Bezos: We've got issues with Google Book Search
NEW YORK--Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was coy about exactly why he isn't thrilled with Google's attempt to forge its way into the digital publishing business.
"We have strong opinions about that issue which I'm not going to share," Bezos said to interviewer Steven Levy at the Wired Business Conference. "But, clearly, that settlement in our opinion needs to be revisited and it is being revisited."
In a court battle rife with twists, turns, and delays, Google has been attempting to push forward its Book Search initiative, which could potentially give the Mountain View, Calif., tech giant exclusive access to digital editions of some out-of-print books. That could, as Levy pointed out, get in the way of Amazon's goal of offering every book ever printed in every language on the Kindle and its new, bigger Kindle DX sibling. And it sounds like that's where Amazon has some beef.
"There are many forces of work looking at that and saying it doesn't seem right that you should do something, kind of get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights," Bezos said.
Bezos was speaking at the conference, which had the subtitle "Disruptive by Design," to talk about Amazon's legacy of shaking up the retail industry and now potentially the publishing industry with its Kindle e-reader device. Most of his talk was focused on the sort of business advice that one might expect a tech company to provide to a room full of big-business and old-media types ("be stubborn on the big things and very flexible on the details," "you have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time"), but he did get a few minutes to talk about how he thinks the Kindle is changing things.
In New York, a longtime global hub of the beleaguered publishing, media, and advertising industries, what he had to say was particularly weighted. The Kindle, after all, is doing extremely well: Bezos said that out of the entire offering of 300,000 books available for both the Kindle and physical retail on Amazon, that the Kindle's sales are 35 percent of physical books' after only 18 months on the market.
"Internally, we are startled and astonished by that statistic," Bezos said.
But he wouldn't promise that the device will singlehandedly save the newspaper industry.
"I never want to convey that I think we have a sinecure with any particular product offering, but if we execute well and other companies that do these kinds of electronic readers, that is going to be part of what happens with newspapers," Bezos said. "And I do think there are going to be multiple companies competing with reading devices and I think there's room for multiple winners."
Like much of the speakers at the Wired Business Conference, Bezos talked extensively about how things have changed over the past few years, and how it demands a deep rethinking of business practices in all industries. In this case, he was talking about the media business.
"Unfortunately, there's a collision of several major issues happening to the magazine, newspaper, and publishing industries all at once, including most recently the recession which has taken a bad situation and made it much worse," he said. "But the biggest structural problem in my opinion is there's just so much supply of advertising space. That's a fundamental problem that's not going to go away."
But at the same time--in keeping with the conference's theme--there's an extraordinary amount of opportunity, Bezos insisted.
"Some of the most important barriers to entry in that industry have been dissolved, and they've been dissolved permanently."
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Fast forward a couple of years. Google now scans your book and publishes a portion of it online. You start to get a cult following.
Under Google's deal, you would have automatically been entered in to their 'land grab' because you didn't opt out. You will get *some* royalties but much less than you would have gotten from a traditional publisher. Even if you have an electronic copy of your book that you could rush to a publisher, you can't. You no longer own the rights to your own work.
In short, Google's deal automatically steals your IP unless you opt-out on short notice. The bad news is that its not just you, but authors who have died, yet still hold the copyright on their books that are out of print. Unless their estates know about this deal, they have to opt-out too.
Its the greatest con job if they can pull it off.
Also consider this... You put your own works online on your website. Google scan's your book and you don't opt-out. Google then sues you for copyright violation on your own work. And they would win! How's them apples?
The solution is dead simple. (1) A writer can simply ask Google to opt out all his works. (2) His work should include a statement rejecting any third party to do things on his work without his approval -- just like what a software maker does.
It's stupid, but it's why groups like Disney have to keep protecting themselves by suing daycares and hospitals for painting Mickey Mouse on the wall of a children's burn ward.
2.4 Non-Exclusivity of Authorizations. The authorizations granted to Google
in this Settlement Agreement are non-exclusive only, and nothing in this Settlement
Agreement shall be construed as limiting any Rightsholder?s right to authorize, through
the Registry or otherwise, any Person, including direct competitors of Google, to use his,
her or its Books or Inserts in any way, including ways identical to those provided for
under this Settlement Agreement.
That may be true, but, in this case, Google is doing very well on their own painting themselves exceptionally bad.
- by chuckl8899 June 16, 2009 11:31 AM PDT
- It's ironic that Bezos implies that e-readers might be part of the advertising solution for newspapers and magazines when there's no advertising model for newspapers/magazines on the Kindle and no support for color or video, and that Amazon takes 70% of the revenues from people reading magazines and newspapers on Kindle. Sounds to me like Amazon is more like the problem than the solution for publishers of magazines and newspapers
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