Google seeks more time in Book Search case

This post was updated at 5:53 p.m. PDT with details about an extension request of the May 5 deadline filed by seven authors.

Google said Monday it's seeking 60 more days to find authors and persuade them of what it believes are the merits of a settlement involving its online Book Search service.

The proposed settlement of the 2005 case filed by the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers involves Google's right to show information from books online--in particular "orphan" works that are still covered in copyright but that are in limbo, for example being out of print or written by authors who can't be located. Currently, authors must respond by a May 5 deadline to opt out, otherwise authors will be included in the settlement.

"The settlement is highly detailed, and we want to make sure rightsholders everywhere have enough time to think about it and make sure it's right for them. That's why we've asked the court for permission to extend the opt-out deadline for an extra 60 days," said Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel for products and intellectual property, in a blog post Monday.

"It's pretty easy for credit card companies to contact their cardholders--they send bills to them all the time. The world's authors, publishers and their heirs are much more difficult to find," Macgillivray said. "So, as the New York Times recently reported, the plaintiffs hired notice campaign specialists Kinsella Media Group to tell them about this exciting settlement, and Google has devoted millions of dollars to fund this notice campaign. Kinsella started by launching a website for authors and publishers and a direct-mail effort. Beginning in January, Kinsella published ads in newspapers and other publications all over the world from Fiji to the Cook Islands to Greenland. And of course, they also placed ads right here at home in the U.S., in publications as diverse as Writer's Digest and USA Today."

Google is facing resistance to the settlement.

Seven authors last week requested a four-month extension (PDF) of the May 5 deadline due to the complexity of the proposed settlement, among other reasons.

"First, two months' time is insufficient to understand the implications of a settlement of this scope," the appeal letter reads. "Second, substantial defects in notice of the settlement undermine authors' ability to assess their rights; and third, more time is required simply to understand the complex terms of the agreement."

[taphilo]

If the original Copyright law had not been changed by ongress under the uring of coprorations so to be more European (and for them to make more money), and was left as it was, there would NOT be any orphan works. The copyright owner would have to renew it every 12 years and thus always be found. Now, life of author plus 70 years makes royalty payment difficult. How about one time self published items? Someone could publish something at 12 years of age and 150 years later it could STILL under copyright. Talk about a massive database tracking billions of people for a few hundred years so to pay royalties to them.
May they should have stated it was up to the PUBLISHER to find the people - not Google - the publishers lost track of the people it's their problem.

[knowles2]

and I bet the publishers are not exactly putting effort into track them either because I be they probably have not been paying a penny to these people themselves.

[InklingBooks]

This article is woefully inaccurate. Google didn't leap at the chance to extend the time for book authors to reach a decision before this settlement forced virtually all of them into automatic opt-in status on May 5, allowing Google to exploit their books for commercial advantage without their knowledge or consent.

Google and the other parties to the settlement are reacting to a letter to the court from DeVore & DeMarco, a law firm representing seven writers or their representatives, including the Noble Prize winning John Steinbeck and and a virtually unknown writer (myself). That letter asked for a four -month delay, while Google is belatedly conceding two months. I did an article on that for Teleread last Friday and, clued in by me, a NY Times reporter had an article on the DeVore & DeMarco letter this Monday morning.

The objections aren't confined to the U.S. In Germany, 1300 writers have signed a letter protesting Google's recent behavior. As Spiegel noted in a Monday article entitled "German Authors Outraged at Google Book Search," German politicians are beginning to take note. The German Federal Commissioner for Culture, Bernd Neuman has vowed to fight to protect the rights of authors. Hans-JOachim Otto, head of the German parliament's Committee on Cultural and Media Affairs has said, "Intellectual property has to be just as protected as material property. All creativity will be destroyed if you have a mentality that everything should be free."

We are sailing into treacherous waters. If this settlement goes through without being radically altered, we could see a nasty copyright war between Europe and the U.S.

And yet what is CNET doing? They're publishing puff pieces about "this exciting settlement," and using warm and fuzzy terms like "devote" and "diverse." It's enough to make us wonder if CNET has become a wholly own subsidiary of Google.

Couldn't Stephen Shankland have found a single contrary point of view? Internet Archives objections are well known. There are others and the numbers are almost certainly growing. And linking to an earlier article about critics is pitiful. That article was equally woefully ill-informed. There are more than a "handful" of critics. Germany alone has thousands. Claiming that orphan works have copyright holders who "can't be found" is absurd. Most can probably be found, particular those who wrote books in the academic libraries that Google has been scanning. Google just doesn't want to go to the bother and expense of finding them. It would rather use their labors for free or, at best, by paying a pittance.

CNET needs to inform its readers that there are numerous and substantial objections to this settlement, particularly from the perspective of authors and their heirs. If you want to read them, Google (no sarcasm intended) "Lynn Chu Google" for a recent Wall Street Journal article.

--Michael W. Perry, Seattle, author of Untangling Tolkien

[Mergatroid Mania]

Wow, how can they do that? In Canada some provinces have had to make negative billing illegal for cable companies to use. How can you assume people want to pay more unless they object?
Same thing goes for Google. How can it possibly be legal for them to assume any type of consent by someone they can't get hold of? That's completely ludicrous. How would you like to leave on vacation. or sabbatical, return a year later and find Google publishing your books. "Well, we couldn't find you so that makes it OK".

Why is it that the more money a company makes, the more it seems to think it can do anything it pleases?