Google pushes for new law on orphan books
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--If those organizations attacking Google's book search settlement with publishers spent as much time lobbying Congress for better laws concerning those issues, perhaps the controversy would go away, Google's chief Book Search engineer suggested Thursday night.
Dan Clancy, Google Book Search head engineer, defends Google's Book Search settlement Thursday.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)Google's quest to convince the world it has nothing to fear by its settlement with publishers came to the Computer History Museum Thursday where Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Book Search, defended the settlement before a few hundred attendees who submitted written questions to John Hollar, president and CEO of the museum. Last year, Google settled a lawsuit filed by publishers with an agreement that gives it the right to scan books that have copyright protection but are out of print even if the rights holder of the work can't be located to grant permission: rights holders have until September to opt out of the settlement and forbid Google from scanning their books if they so choose. The settlement is not final, and a final hearing is scheduled for October to approve the settlement.
Clancy argued that the vast majority of rights holders have every reason to work with Google, given that books that have copyright protection but have fallen out of print can be given a new lease on life if they can be searched, read, and eventually purchased over the Internet. Book publishers lose interest in printing a book if demand is low, but the Internet makes it possible for books to be distributed at extremely low cost.
The problem is that Google's settlement makes it the only organization in the U.S. with the legal authority to scan and publish so-called "orphan works," or books that are still under copyright protection but whose rights holders can not be located. when it began scanning books in general, and the thinking is that anybody else who tried to scan an orphan work and compete with Google's offering would be forced to follow a similar legal path to obtain the same freedom.
The Internet Archive has been one of the more prominent critics of Google's Book Search settlement, and distributed a statement prior to Thursday's event saying just that. "...no one else has the same legal protections that Google has. Would the parties to the settlement amend the settlement to extend legal liability indemnification to any and all digitizers of orphan works? If not, why not leave orphans out of the settlement and compel a legislative solution instead of striking a private deal in a district court?"
Under the settlement, the Books Rights Registry is allowed to cut deals with other companies or organizations looking to digitize books, but they are not allowed to extend the same privileges Google enjoys with respect to orphan works, which Clancy estimated as about 10 percent of the books that are out of print but still protected by copyright.
That's why a legislative solution that fixes the problems concerning orphan works is the best outcome for everyone with a stake in book digitization, and Google is leaning on Congress to get such a law passed, Clancy said. Given the pressing issues before Congress at the moment--not to mention the complexity of copyright law--finding champions for such legislation has been difficult, he said.
Google thinks that by obtaining the right to digitize orphan works, it will stimulate demand for digital book scanning that eventually forces Congress to act. Any law passed to loosen restrictions on the use of orphan works would take precedent over Google's settlement.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
And Google is not forcing you to use their search.
If Google is barred from futher digitalization of orphaned books, then NO ONE will be able to do so, and the current copywrite laws will remain unchanged. However, if Google is allowed to digitize them, hopefully one day Congress will see that there is a good reason to allow everyone else to do so, too. Once again - if the Justice Department were to step in, it would HURT the consumer, not help them.
Information was the last truly free area on the internet and Google has not only monetarized it, it has done it in a way that will leave us forever dependent on its services - more advertising, more profiling, more profiteering... so much for "Do no Evil."
The proof is, of course, in the pudding, and until any actual laws get passed it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of Google's motives. But they're at least paying lip service to the notion of copyright reform, which is more than most megacorporations do.
That's particularly true of the Berne Convention, which specifies a minimum copyright term of life plus fifty years and no formal registration procedure for protection. Google wants to reduce that term to little more than a book going out-of-print. The Google settlement also demands that every book copyright holder on the planet register themselves with a private entity, the Book Rights Registry, or see their U.S. copyright set aside for all practical purposes. That also violates Berne.
It's now almost certain that the antitrust division of Justice Department will be involved in this dispute. I know from someone involved that they have asked the court to extend the date for them to file objections to September 18. The European Union also plans to hold hearings on the settlement in early September and is likely to file objections with the court, since many of those impacted are European writers. That's likely to introduce enough delay for countries closely linked to U.S. markets, such as Japan, Australia and New Zealand, to get involved.
A few months ago, the Google settlement seemed a 'done deal.' Now even Google executives such as Dan Clancy know it's in trouble. Unfortunately, they've still not faced the fact that the only real answer lies in negotiating new international treaties. Those treaties need to be adapted for the new digital age in a way that are fair to all involved and offer no special advantages to anyone.
--Michael W. Perry, Seattle
Existing copyright law is quite clear, and if it was enforced Google would have no right to duplicate these works.
If I was a author of one of those books living in another country, I'd wait a couple of years and then I'd sue their a$$es off. N o one can sign away an authors rights unless they have been given permission by the author.
The way it stands now, if these works are not available on the used book market, then they aren't available at all. (There may be a few hidden in academic storage libraries, but those are rarely available to anyone but an academic.)
Over the years, there have been a few chosen for reprinting at very high cost, but most of these books are lost to us. Surely the authors would prefer their books to be read rather than dumped in the virtual landfill of inaccessibility.
Google is at least trying to make these inaccessible books available again. Who is going to do that if they don't?
I expect most "orphaned" books are ones that were printed in very limited runs and where the copyright was owned by the author. If the book is long out of print and the author or copyright holder can't be traced, whose "rights" are being violated? No one is making money off the book anyway and the information is inaccessible to the public. (A lot of genealogy books fall into this category).
It would seem to me that the best way to handle this situation would be for Congress to change the law. The idea of copyright law is to protect the economic rights of the creator of the work. If the book is consistently out of print there are no economic rights to protect, as neither the author or publisher is making any money off it. Therefore change the law so the copyright expires if the book is out of print for over ten consecutive years. It would then be considered "abandoned" and become public domain.
Publishers would then either have to keep the book available or give up the rights to it.
This simply isn't true. The vast majority of books are copyrighted in the name of the author. The author only licenses certain rights to the publisher, and most contracts allow the author to revert those rights when the book has gone out of print. The Googler Books Settlement recognizes this, and treats out of print books as belonging solely to the author in most cases, whether the rights have technically reverted or not.
Especially with works of fiction, the reverted rights may indeed have some value because the book can then be resold to a new publisher. It's not that unusual, I was able to re-sell a book originally published by Bantam to HarperCollins, and received a second advance, and the book was once again on the shelves of bookstores.
And whether a work is "orphaned" or not depends, in part, on how diligently you search for the author or the author's estate. There's no such thing as "orphaned works" that don't have a rightsholder, unless they're in the public domain because their copyright has expired.
RT
www.anon-web-tools.us.tc
- by jhmattern August 2, 2009 1:18 PM PDT
- Michaelcapo is absolutely right. Most book contracts stipulate that the copyright reverts back to the author if the publisher fails to keep the book in print for a certain amount of time. The author then has the right to shop it around to other publishers or even to self-publish the book for direct earnings if there's only limited demand. Saying that something isn't covered if you can't find the author is like saying you have the right to republish any article you find ghostwritten online without an author attributed. It's not legal.
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(15 Comments)The user who noted that one party cannot legally sign away the intellectual property rights of another is also absolutely correct. The problem would lie in the authors' contracts with their publishers (as in whether or not they grant the publisher the right to act on their behalf in these kinds of matters).