Google Books agreement quashed.

[CatInASuit]

Google's plans to digitise as many of the world's books as possible and create the biggest online library have been quashed in a ruling by a US Judge.

In a ruling, the proposal put forward by Google was mentioned as going too far and giving Google a signifiant advantage over every other company in publishing.

Havng read the notes, Google was not just attempting to gain access to US books, but due to copyright agreements across the globe, access to all books written. The other major contention was the fact that it would effectively bypass copyright law in that it was an opt-out scheme, where the rights owner would have to say they didn't want to be included.

Current copyright law says that the owner can do whatever they like with the work, it is there's to do with as they please. Looking at it, if Google had made it an opt-in instead of an opt-out, it is likely it would have succeeded.

But at this point in time, I'm glad they failed.

More on the story here

[Sarahfeena]

Yes, I tend to agree with the judge here.

It's truly amazing, though, the scope of the projects Google takes on. "Let's take pictures of everywhere in the world!" "Let's scan every book that exists!" Crazy.

[What Exit?]

I have to agree, but I think it is a shame. I hope they continue to scan and store it until the books become public domain. I love the idea of preserving books I guess.

[Orual]

I do not think it's a shame at all. Google is starting to creep me out.

[What Exit?]

It is a shame for the fact I would like to see books preserved in a digital format. I completely understand the judgment though to protect intellectual rights. Though I also think these rights have gone too far. The years keep extending thanks mostly to Disney.

[Zuul]

There are far better ways to preserve books than to give a for-profit corporation dominion over every book ever written, though.

I'm relieved and agree with the judges. The opt-out system was ludicrous and not how copyright is supposed to work at all. I'd be all for copyrights expiring eighteen years after the creator's death (long enough for any minor children of the creator to reach adulthood, and make it 75 years total for any properties whose rights are held by a corporation), but I'd rather see copyrights held indefinitely than turned into a joke.

[What Exit?]

Actually there is not really a better method currently from what I can see. Also is there anything wrong with Google being able to make all books searchable but only allowing people a snippet of the text? What an amazing library and knowledge tool this would be?

I think copyright can be protected and access greatly increased at the same time. I type in Triceratops and get 37,387 hits from a book search. I start to narrow it down from there. This would be huge. Now imagine trying to find any book that mentioned an obscure historical figure. I will use Adam Hyler (Adam Huyler) as an example. A book search would be a huge boon to research. This would also start driving a on demand book sale business that should be happening with all the new digital text readers out there. How many books are out of print? Well over 10 million I would guess.

[Orual]

Google should not have access to all books just because they want it. Digitization is not considered a good preservation medium in any case, and digitization that is controlled by a private company is even worse.

[What Exit?]

Why though? (On the access part)
Why isn't Digitization good? It can easily be brought forward as technology changes as opposed to Diskettes, tapes and CDs.

Also what about the benefits I listed above?

How is anyone hurt if only snippets of the books are available? This could actually benefit many authors and copyright holders in the long run.

[Orual]

Because they are a private company trying to make money off of other people's work. They already have more of a monopoly on information access than I am comfortable with.

Bringing digitization forward isn't really that 'easy'. Standards change quickly and a lot is lost along the way. Do you really think everything that was ever put onto magnetic tapes has been brought forward? There's a ton of material on old storage media that can't even be read any more.

My issue isn't what Google makes available to the public. My issue is what Google has access to and control of. They are not a trustworthy organization, in my opinion. And the whole paternalistic "we know best and we're trying to help these poor, unfortunate authors and copyright-holders" attitude just raises my hackles.

[What Exit?]

1) They have a monopoly? I think you need to check the definition of that word. They make money by providing access to knowledge. This access fuels a lot of the economy these days already. They however have many competitors, including another titan called Microsoft.

2) I know a huge amount about the data issue. I live it and have lived it for nearly 20 years. Any offline storage sucks. Migrating on drive storage forward however is a pretty simple task that the computer industry is really good at. Google keeps their data on line. This is a not what you are thinking of at all. We use the term online data warehousing. We lose nothing online as we step forward, only what we archive off to tape.

3) Well that is strictly opinion. I guess I do trust them, especially as others can do what they are doing. I think Michael E. Moon's son would be very happy if a few of his father's books sold in digital format and brought him some residuals as his father wrote a great book that has been out of print for years and only used copies move around now. John Medicinewolf

The current system is a lot worse then what I proposed above.

[Orual]

I must have missed the part where Microsoft is trying to become the repository and gatekeeper for all books that have ever been published.

But I'm sure this is a subject upon which reasonable people can disagree. I am just disinclined to trust Google or the permanency of the internet.

[Tuckerfan]

I must have missed the part where Microsoft is trying to become the repository and gatekeeper for all books that have ever been published.

They shut down that project a few years ago. BTW, one of the groups responsible for bringing this case to court was Microsoft.

[CatInASuit]

The biggest problem for me is that it gave Google the automatic right to digitise any new book created anywhere in the world, unless the author objected.

They would have had an online monopoly going forward because they would have every book digitised for download to do with as they wish. Not to mention the intellectual capital they would have from seeing how people look for books.

They would also have been able to sell access to the books in a way that Amazon could only dream of.

Google's motto used to be "do no evil". Given their penchant for gathering as much information as possible, not respecting privacy or the rights of others, they are just as bad as any other corporation out there.

[What Exit?]

Are you happy with the current situation where out of print books earn no money at all for their writers and families of said?

Do you see no value in the increase of knowledge searching that digitizing books would give?

What keeps Amazon from doing the same thing?

There rapid response to disasters around the world does not strike me as being as bad as any other corporation out there.

[CatInASuit]

Are you happy with the current situation where out of print books earn no money at all for their writers and families of said?

It is the right of the owners and the families to do with their copyright as they see fit. If they want to allow Google to digitise it and sell copies for royalties, then that should be an agreement that they enter into. But for those people who do not want their works digitised, it should not be an agreement they have to opt out of.

Do you see no value in the increase of knowledge searching that digitizing books would give?

It's a very beneficial state, however, considering that Google would be charging for full access and using the search actions from people to further drive their business, this is not a philanthropic measure, this is a business deal with only one real winner, Google.

What keeps Amazon from doing the same thing?

This whole thing started because Google were asked to help a few libraries digitise their books to keep copies. They decided to expand it to all works. Also, because it is storing and indexing information is something that Google is very good at. Amazon is an online retailer that just happened to start with books. It's not a good comparison.

There rapid response to disasters around the world does not strike me as being as bad as any other corporation out there.

Oh I agree, there are much worse companies out there. But they can certainly no longer be held up as a paragon of virtue.

[Zuul]

Are you happy with the current situation where out of print books earn no money at all for their writers and families of said?

Yes, because people who have out of print books but retain rights to them are capable of negotiating a contract with a publisher to get those books into print again. A lot of hybrid publishers like the one I work for will take previously published, out of print books. We then sell them for all major e-reading devices and will have actual physical books done as POD.

If someone wanted their out of print book to be out there making money for them, they could do it. If they want their out of print books to earn money, retain rights to those titles, and are doing nothing about it in the hopes that some huge corporation creates an opt-out scheme, they are idiots. An opt-in system or contacting a publisher would be perfectly acceptable solutions.

[Tuckerfan]

Are you happy with the current situation where out of print books earn no money at all for their writers and families of said?

Yes, because people who have out of print books but retain rights to them are capable of negotiating a contract with a publisher to get those books into print again. A lot of hybrid publishers like the one I work for will take previously published, out of print books. We then sell them for all major e-reading devices and will have actual physical books done as POD.

If someone wanted their out of print book to be out there making money for them, they could do it. If they want their out of print books to earn money, retain rights to those titles, and are doing nothing about it in the hopes that some huge corporation creates an opt-out scheme, they are idiots. An opt-in system or contacting a publisher would be perfectly acceptable solutions.

And for works where the right holder can't be found? What then?

[Zuul]

And for works where the right holder can't be found? What then?

The copyright exists to protect the copyright holder. If a book is out of print and the person holding the copyright doesn't want to make any effort to get it back into print, tough shit. They own it. The copyright holder can contact a publisher that does previously published work, or get on Smashwords and put it out there on their own. If they don't want to do that, there's no reason why their intellectual property should be made available like that without their awareness.

[Tuckerfan]

And for works where the right holder can't be found? What then?

The copyright exists to protect the copyright holder. If a book is out of print and the person holding the copyright doesn't want to make any effort to get it back into print, tough shit. They own it. The copyright holder can contact a publisher that does previously published work, or get on Smashwords and put it out there on their own. If they don't want to do that, there's no reason why their intellectual property should be made available like that without their awareness.

That's not what I'm talking about, however. I'm talking about "orphan works" where no one knows who holds the copyright, perhaps not even the person who is entitled to hold the rights.

Case in point, there's a book entitled Elmer's Engines, the author of which has died, the publisher of the book has gone out of business, and other trade related publishers have tried to track down who might hold the rights to the work, but have been unable to do so (seems the author had no obvious heirs, and the publisher's records were lost during liquidation). So the book goes for hundreds of dollars on eBay when someone decides to sell their copy (it'd retail for no more than about $40) and illegal PDFs are available if you know where to look.

Of course, because the book is out-of-print, and the copies which do appear immediately skyrocket in value on eBay, not too many people know about the work, since its not something they're likely to encounter. Were someone able to make the book available for a reasonable price, then it might become a popular seller (at least within the niche market). Or people might decide that its crap and not buy any copies.

Either way, the book publishing industry is going to find itself in the same spot as the music industry was just a few years ago. There are people building their own automated book scanners who're illegally scanning and uploading PDF copies of books, and no matter what DRM is put on ebooks people are cracking it and releasing the copies on various file sharing services. The book scanners will get cheaper and easier to build, and as sales of dead tree editions continue their decline, all that's going to be left are electronic versions. At which point, its not going to matter if the rights holder wants the book to continue to circulate and be available or not, people will keep the copies going.

[The Original An Gadaí]

Typically how many orphan works are there right now, they must be rare enough, especially works that might have a significant market?

I agree with you with regard to piracy, book piracy is going to fuck over the publishing industry the way it has the recorded music industry.
I think realisation of that was partly why mainstream publishers have been slow to e-publish.

[Tuckerfan]

Typically how many orphan works are there right now, they must be rare enough, especially works that might have a significant market?

The problem is: Nobody knows. There's no clear record of who owns the rights to what works, in many cases. Heck, for things which you think that there would be clear rights to, there's apparent confusion. The Star Trek franchise is apparently hugely muddled with nobody really certain as to who owns what rights. All the parties involved can do is take their best guess and hope that nobody shows up and proves that they, not this other company has the rights to sell Star Trek action figures.

I agree with you with regard to piracy, book piracy is going to fuck over the publishing industry the way it has the recorded music industry.
I think realisation of that was partly why mainstream publishers have been slow to e-publish.

Piracy didn't fuck over the music industry, the music industry fucked themselves over by fighting the inevitable. Had they tried to get ahead of the curve, they might not have lost so much ground to piracy (which some studies claim that piracy drives sales rather than harming them, and that if music publishers would cut song prices to $.05 each, piracy would disappear completely).

[The Original An Gadaí]

Piracy didn't fuck over the music industry, the music industry fucked themselves over by fighting the inevitable. Had they tried to get ahead of the curve, they might not have lost so much ground to piracy (which some studies claim that piracy drives sales rather than harming them, and that if music publishers would cut song prices to $.05 each, piracy would disappear completely).

They might (who knows) have mitigated some of the damage that piracy has wrought but I doubt they would have made it an irrelevancy, especially as bandwidth increased.They tried to get onto the online bandwagon in the '90s and did so badly, although no successful sales model would exist until iTunes, but utilities like Napster that did become so popular could never have worked on a pay basis. Piracy does not in most instances drive sales, unless perhaps a small artist who attracts bigger crowds to shows, sells more merch, but there's no way that a quality pirated copy typically generates sales of the recorded work. Sales at a $ each or whatever seems to work on iTunes and other platforms. Now I'd say that streaming is a bigger issue with regard to selling music than illegal downloads are.

But saying that the record industry fucked itself over is sort of akin to blaming the victim.

[Tuckerfan]

Piracy didn't fuck over the music industry, the music industry fucked themselves over by fighting the inevitable. Had they tried to get ahead of the curve, they might not have lost so much ground to piracy (which some studies claim that piracy drives sales rather than harming them, and that if music publishers would cut song prices to $.05 each, piracy would disappear completely).

They might (who knows) have mitigated some of the damage that piracy has wrought but I doubt they would have made it an irrelevancy, especially as bandwidth increased.They tried to get onto the online bandwagon in the '90s and did so badly, although no successful sales model would exist until iTunes, but utilities like Napster that did become so popular could never have worked on a pay basis. Piracy does not in most instances drive sales, unless perhaps a small artist who attracts bigger crowds to shows, sells more merch, but there's no way that a quality pirated copy typically generates sales of the recorded work. Sales at a $ each or whatever seems to work on iTunes and other platforms. Now I'd say that streaming is a bigger issue with regard to selling music than illegal downloads are.

But saying that the record industry fucked itself over is sort of akin to blaming the victim.

London School of Economists on the matter

A report published by the London School of Economics says that music industry estimates of financial losses caused by illegal file sharing are deeply flawed.

The paper, Creative destruction and Copyright Protection - Regulatory Responses to File-Sharing, claims that the Digital Economy Act (DEA) gets the balance between copyright enforcement wrong and that peer to peer (P2P) file sharing should be used to promote innovation.

The LSE also suggests that providing music fans with a simple way to legally download at a reasonable price is a much better way to combat piracy than "a heavy-handed legislative and regulatory regime."

The music industry has claimed that it loses as much as $40 billion a year to 'illegal' file sharing but the LSE publication suggests that the decline in physical sales of recorded music can't be attributed to file sharing alone. Changing patterns in music consumption, the prevalence of legal digital downloads and the fact that people have far less money to spend must all be taken into consideration.

And given that the music industry (famous for suing dead people and people who don't own a computer for music piracy) are trying to claim $75 trillion in damages, they can go fuck themselves for all I care.

The record companies suing Limewire were asked to estimate the damages that should be paid by the file-sharing service. Their estimate? $400 Billion on the low end, and at the high end — $75 trillion dollars. That’s more than the GDP of the entire world.

(bolding mine)

[The Original An Gadaí]

Your cite doesn't refute what I said. I don't have any huge love of the majors but I don't think the majors are responsible for piracy, people who pirate are. Their inability to adapt to the online market faster was unfortunate but as I've said I doubt it would have made a huge difference with regard to how prevalent piracy has become. "The LSE publication suggests that the decline in physical sales of recorded music can't be attributed to file sharing alone." I agree with this. I haven't read their paper as you have to sign up to read it and I can't be bothered right this minute. I've read any number of papers that have included various extra elements, the increasing popularity of videogames for teenagers, DVD sales, facebook global recession, youtube etc. that have all probably contributed in some way to the decline in record sales. However, I think it is highly unlikely that piracy isn't a major factor in the sales decline.

[Tuckerfan]

Your cite doesn't refute what I said. I don't have any huge love of the majors but I don't think the majors are responsible for piracy, people who pirate are. Their inability to adapt to the online market faster was unfortunate but as I've said I doubt it would have made a huge difference with regard to how prevalent piracy has become. "The LSE publication suggests that the decline in physical sales of recorded music can't be attributed to file sharing alone." I agree with this. I haven't read their paper as you have to sign up to read it and I can't be bothered right this minute. I've read any number of papers that have included various extra elements, the increasing popularity of videogames for teenagers, DVD sales, facebook global recession, youtube etc. that have all probably contributed in some way to the decline in record sales. However, I think it is highly unlikely that piracy isn't a major factor in the sales decline.

It all depends upon who you want to believe. There's any number of studies which take both sides of the issue (interestingly enough, the ones which put the blame for music industry losses on piracy tend to be funded by the music industry), so its certainly not going to be settled by anything we say here.

[The Original An Gadaí]

I've read a lot of them. Plenty of ones that say piracy is a significant factor are independent academic studies. Again, I've no love for the RIAA or its equivalents on these shores. My ISP no longer allows access to the pirate bay, and will send out warnings if they detect you pirating stuff and may even cut off your connection. This was at the behest of RIAA's local equivalent.

[The Original An Gadaí]

By the way good to see you posting Tuckerfan!

[CatInASuit]

That's not what I'm talking about, however. I'm talking about "orphan works" where no one knows who holds the copyright, perhaps not even the person who is entitled to hold the rights.

In those cases, tough. If no-one knows who the rights belong to, you are going to have to wait until it becomes public domain. But it is wrong to suggest that these cases should override those where not only is the rights holder known, but actively doesn't want to have their book digitised.

Either way, the book publishing industry is going to find itself in the same spot as the music industry was just a few years ago. There are people building their own automated book scanners who're illegally scanning and uploading PDF copies of books, and no matter what DRM is put on ebooks people are cracking it and releasing the copies on various file sharing services. The book scanners will get cheaper and easier to build, and as sales of dead tree editions continue their decline, all that's going to be left are electronic versions. At which point, its not going to matter if the rights holder wants the book to continue to circulate and be available or not, people will keep the copies going.

People pirate stuff because they like getting it for free, simple as that, and a lot of the excuses made are normally pure bullshit. In many ways book piracy is a much worse thing than music piracy. With music, the band can always make money from people seeing them play live, for authors, the book is it.

I have heard of authors who have been cancelled because their books did not earn out due to piracy. The pirates' comments on hearing the the author had been cancelled was to ask for the next one for free. The author pointed out that if everyone who had downloaded it for free had paid for it (and it was available so there was no excuse), then the next one would be on bookstore shelves. As it was, the author was looking for a new job.

[What Exit?]

Google digitizing books is not the same as piracy though. If they digitize and just make the books searchable but not for reading is more the subject of this debate.

I think you are off on a side argument.