (though there also have been times where that nudged me the other direction).

    When people start "discovering" books with Google's book searches, the very worst thing that would happen would be that people would be briefly exposed to books they otherwise might not have. But for "searchers" who find an interesting book, they won't be ripping the publishers off by printing (stealing) or downloading (stealing) these books, since Google isn't offering that as an option.

    And assuming for the moment some figure out how to download a copy, they're left with a book on their computer... not convenient to read (e-books, still on respirator), and way too expensive to print (and aesthetically "not a book").

    So, the most likely result would be a library visit, or purchase.

    Come on Pat!, think again.

    • I'm surprised Pat Schroeder is involved with or leading the charge in attempts to throttle Google.

      I'm not. Pat Scroeder:Book Publishers::Hillary Rosen:RIAA::Jack Valenti:MPAA.

      Okay, Hillary and Jack both stepped down, but you know what I mean. All three of them are shills/whores for their respective employers/pimps.

      I mean, this article [washingtonpost.com] goes back to 2001:

      Schroeder is president of the Washington- and New York-based Association of American Publishers, sponsor of the event. Like a nurturing shepherd, she moves

      • I'd say Pat Schroeder's perspective on this all is more dangerous than the others (RIAA/MPAA), and thus not completely comparable. For the most part, once you buy your overpriced CD/DVD, you can lend it to a friend and they can play it and so on as they wish. Now, once you buy your overpriced book from a publishing house, you can also lend it to a friend. However, she wants you not to be able to give it to a library so it can be lent to strangers or anyone. We're not talking about making copies, just bo
    • When people start "discovering" books with Google's book searches, the very worst thing that would happen would be that people would be briefly exposed to books they otherwise might not have. But for "searchers" who find an interesting book, they won't be ripping the publishers off by printing (stealing) or downloading (stealing) these books, since Google isn't offering that as an option.

      I think you nailed it on the head. What would happen if people started thinking about books - even reading parts of them
    • Your arguments are all pretty logical, and the publishing industry should listen to them. But the problem is that the law is what it is, regardless of whether the publishing industry is foolish to try so hard to enforce it. Sorry, but what Google is doing is clearly illegal. They need to make it opt-in for books that are still under copyright.

      Guess what?, copying a book would far EXCEED the cost of buying one!
      In some cases that's true, but not in others. It's not true in the textbook market, where an 800

      • I'm afraid some people are ignorant of the Fair Use limitations on copyright. Berowell must be, if he thinks that the resolution of Google's Fair Use defense is clear.

        Schroeder, on the other hand, knows perfectly well that Google's Fair Use argument is plausible. It won't necessarily win in court, but it is no way a clear loser. Schroeder does what all big publishers do: pretend that Fair Use doesn't exist, and hope that they will get people to abandon their Fair Use rights.
    • if Google can make digital copies of the books, ANYONE can make digital copies. (duh). So, exactly what it the concern about this?

      What is the concern? Making copies of a work is the exclusive right of the Copyright holder. Google is infringinging on the rights of AAP members. That's why they are suing. That piracy of books isn't widespread or is more expensive than an official copy is irrelevant.

      She's right! This does go far beyond creating a digital version of a card catalog! Google's super-sized rev

  • ... the RAIN! Yeah, Yeah. I mean, the rain don't mind and the rain dont care. And you gotta blame it on something

  • Like a mime... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by parasonic ( 699907 )
    ...They're hitting walls that they don't (for)see. Between this and the multitude of other legal issues that have arisen like the "name copyright" issue in the UK and the similar problem in Germany that forces them to call it Googlemail, I have begun to wonder how many more sectors/markets Google can possibly penetrate before hitting a legal or societal brick wall. They might do something that deems them as a "big business" or "monopoly" with all of the associated negative connotations. They've already infr

  • Rooting for Google (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:36AM (#13836368)
    I hope Google wins this one, and wins it big. I'm tired of living in the 19th century, and being told I should remain there by people who consider an electric typewriter to be too advanced for their use. Google believes they are within the current copyright laws, and they have more expensive lawyers than I do.

  • Celsius 232.78 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:36AM (#13836370)
    I guess we'll all have to memorize our favorite book.

  • High and mighty (Score:5, Informative)

    by ifelse ( 916112 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:37AM (#13836387) Homepage
    It's interesting to note that authors don't really have any say [kottke.org] in this affair even when they're in favour of Google Print [meghannmarco.com].
    • "Authors don't really have any say"?

      Of course not. Why should they? When an author signs with a publisher, they sign their work away to the publisher. Most of their work becomes pre paid and they merely become another worker, doing what they do best largely for someone else's benefit.

      If an author wants to retain rights to their work then they should self publish instead of "selling out" to a publisher. Otherwise they are nothing more than work for hire. You have no rights to the source code you write when w

  • Clueless publishers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jerry Coffin ( 824726 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:38AM (#13836389)
    I wonder how long it will be before the publishers realize that Google (like paper libraries before them) are really doing the publishers a favor. I've bought a whole lot of books in my life, and I'd guess about half of them I read in whole or in part at a library before I bought them.

    Books are a bit like software, and the try before you buy model works well. I have a hard time imagining most people deciding to read the entirety of a long book on their computer, even if it's available for free. I can imagine quite a few people looking at a new book online and using that as the basis for choosing to buy the book if they're going to read it though.

    Fortunately, at least a few companies display a bit of understanding. The people initiating these lawsuits should read the introduction Here [baen.com], and then check Baen's profits, and note that they're still in business and doing reasonably well, thank you very much.

    Of course, everybody else should go there simply to check out some books for free, and (perhaps) to support Baen Books for being decent people and doing good things.

    --
    The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

    • Your comment implies that publishers have realized the good that libraries do for them. They have not. Publishers would love to find a way to abolish free, public libraries if they could.
    • I wonder how long it will be before the publishers realize that Google (like paper libraries before them) are really doing the publishers a favor. I've bought a whole lot of books in my life, and I'd guess about half of them I read in whole or in part at a library before I bought them.

      I wonder how long it will be before the population of /. realizes that the people running $industry know more about what is good and bad for $industry than they do.

  • I'm not reading the articles... but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cavemanf16 ( 303184 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:39AM (#13836404) Homepage Journal
    These associations of book publishers should be careful with what they do, or they could quickly find themselves in the position of the RIAA and MPAA amongst far more people than just geeks. I'd wager every single person I know has been to our city's library system at least once in their lifetime. (Columbus, OH) And I'd also be willing to bet that should the courts be stupid enough to allow this to spill over eventually to the library's that there would be a lot of people pissed that they might cripple our city's library system which happens to be the best one in the nation because there are about 30+ library's "linked together" across the city. In other words, I can go to my local library building (or even online: http://www.cml.lib.oh.us/ [lib.oh.us]) and reserve just about any DVD, CD, book, or magazine that I could ever want. It's like a physical version of Kazaa, eDonkey, or any other P2P system, except all the content IS stored on the central "server". (The library drives trucks of books around all over the city, transporting them from one location to another based on patron requests)

    So, how is Google any different, except that it's potentially more massive, EVEN faster than the library system I'm used to, and available to even more people?? It's just an extension of the concept that's been around in my city in "snail-mail" form for quite a while now. Keep it up and they're liable to piss off a vast majority of the population of the US if the laws about copyrights keep getting extended further and further away from the original intent of copyright law.

    No, this isn't my most well-though-out post ever, but I wanted to highlight this facet of the debate over Google's LIbrary Project.
    • So, how is Google any different, except that it's potentially more massive, EVEN faster than the library system I'm used to, and available to even more people??

      It sounds like the difference is that the library system has its legal ducks in a row, whereas Google decided to go ahead on the basis of We're Google And We're The Future and let the chips fall where they may.

      Incidentally, do you really think you have the only city with a unified library circulation? They have that pretty much everywhere in the US

    • Congratulations on your city's achievement of connected libraries with cooperative lending! The rest of us welcome you to the 20th century. You'll have a great time!
    • In other words, I can go to my local library building (or even online: http://www.cml.lib.oh.us/ [lib.oh.us]) and reserve just about any DVD, CD, book, or magazine that I could ever want.

      You know, without being ironic, you might consider not telling people about this feature available at most urban library systems. It would be reason that the media corporations use to shut down the public libraries (or reduce them to only being able to distribute non-copyrighted materials).

      However, on the
  • There is gutenberg project which is slowly converting Public domain text into the digital platform but doing it w/o violating the copyrights. Google, being the 800 pound gorilla of the digital space, wants to say, "I do whatever I want and you can not do anything about it" which, in my opinion is not right.

    Some people before my post said, pc's are not getting any slower and scanners any weaker and this is supposed to happen sooner or later. Well, I beg to differ. One person scanning his own, paid, copyrig

    • copying is not violating (Score:4, Insightful)

      by argoff ( 142580 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @11:03AM (#13836688)
      The substance of what you said has an implied presumption that when something is coppied, distributed, or even sold without the creators permission, then the creator/publishor is in some way violated. While I understand that's the theory, and we have all been spoonfeed that that is an "intellectual property" right, the reality is quite different.

      While protected rights, naturally lead to incentives - protected incentives do not naturally lead to rights. Perhaps somebody feels violated when you freely copy, then again perhaps plantation masters feel violated if you steal, oops I mean free, slaves from the plantation. That is what I mean. Property and incentive are not an ends in themselves, to be just they need to derive from the real world - like the fact that not everybody can use the same resources at the same time, but with information they can!

      Copyrights are particualrly evil because they have the effect of stealing away our culture and giving it to hollywood. They also have an effect, that to secure them, you need to microregulate the internet and everybody that uses it. They have an effect that leads to anti-trust behavior in large software companies, and tend to make the information itself more valuable then the people who provide the services. The cost of having them in the information age is simply too high and they can not survive the information age any more than micro-controll of the labor market (slavery) could survive the industrial revolution.
      • Copyrights are particualrly evil because they have the effect of stealing away our culture and giving it to hollywood.

        You're forgetting that if the author isn't protected from theft, he/she will be less inclined to produce the culture that's being "stolen." Creation takes work and that work needs to be compensated otherwise it'll cease. Slavery arises when a man is required to work for nothing which from the jist of your post, is exactly what you think creators should be paid. After all, it costs them n

        • Speaking of twaddle.... (Score:4, Informative)

          by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @12:46PM (#13837624) Homepage
          You're forgetting that if the author isn't protected from theft, he/she will be less inclined to produce the culture that's being "stolen."

          Yes. But so what? The goals of society are to both encourage the creation of works and to have those works be in the public domain. While we can cause a lot of creation to occur by slightly delaying entrance into the public domain, and only granting a modicum of protection even during that initial period, there does come a point of diminishing returns. In fact, we eventually reach a point where granting more protection reduces the amount of creation.

          So there will always be unprotected authors, because some works just aren't worth protecting to the extent that it would take to cause them to be created.

          Furthermore, we should be responsible with copyright policy. We should provide no more incentive than the minimum amount necessary to get the maximum amount of net public benefit (i.e. the benefit of creation minus the harm caused by their not being in the public domain). To provide more of an incentive would be wasteful.

          Slavery arises when a man is required to work for nothing which from the jist of your post, is exactly what you think creators should be paid.

          Failure to give artists an economic incentive to create works is hardly comparable to forcing them to create. If artists aren't incentivized, they can be accountants or something. There's no one cracking a whip over them, so please stop with your useless hyperbole.

          It's not the protection from theft that's evil, it's the theft itself that's evil.

          It's not theft, and neither is evil. Copyright is utilitarian and essentially amoral.

          Although if there were a moral component, it'd be in favor of pirates, who spread and enjoy knowledge and help ensure that works will survive, as opposed to authors, who act as gatekeepers.

        • Re:What a load of twaddle (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Phurd Phlegm ( 241627 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @01:05PM (#13837784)
          Copyrights are particualrly evil because they have the effect of stealing away our culture and giving it to hollywood.
          You're forgetting that if the author isn't protected from theft, he/she will be less inclined to produce the culture that's being "stolen." Creation takes work and that work needs to be compensated otherwise it'll cease. Slavery arises when a man is required to work for nothing which from the jist of your post, is exactly what you think creators should be paid. After all, it costs them nothing to duplicate their work so why pay them?
          You couldn't be more right. If Steamboat Willie weren't protected by copyright in perpetuity, Walt Disney wouldn't produce any more cartoons. Of course, he's been dead for years.

          Inventors get seventeen years (actually it varies) of protection. Is there a reason that authors need "lifetime plus 75 years"? I have only the greatest respect for authors (with some exceptions...) but I think the transistor, antibiotics, and the airplane have more of an impact on my life than Gore Vidal and Dave Barry.

          Many of the works that are currently on the shelves will NEVER go into the public domain. And there is one thing authors need more than anything else--people that love reading. A large free corpus is a good way to build that.

    • Sonny Bono owns you (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      There is gutenberg project which is slowly converting Public domain text into the digital platform but doing it w/o violating the copyrights.

      What happens to PG once all notable English-language works first published on or before December 1922 have been scanned and digitally republished?

    • I think you're confusing Google Print with something else (you're not the only one...lots of people don't seem to get this). You can't read or download the whole book via Google. It's a search engine that searches the full text of books, and the results are EXCERPTS of the books found, with links to buy them, and perhaps libraries that have them. This is NOT an online library. It's an online full-text search of a library.

  • Hmmm...... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 8127972 ( 73495 )
    It almost sounds like the publishing industry is getting it's legal advice from the RIAA.

  • By libraries, helped by Google. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lancejjj ( 924211 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:57AM (#13836617) Homepage
    I work with one of those academic library institutions.

    This is more like an effort by the libraries, and Google is basically under contract to do the heavy lifting of scanning and technology, because they're good at such grand data projects. Traditional libraries simply aren't scaled and don't have the budgets to do it all by themselves. There's major cost savings in consolidation and expense-sharing. Why scan 7 times when you can scan once?

    It seems like the publishers are really aiming for a for-fee privatized electronic library system, cutting out traditional non-profit libraries.
  • They are carrying out the greatest copyright violation in the history of...well...all of history. What possible argument can they have in their favor? I can't even see where they'd start such an argument and I can hardly imagine a more clear cut case against them. Copying entire books wholesale can hardly be called "fair use" and they're using the copyrighted text to drive up hits on their ads. I think print.google.com is a great tool, I've just printed out a few useful pages from a book with it myself, but
  • Honest question that I fail to grasp... A library purchases a book and then that book is made publicly available for all to read. If Google were to purchase the initial copy then scan it how are they different from a library other than the factor that is it will be easier to search for and access books from anywhere? I understand the issue of individuals copying the books and keeping them and I am sure Google can put a mechanism in place to deter copying of the material. Libraries generally will disallow co
  • Google should have worked with the publishers and copyright owners of the books rather than a public library to do this job? I mean making all books in world online is not a monstrous task just because of the efforts involved in scanning, but for managing the relationship with all the stake holders. Think of it - anyone with a lot of cash and copy monkies can scan these books, but it needs lot more skills to get all the relationships right. Google took a short-cut by bypassing the people who put years of t

  • To pre-emptively tackle some arguments here... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Garwulf ( 708651 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @11:07AM (#13836723) Homepage
    Well, I've seen this sort of thing come up time and time again, and in the hopes of contributing something that will keep the discussion informed and to the point, I'm just going to shoot a couple of things down right now, and raise a few more:

    1. Google is NOT doing something new and revolutionary, they are instead extending what is already a good idea and already extant. Sample chapters have been up on the 'net for years. The ability to search for millions of books in dozens of different libraries at once by particular keywords has existed in university libraries for at least a decade, if not longer. Project Gutenberg (sp?) has been digitizing out-of-print public domain books for years as well. Google is extending this general idea, but they did not invent it. And, if they are stopped by these lawsuits, it will NOT bring the world to a halt, damage authors or the publishing industry, damage readers, create some weird heirarchy of those who have information and those who don't, or anything of the sort (in fact, we already have an overload of information in modern society).

    2. The argument that what was in the first draft of the U.S. Constitution is exactly what copyright should be is extremely flawed, both historically and logically. It is flawed logically because the argument revolves around the U.S. Constitution, which has little or nothing to do with international law and the Berne Convention (and the libraries in question have books by authors from around the world). It is historically flawed because the first draft of the U.S. Constitution was an 18th century document written by 18th century people for an 18th century world, and society, including the situation of authors, has changed since then. There's a good reason why Jeffersonian democracy hasn't existed since about the 1830s. Copyright may require some tweaking to function properly in this new age of the Internet, but regressing two centuries is not the answer at all.

    3. The main issue here revolves around whether Google asked for permission from the copyright holders before scanning. And, both morally and legally speaking, they should have. And, the fact is that if they had asked first, they quite possibly would have had the publishers and authors bending over backwards to help, because it IS a good idea. However, the ends do not justify the means, and quite frankly, I don't think they ever have.

    Now, those issues aside, there are some good issues to raise - how do you protect copyright in this digital world? At what point is something no longer fair use when you're dealing with credited electronic excerpts? How does copyright need to change in order to balance the needs and rights of the author with the needs and rights of the reader?

    • And, if they are stopped by these lawsuits, it will NOT bring the world to a halt

      Really? The majority of public web searches are performed through Google. If Google is successfully sued and is ordered to pay $150,000 statutory damages per infringed work, then Google may have to liquidate all its assets and close down. How can the World Wide Web as we know it keep going without Google Search?

      • How can the World Wide Web as we know it keep going without Google Search?

        Google is no longer significantly better than any of the other major search engines. Yahoo, MSN, A9 and probably numerous others offer equivelant capabilities. If Google closed down tomorrow, it wouldn't mean much for the 'Net as a whole.

  • Penguin are IP nazis (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @11:10AM (#13836765)
    Penguin have a good reputation in the UK. However, I found out that they actually use every legal means to protect IP as their own, even when legally that IP is legally in the Public Domain.

    Case in point - Beatrix Potter - the cute bunny children's stories - Penguin owns the company that publishes Beatrix Potter books.

    Nearly all of these stories are in the public domain, and even a lot of the artwork. However, you try to publish any of it... They have trademarks on all the character names and images, so although the copyright is public domain, the character names count and images count as trademarks of the company so you can't use them.

    Doesn't seem right to me that a company should be able to prevent public domain works being published because they have trademarked the character names...

  • Google's Response (Score:4, Informative)

    by nmec ( 810091 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @11:42AM (#13837062)
    Surprised this wasn't in the article but you can read Google's response from Eric Schmidt here [blogspot.com].
  • And I wouldn't mind paying a $10 monthly fee to have access to the (completed) Google library. So long as that $10 goes to the authors and editors, not the now defunct publishers who are dragging their feet. Right now, I rairly buy a new book. Terry Goodkind and Rowlings are the only two authors that I actually bother to actively follow. But with paper display e-book and the 'online library' available, I'm sure I would be introduced to other great authors (imagine applying 6 degrees and trending info right

  • Not Invented Here! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by geoff lane ( 93738 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @12:05PM (#13837263)
    It's not hard to see that the book publishers have been very lax marketing their products. Amazon was a success in part because the online book ordering services from the old publishers were uniformly terrible. Now Google is offering FREE services that will enable the world to discover book content that would be impossible to discover even if you lived in a library.


    Free scan, free search, free marketing. Of course the book publishers would be against it. It might mess up their carefully constructed marketing plans by creating a demand they were previously unaware of :-)


  • Creating a digital library is different than a public library. In a public library, the library pays for the books and the authors earn money over the purchases, while in Google's digital library people are going to read the books without paying and so the authors dont earn from it. I agree that some of the books are overpriced but making digital copies is not an answer. Google is doing EVIL here and i think they should come up with a mutual solution with the publishers and the authors. Digital library is a
    • So I'll ask, do you have any clue what you're talking about?

      The only books displayed in full-text were those in the public domain (out of copyright). You only got exerpts of books that were copyrighted. But that's not the heart of the case. The publishers are suing google over the index they're creating, scanning the books and making a copy for themselves without clearing copyright. They're not doing evil, there's legitimate issues here, like whether or not this index a legit extention of the library's

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