Google Book Search Settlement Receiving Criticism 119
waderoush writes "While James Gleick, Lawrence Lessig, and other pundits have reacted positively to this week's proposed settlement of the publishing industry's lawsuit against Google over the Google Book Search project, a deeper study of the agreement turns up some worrisome provisions that could make online access to books much more costly and difficult than it needs to be. Harvard University's libraries, for example, declined to endorse the settlement over concerns that it provides no mechanism for keeping the cost of access to books reasonable. And while the parties to the settlement have made much of the clause providing public libraries with free full-text access to Google's database of over 7 million out-of-print books, Xconomy has a post pointing out that this access is restricted to exactly one Google terminal per library. So, you can read books for free — as long as you're the first person to get to your public library's computer room in the morning."
Library, n. 1) A place to keep books. (Score:2, Insightful)
"So, you can read books for free -- as long as you're the first person to get to your public library's computer room in the morning."
Or, y'know, if you... check out a copy of the book. 'cause that's what libraries are for.
Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, y'know, if you... check out a copy of the book. 'cause that's what libraries are for.
I think the point is that the books are out of print so probably the library doesn't have a hard copy.
Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books. (Score:5, Insightful)
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MOD Parent UP!
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Out of print, by definition, means the book is no longer being printed.
Copyright infringement is still legally wrong, and they are still legally entitled to a part of the settlement.
Many books go out of print only to be reprinted later, printed in different countries (thus making money on it, so fuck your "definition") for a while while the local used market dries up, or added to a compilation or collection that is in progress and will be printed later.
The most typical case is another print run being done a
Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books. (Score:4, Insightful)
(Posting as AC because I modded this thread)
I think you are the one who is guilty of being an idiot. By your logic anything in the public domain should still rightfully be protected by copyright, because someone somewhere may still make a profit from it.
Good luck telling your grandchildren why they can't read any of the Grimm fairy tales because every edition since before the first world war is still under copyright but out of print.
Everyone should pay more attention to where our copyright laws are going, because it has all been foretold by RMS.
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Used books exist.
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Where did the gp support the existing copyright durations? The issue was the broken logic that suggested a temporary break in publication should lead to a loss of all rights.
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Copyright should expire after 5 years, and then people should be entitled to reproduce copies of the works.
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And then there are all the modern editions.
So they're not //in// copyright and //out// of print, they're //out// of copyright and //in// print.
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"Information wants to be free" like water wants to run downhill. That's free as in speech, not beer. The statement is true: it takes a *lot* of dilligence to prevent information from spreading in unwanted ways.
Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong.
Information doesn't want anything.
Certain people want information to be free.
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Try reading my post before replying. You're not at all objecting to what I wrote, you're objecting to the (nonsensical) meaning you've assigned to the phrase - no adult seriously uses it that way.
Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they anthropomorphize information as wanting to be free, so that they can disassociate themselves from their desire for information to be free, and thus claim it as an accepted truth.
In this way, they seek to paint themselves in a positive light as defenders of information and champions for its freedom. In reality, they're almost always deriding copyright and censorship, and often supporting piracy.
I often hate copyright law. I hate all censorship. I may or may not yarr on occasion. But I'm up front about it. I don't hide behind useless catch phrases that make claims of playing "backups" of games or movies look plausible.
I believe you're the one missing the point.
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I stand by my statement that no *adult* uses the phrase seriously in the way you've described.
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Gee, a pirate who thinks copyrights are dumb and all anti-piracy measures should just be given up.
When it's YOUR work people are stealing, you'll sing a different tune (then again, you'd actually have to do something creative/constructive, and I think the odds are pretty much against you on that one).
I do agree that the majority of anti-piracy measures we've seen so far have been failures, and that the people who buy into them are idiots.
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Well, at least we know you're not a plumber, Joe.
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The 'wants' in the sentence "Information wants to be free" is a metaphor for natural tendency. Hence the following sentence water 'wants' to run down hill. Your misinterpretation of the anthropomorphizing of the nouns 'information' and 'water' are stemming from a misunderstanding of the literary devices here.
Sexconker and the like should feel free to argue over the natural tendency of information being free but they, supposing they passed the 5th grade, should know be
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Do you have the right to output the same communications as someone else, i.e., copy, under free speech rights? I don't know - does anyone have an expert opinion?
In the long run, information wants to be free as in beer because publishers will be decimated by the low cost of digital media. The law and public policy will change to encourage good authors while making books free as in beer. It's a simple matter of extrapolation.
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Many books go out of print only to be reprinted later, printed in different countries (thus making money on it, so fuck your "definition") for a while while the local used market dries up, or added to a compilation or collection that is in progress and will be printed later.
If the book comes back into print it's not out of print then is it you dumb piece of shit.
Clearly the OP wasn't talking about books that are between print runs or between editions but don't let that stop you from being a clueless fucking troll.
Shove a knife up your ass, dick eater.
And if the publisher hasn't yet decided whether to reprint, which is probably the most common case? Gp, pass the AC that knife, it seems it will be him that needs it, not you.
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'out of print' by definition means they aren't making any more money on this book...
Yes, but it doesn't mean they don't plan to in the future. There are many reasons that a book can be considered out of print [wikipedia.org].
which means they don't deserve money from a settlement. "We don't find value in printing this book anymore" should mean it defaults to public domain and becomes free access. Anything else sounds like just another abuse of copyright in my opinion.
Just because it's not worth it to publish a print copy doesn't mean that they should consider the work to be worthless.
Although I do agree that copyright should be a "use it or lose it" proposition.
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And it's not like you cannot use http://www.lulu.com/ [lulu.com] to keep it in print.
Self publish at 400% mark up to keep copyright seems fair enough.
If you cannot bother with that, I cannot see any reason to keep it under copyright.
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'out of print' by definition means they aren't making any more money on this book at the moment, but may choose to reprint at some future date and so start making money again, provided the market hasn't been flooded with illegal copies.
Fixed that for ya.
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'out of print' by definition means they aren't making any more money on this book at the moment, but may choose to reprint at some future date and so start making money again, provided the market hasn't been flooded with illegal copies.
Fixed that for ya.
If the author or publisher has any intent to reprint at a future date, they can easily log onto Google and request that their book not be make available.
If they're not willing to put that much effort into preserving their market, then obviously they don't really think it's worth preserving. I think that's an eminently sensible compromise between the public good of making material available and the public good of incenting authors and publishers.
Note that the good of authors and publishers is irrelevant
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If the author or publisher has any intent to reprint at a future date, they can easily log onto Google and request that their book not be make available.
Really? Where can I log onto Google and prevent all electronic and physical distribution of a book? This is a new Google service that I was unaware of.
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If the author or publisher has any intent to reprint at a future date, they can easily log onto Google and request that their book not be make available.
Really? Where can I log onto Google and prevent all electronic and physical distribution of a book? This is a new Google service that I was unaware of.
At present Google only distributes public domain books, so this feature doesn't exist. If you look at Google's planned agreement [google.com], you'll see that for in-copyright, out-of-print books, authors will have the option of making full text unavailable (and for in-print books they'll have the option of making it available).
As for the mechanism, Google will establish a Book Rights Registry which authors and publishers can use to assert their control over a particular book, to challenge its in-print/out-of-print s
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As for the mechanism, Google will establish a Book Rights Registry which authors and publishers can use to assert their control over a particular book, to challenge its in-print/out-of-print status and to issue directives defining how Google makes their book available.
And that will have legal force on other possible distributors? And will Google have a monopoly on maintaining this registry? Because if every POD publisher is maintaining its own registry, then it suddenly looks like a hell of a lot of work for publishers to retain their copyright.
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As for the mechanism, Google will establish a Book Rights Registry which authors and publishers can use to assert their control over a particular book, to challenge its in-print/out-of-print status and to issue directives defining how Google makes their book available.
And that will have legal force on other possible distributors? And will Google have a monopoly on maintaining this registry?
It will have legal force on all of the publishers and authors who have signed up to the settlement agreement. Google will establish the registry but it will be independent, controlled by a board of directors, whom the signatories to the settlement (which includes many publishers, the Authors' Guild and Google) will jointly select.
Those who haven't signed on to the settlement agreement, of course, will not be bound by its terms. Google will not publish the full text of their books, but will continue with
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It will have legal force on all of the publishers and authors who have signed up to the settlement agreement. Google will establish the registry but it will be independent, controlled by a board of directors, whom the signatories to the settlement (which includes many publishers, the Authors' Guild and Google) will jointly select.
But conditional distribution rights agreed between the registry and the signatories to the settlement is nothing at all like the book defaulting to public domain, as suggested by the message I "fixed", is it?
What's a "POD publisher"?
"Publish on Demand"
I don't see how it will be "a hell of a lot of work for publishers to retain their copyright". They'll retain their copyright regardless of what they do with Google.
Not if the work defaults to the public domain, as suggested by the message I "fixed".
I just bothered to actually READ the information that's available.
But not the thread you were commenting to. Such a pity.
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I did lose the context along the way, sorry.
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I did lose the context along the way, sorry.
It's a /. tradition :-)
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You might find that the bookstore still has a few copies left if it's only recently gone out of print.
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It means that the publisher has run out of new copies to sell you. It might be that the publisher has no intention of ever printing any more, or it might be that they're pondering whether or not it might be worthwhile running off another batch, depending on how many people ask.
One obscure academic book that I wanted to buy had a very small print run, and seemed to go out of print in about eight months! So I had to go to a library and (ahem) pho
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Or, y'know, if you... check out a copy of the book. 'cause that's what libraries are for.
Wow,
and I thought the recording industry had outdated business models.
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Worse than that! (Score:3, Insightful)
"So, you can read books for free â" as long as you're the first person to get to your public library's computer room in the morning."
It's much worse than that. If you were to read those same books electronically from the comfort and convenience of your own home, then your eyeballs would explode and your body would spontaneously combust, possibly killing your entire family and burning down your house. At least that's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for why I would have to sit in front of a computer in the library to access an online resource instead of using my own computer.
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So I was thinking...what if I hijacked the library computer so that I could read books from home.
The whole idea of books was being able to quickly and cheaply reproduce information for the masses. It's funny how anyone caught doing so with certain texts were branded heretics and burned at the stake. Here we are a few centuries later and the same thing is occurring with the Internet.
Sometimes I really wonder if Fahrenheit 451 is fiction or prophecy.
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At least that's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for why I would have to sit in front of a computer in the library to access an online resource instead of using my own computer.
Libraries are relatively controlled environments.
If they gave everyone access at home, there would be no real impediment to prevent screen scraping of the entire collection.
Ah, well... RMS seems to have been right again. (Score:5, Insightful)
The right to read. [gnu.org]
My New Library (Score:1)
I wonder if there is a stipulation on what defines a library. Perhaps it's time to open my own, new, single computer library in my house. Of course membership would be somewhat limited.
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I think by "library" they mean a public library, or at the very least a semi-public library such as a university library.
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FTA:
If you read the agreement, you'll see that it restricts each public library to exactly one Google terminal. Tens of millions of books online-but at any given moment, no more than 16,543 people are allowed to read them without paying. (That's how many public libraries and branches there are in the United States, according to the American Library Association-one for every 18,500 Americans.)
I'm not sure what the procedure is for turning your house into a public library, but I suspect that you're SOL - Especially if you're not willing to open up to the public.
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The public libraries clearly just need to redefine what a "branch" means. If they get 1 terminal per brach, the problem could easily be solved.
First lender. (Score:2)
"...Xconomy has a post pointing out that this access is restricted to exactly one Google terminal per library. So, you can read books for free â" as long as you're the first person to get to your public library's computer room in the morning."
OK and if I want to access one of my libraries databases on CDROM how would that be different than this?
Re:First lender. (Score:4, Informative)
Many libraries either have the CDROMs mounted on a disc changer, or the content served out from a network share. They have special licensing terms for libraries to allow them to do this. Some like ProQuest or EBSCO provide that licensing at reduced cost or sometimes even no charge for certain libraries, in the name of being 'good corporate citizens'.
(I have two friends who are both librarians)
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Could the library download a copy of the book from google and burn it to a CD that could be checked out?
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They could probably burn off as many copies as they wanted, assuming that the book isn't copyrighted. Otherwise they may run into trouble.
Massive parallelization of libraries? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Have fun with zoning and that! Oh, and the bookkeeping should be fun, too.
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I don't think they'd necessarily be independent. In fact, that's unlikely. So it would be a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Libraries.
Common sense revolts (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been reading Lessig's Free Culture (available online somewhere; I have a local copy). From the preface:
He's no Isaac Asimov; the book isn't exactly gripping, but what he has to say is incredibly important.
Ironically, searching Google Books for Lessig's freely available book yields this [google.com]: "This is a preview. The total pages displayed will be limited."
You can read/download it here at [free-culture.cc]. Here [free-culture.cc] is a PDF version.
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And yet, by exactly the same argument, common sense should revolt at the idea that I can't walk from my own back yard through to the shops via my neighbours' back yards, nor they to the main road through mine. In days long ago, man had no concept of private property, and anyone was free to walk to the river to fetch water or walk to the woods to go hunting by the most convenient route. At some point, society started to recognise the concepts of private property, a home, a personal space. It is actually rath
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The idea of "property rights" is a relatively recent notion and one that is not shared by all people. To many cultures, some admittedly obsolete, the idea of some thing or some place "belonging" to anyone is utterly foreign. The Inuit and aboriginal folk in Australia have no concept of property and property rights.
Of course, while cultures that do not have property rights may have produced some interesting artwork, these cultures have virtually no other standing in the world today. They are not known for
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You left out the part where the courts declared that you have rights to "airspace you can reasonably use" even if it interferes with overflying aircraft.
Nowadays that is effectively no more than 500ft without FAA approval and most likely far less than 500ft because of local and State laws.
There are a lot of "rights" when it comes to property.
Most people are only buying a few feet of topsoil and limited air rights.
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Here we have a classic case of what Republicans "legislating from the bench." Justice Douglas' argument boils down to "the past 1000 years of Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, which we the people have willingly incorporated into our jurisprudence, are inconvenient and don't make a lot of sense. I could follow the law as it is, rule in accordance with the established law of the land, and find in favor of the plaintiffs, but nah, my common sense revolts at the idea. So instead I'll redefine what property means
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"Sorry, Congress, property rights haven't changed and technically overflying private property is trespass. You've got two laws, the property rights common-law definition and this new thing about airplanes, and the older law wins. Maybe you ought to change one of 'em."
That's what Congress did when it declared the airways public. If the first new law didn't beat out the old law, why would a second?
Frankly, I am all in favor of the Supreme Court's power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution ... but violating "common sense" ain't the same thing.
You're in favor of striking down the laws against libel and slander, or speech that endangers people? Much of the job of the Supreme Court is balancing the brief and non-specific words in the Constitution and amendments with the dictates of common sense and the weight of history and precedent. Lower courts also have to do the same thing when applying the law to their cases.
Define "read" (Score:2)
Just did a term paper on this very subject (Score:2, Interesting)
I just finished a term paper for University on this very subject, my argument and topic of discussion was why an online book resource and/or library differs from a traditional library.
If Google were to purchase a copy of a book and lend it out electronically, and a library were to purchase a copy of a book and lend it out physically how do they differ?
The main difference is that the library likely has only one copy and only one copy can be borrowed at a time. If they were to have more than one copy they cou
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I have argued that this is one way that copyright should be reformed - that once a work is out of print, it is in the public domain. Disney's habit of bringing out of print movies every seven years is IMO sleazy.
Of course, it would be a moot point if copyrights were reasonable length; say, 20 years. Can anyone argue that JRR Tolkien will ever write any more books?
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Can anyone argue that JRR Tolkien will ever write any more books?
Many people write books primarily for money. I believe this even motivated Tolkien. Once you have a lot of money, receiving more money is not so much motivation, unless you can give that money to others that you care about. The ability for a book to remain in copyright for a few years after the author's death helps with this.
You're still motivating the author to write in the first place, even if the payment happens after his death.
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Again, from Lesig's book:
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Parody is protected. Even 2 live Crew's rip-off of "Pretty Lady" was protected (mostly because the SCOTUS didn't want to take on the job of discriminating between good art and bad). Ripping off a couple bars of a song without an agreement before-hand has to go to the court - and of course the court will get it wrong from time to time. Is ZZ Top "stealing" Howlin' wolf OK, but Vanilla Ice stealing "Pressure" not OK? I think so, but you can't exactly make that explicit in law - a court has to get involved
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The out of print argument works fine in the realm of digital distribution where additional units can be produced for free. In the real world, economies of scale come in to play. It doesn't make sense to print a book if you can't sell at least, say, 10,000 copies at your desired price. Thus, a book may sit out of print until such a time as demand justifies printing more copies. The point being that it is the interest of authors and publishers to maximize their profits. Keep in mind that Disney's habit o
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It doesn't make sense to print a book if you can't sell at least, say, 10,000 copies at your desired price.
And yet, in the 1920s there was an author named Vachel Lindsey [wikipedia.org] from Springfield who made books like theye were made a thousand years ago - one by one, by hand, selling them in his travels across the continent as a hobo.
"Print on demand" publishing changes things. (Score:2)
What's happening now is that large publishers are increasingly scanning their own reference-book back-catalogues, so that any further short-run printing can be done using "print on demand" technology.
Most (if not all) of the university presses have been converting their catalogues to POD for years. So if you want to order an obscure technical work on satellite electronics or sewer maintenance, and the book had a limited print run (say, just enough to sell a copy
"out of print" means ... ? (Score:2)
I don't know if the clause still exists. I guess that part of the problem with enforcing it was that although publication dates of individual printings are easily established, there's no corresponding "official" date for unavailability. If a book hasn't been printed for fifty years, but the publisher still has one copy on a shelf somewhere that th
criticize all you want... (Score:1)
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When you're the plaintiff's, you can reject the settlement, and continue litigation.
Oh, that's what Harvard is doing?
That's in TFS?
Shocker.
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not to be a google-apologist, but to be fair, why is this google's fault? i would bet that the one-google-terminal-per-library is a stipulation that the publishers insisted on.
google could have gone to court with this and lost and we'd have ... nothing. at least now, there's SOME access to all these out of print books.
i'm just sayin'...
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If you live in Europe or North America, your local library can probably get you almost anything that exists in the Western library system, for free or for a nominal charge, Europe and the US have an interlibrary loan scheme for just this purpose.
Where do you think that Google are getting their hands on these "out of print" books to scan?
They get them from libraries.
Hmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Where to address the reading issue. (Score:2, Interesting)
The reading issue is better addressed with Congress than it is the publishing industry. Sure, the publishing industry has a lot more friends in Congress than the public seems to, but ultimately, the best solution is not to hope that a large company can force the industry into favorable terms, it is reasonable terms for copyright.
Don't Rush to Judgment (& I'm not a pundit) (Score:1, Informative)
I think it will become clear that the public access terminals are a tiny part of the program as it evolves. What most readers will see will be a tremendous expansion their ability to browse, consult, and even read books online--particularly the huge reservoir of books that are still copyrighted but out of print.
It won't always be free, so some will always complain. Still ...
I'm really not a pundit, but an author. I have an interest. I'm on the board of the Authors Guild, and worked hard on this, so you may
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By the way, your second sentence is a real sleeper. I had to try to read it three times before I could get all the way through. Might want to work on that grammar a bit, as well, and generally improve your impersonation act. Or just stop lying and trolling.
Yeah, I'm calling you out. Come show yourself, if you're real.
OUT OF PRINT (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do people keep thinking out of print means impossible to find, not being sold, etc?
OUT OF PRINT means it's NOT BEING PRINTED.
Current copies can be sold.
If those are gone (VERY rarely does a book actually sell out. Even rarer is a book selling out, and a publisher not immediately printing more.), the used market kicks in.
Libraries are just that - LIBRARIES. They collect books, and they just happen to let you check them out for a while.
Books go out of print and are reprinted later all the time. They are printed for different countries. They are collected into compilations or collections, which are printed when finished. They are updated by the author, and a new revision is printed. They are reprinted when the author writes a new book or a sequel, wins an award, dies, the book is turned into a movie, etc.
Out of print means just that.
There is currently not a printing press making new copies of the book. Copies are often hard to acquire from a store, and maybe even a library. But all you nerds have this thing called the internet where you can get together and buy and trade things.
I seem to recall a certain website named after a certain river/rain forest/tribe of warrior women getting it's fucking start by making is vastly easier to access books in general.
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> the used market kicks in.
Yes indeed it does:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=aerofax+mig-21&x=0&y=0 [abebooks.com]
A dollar per page? In other words, unattainable.
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Here's another example [amazon.com].
$240 for a paperback book.
Actually, in that particular case there's probably enough market to justify another printing, and indeed Baen books has picked it up and will be releasing it in a few months. The real sad cases are those in which the potential market is too small to justify a printing run. This is particularly true for obscure reference books, which people tend to buy to keep, removing them from the market completely.
There's a lot of value in making these books availab
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Or, maybe Google shouldn't assume they have rights to every fucking thing in existence.
Google should be actively procuring the rights to the books, not assuming everyone's cool with it and then maybe dealing with it later if they bitch enough.
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Or maybe Google shouldn't assume they have rights to everything in existence.
They don't. Google's argument (and one that is dead accurate, based on the history and purpose of copyright law) is that offering books for search should NOT be considered copyright infringement. The motivation for copyright is to advance the arts and sciences, and making material easier to find, without limiting the ability of publishers to be compensated, is absolutely to the benefit of progress. Google's approach of scanning and enabling search, while refusing to provide full-text downloads, strikes a
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"The motivation for copyright is to advance the arts and sciences"
No, it's really not. It's about money.
Quite literally, it is the right to copy.
Copyright law exists to prevent free dissemination.
Google indexing stuff and providing search results is useful, sure. That's what we have abstracts for.
The problem is Google was indexing full texts, and often displaying/caching (essentially displaying if the user isn't a complete moron) full texts. Often, it's a problem with the site, sure. But it's just as mu
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"The motivation for copyright is to advance the arts and sciences"
No, it's really not. It's about money. Quite literally, it is the right to copy. Copyright law exists to prevent free dissemination.
Your premise is flawed. Copyright does prevent free dissemination, but that is not its purpose.
The problem is Google was indexing full texts, and often displaying/caching (essentially displaying if the user isn't a complete moron) full texts. Often, it's a problem with the site, sure. But it's just as much of a problem for Google to assume rights they don't have, to spider around and brute force pages, etc.
I disagree. I think indexing full texts is a clear Fair Use, and while it is possible for users to hack around the limitations on displaying the whole text so they can get it anyway, there is no evidence that this fact is in any way detracting from the commercial value of the works. Google claims to have pretty good evidence to the contrary, by showing statistics on people who found books via their search engin
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Your premise is flawed. Copyright does prevent free dissemination, but that is not its purpose
No, that's exactly it's purpose!
It's to keep the right to copy something in the hands of a single person/organization.
And the whole thing only started because Google got sued, knew it would lose, and settled by offering up this program.
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No, that's exactly it's purpose! It's to keep the right to copy something in the hands of a single person/organization.
That's its effect. That is not its purpose.
Is the purpose of an automobile to consume fuel?
Is the purpose of a hard drive to spin platters and move heads from place to place?
And the whole thing only started because Google got sued, knew it would lose, and settled by offering up this program.
If it was so clear that Google would lose, why did the publishers and authors sign on to this compromise? Note that the compromise gives Google EVERYTHING it wants. The only downsides to Google, as compared to a complete win are, (1) the cash settlement and (2) having to bother with the registry.
The publishers and authors filed
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COPY
RIGHT
It is the right to copy.
The purpose is to restrict the right to copy.
You are a moron.
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I'm the moron? How much have you read on the history of copyright, its origin, its evolution and the re-balancing that has been periodically performed to ensure it supports the underlying social contract?
Here's a little test:
How is this googles fault? (Score:1, Insightful)
No really. I doubt it was their intention to launch this program just to be sued. Considering you can find almost any book through google, even in audio format, for free... I think they did a pretty good job. They are not evil. They are more like "ok, ok guys, just don't poke us with sticks" while usable code from book project is already in main search engine itself.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's Google's fault because the program only came about AFTER being sued, for the very thing you describe.
Re: (Score:2)
The guys running GB said some very stupid things early on that suggested that they were going down a course that would lead to certain specialist publishing companies having their businesses destroyed, due to GB doing things with those companies' copyrighted materials that GB had no legal right to do.
The attitude emanating from Google Books back then seemed to
Ever read Fahrenheit 451? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Inter-Library Loan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Look...everybody here should be familiar with basic logic...
Google's own policy is "don't be evil"
The Slashdot article implies that Google is evil.
Therefore the Slashdot article is wrong.
Simple predicate logic.
The truly scary thing is I can't tell if this AC is joking or not.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed, but his logic is incredibly faulty just the same, and there may actually be people who think like that.
"Don't BE evil" is not the same as "don't DO evil". And at any rate, Pontiac's motto used to be "we build excitement" when in fact what they actually built was cars.
Corporate mottos are meaningless to anyone but an idiot, Google's included (as much as I like their search engine).
Re: (Score:1)
"Don't BE evil" is not the same as "don't DO evil".
Pontiac's motto used to be "we build excitement" when in fact what they actually built was cars
No, not actually. I wouldn't glorify anything Pontiac/GM produced during this period of their existence with the term 'car'.
Corporate mottos are meaningless to anyone but an idiot
Where do you want to go today?
Re: (Score:2)
I think they were pretty close (one substitution, one deletion) to the truth.
Slashdot ate half of my other post. :( (Score:1)
What I said in it was that not everyone agrees on what 'evil' means anyhow. One man's evil is another man's justice.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with that, too. I consider the death penalty to be barbaric as well as evil, some consider it justice. As they say, one man's meat is another man's poison.