More questions than answers on Google Books
BERKELEY, Calif.--Google's Dan Clancy had patiently answered question after question regarding Google's' Book Search settlement with publishers and authors until late in the afternoon Friday, when he was finally left speechless.
Louis Trager, a reporter from Washington Internet Daily, asked Clancy what kind of message was sent when Google decided to "copy first and answer questions later." The question--for which there's no safe answer, if you're in Clancy's shoes--perhaps underscored the core of the opposition to the settlement, reached in October, after Google was sued in 2005 for scanning out-of-print works without explicit permission.
Google's Dan Clancy is charged with defending Google's position before opponents of its book search settlement.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)If the class action settlement is approved, Google stands to gain control of a priceless asset. Jason Schultz, acting director of UC Berkeley's Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic, called it "the largest copyright-licensing deal in U.S. history:" the right to display the contents of out-of-print books that are still covered by copyright protection.
Google, however, has already scanned more than 10 million books. At the moment, it's not allowed to display more than a few snippets of copyright-protected books for which it doesn't have an explicit agreement with the rights holders. If the settlement is approved, Google will suddenly flip a switch and offer full-text searches of those books, as well as links to bookstores.
Nothing vexes Google's opponents more than the fact that the company assumed that it had the right to digitize nearly 100 years of written material without serious negotiations with those rights holders until it was sued. Authors have until Friday to decide if they want to opt out of the settlement and preserve the right to sue Google on their own for digitizing their book without their permission, though they can tell Google to remove their books from the Book Search archive, even if they remain in the class.
Everyone agrees that a searchable digital library of out-of-print books would be a very valuable asset for the world. As any owner of an e-book reader such as Amazon.com's Kindle will tell you, the way we think about books is changing.
Think about it: libraries offer tons of out-of-print books, so it's not like the collective knowledge of those books is inaccessible. Yet that knowledge exists in millions of hard-bound individual silos.
What if we could make all that knowledge instantly accessible from anywhere in the world? And more importantly, what if researchers have the ability to analyze it?
Amazing gains could be made in fields like linguistics. In dismissing arguments that scale makes a search engine better, Google's Hal Varian told me last month that one area that does seem to increasingly benefit from scale is translation: the more copies of bilingual books that Google has access to, the more it can perfect its translation algorithm.
"The value of the book as data is greater than value of the book itself," said Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive and perhaps the most vocal critic of the settlement. And who will control access to a valuable group of books? A for-profit corporation, which, by the way, paid just $125 million for the license to that information. It paid $1.65 billion for YouTube.
Google likes to say that anyone can cut deals with the Book Rights Registry, the nonprofit organization set up after the settlement to handle payments to right holders, to get similar access to out-of-print yet in-copyright books. The thing is, the number of organizations that can afford to duplicate Google's efforts is limited.
Clancy declined to say how much Google has spent on scanning books, but the Internet Archive spends about $30 for each book scanned. If Google's costs are similar, that's $300 million and counting; there are about 23 million books in the WorldCat database. Microsoft folded its book-scanning project, once it realized that Google was aggressively going after that market, said Tom Leonard, the head librarian at UC Berkeley, which had been part of a book-scanning partnership with Microsoft.
This is what frustrates Google, to a certain extent: everyone agrees that digital access to books is important, yet no one else is willing or capable of doing it. And Google insists that it will be a fair steward of the material: the European Commission has backed Google's efforts, and several university libraries, such as that of the University of Michigan, are also fully on board.
But taking Google at its word requires trust, and trust in corporations is in short supply at this point in American history. It's taken perhaps longer than it should have, but Google is gradually realizing that a fair portion of the public no longer sees it as a cute little Silicon Valley start-up with idealistic stars in its eyes, one that insists "you can make money without doing evil."
Google damaged that trust when it began scanning books without permission, arguing that it was allowed to do so under fair-use laws. Publishers and author groups also harmed that trust when they turned over the key to the castle by bringing the lawsuit as a class action, suddenly making plaintiffs out of millions of authors who did not necessarily appreciate the future value of digital books in 2005, nor authorize the negotiation of the rights to their works.
By the time the reporter caught Clancy off guard, he was understandably drained from a long day spent under hot lights fielding questions, and at least one diatribe, from passionate academics and activists.
The thing is, it's a fair question: Google has the financial resources and collective intelligence to do nearly anything it wants in the world. Where will Google turn its information vacuum next? Will it ask permission first?
Corrected August 30, 10 p.m. with the correct identification of the reporter who posed the question to Clancy.
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. 
All I see from you and other posters, is rhetoric. Prove your point with actual show of damages, written quotes of facts, not other people's opinion.
I find it troubling that so many have strong opinions about issues that they are either mislead about or do not completely understand. This, I am sorry to say, includes the author of this article.
Whether Google could or could not scan in-copyright books without right's holder permission under fair-use laws is an open question. Remember, the company does NOT display in-copyright books that it scans. It simply makes them searchable. This way, one may type-in the name of a character or a famous quote and find a book or multiple books that mention the character or the quote.
For example, one can search for "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" and find that the line comes from the famous "Pride & Prejudice" novel by Jane Austen. Unless the novel is old enough that it is out of copyright, the text of the book will not be displayed. At most, you will see a short snippet of 2-3 lines that contains the words you searched for.
So no, no one is scanning someone-else's books and displays them for free. Instead, the company does what any library does: it creates an index that makes it easier for people to find (and buy) books. The only difference is that the index being created by Google is much better and bigger than anything ever created.
I would say that the company does a great service for the world, and does it well within fair-use rights. And no, as much as it would be nice, it is not practically possible to track every single possible right holder and to ask their permission. No enterprise will ever be able to bear the costs of such an effort, which means that millions and millions books will be lost forever for future generations. Remember that for every "Harry Potter" out there, there are hundreds of thousands of books that are old, relatively unknown, but yet may present an incredible historical value.
Scanning so many books is an expensive enterprise, and the profitability of it is questionable. I mean, Microsoft, that is currently engaging in an ugly business of cowardly back-stabbing, while they themselves are in no way affected by the issue in question, dropped a similar book-scanning effort, probably not because it was so profitable. So well, what will it be? Will we kill the effort and let millions of books to die in obscurity? Because the way I see it, it is either Google or no one else, since no one else wants to come out and pick up the bill to do this one truly great thing.
Not sure why you fail to understand that scanning the book without permission was illegal in the first place. Scanning is making a copy (digital) of the book. Making a copy (digital or otherwise), without explicit permission, is illegal. It does not matter if the copy is displayed to the users or not. If the copy had been displayed, it would be tantamount to unauthorized and illegal distribution.
While the availability of books in electronic form and hence also searchable is very good indeed, there was no why Google could not have sought permission first and then proceeded with the scanning. They way they went about was simply an abuse of power and with the planned motive to settle it later. Very cheeky and calculated move.
As much as I used to like Google initially, step by step they are eroding the trust. It is turning out that the "do no evil" is just superficial and a disguise.
An everyone pretty much agrees that books need to be digitise just no politicans willing to stump up the cash and companies who have more than enough money to compete with google pulled out in the hope that google would pay the cost an they would some how reap the benefits.
Fact is google is doing everyone a favour, why everyone else is trying to figure our to get the most money from google.
An everyone pretty much agrees that books need to be digitise just no politicians willing to stump up the cash for it, as the French found out and companies who have more than enough money to compete with Google pulled out in the hopes that Google would bear the cost an they would somehow reap the benefits of Google efforts, for little or if there plan work perfectly for nothing.
Fact is google is doing everyone a favour, why everyone else is trying to figure how to get the most money from Google without actually helping the effort in any useful way.
Which meant both sides reckon it was 50/50 chance that they are both right and so to avoid costs and lawyers fees they came to a agreement.
Which is still to decided on and agree by the judge.
It most likely that we will never find out whether it will truly illegal or legal as I pretty sure the judge will agree to the deal. As to whether is past the competition requirements of the DOE, the past the tough of the European commission all likely hood they will past the DOE with a breeze.
Google MUST ask permission of copyright holders (or their estates) IN ADVANCE before making digital copies of books. Then they must PAY the author for the use of any intellectual property they use to generate income.
Anything less than that is a from of robbery by Google.
I am all for digitizing books, but at least ask permission to do so.... I am sure you don't want google looking into your computer without your permission.
If you did not buy the book, copying it in its entirety (electronic or otherwise) is illegal. Fair use - small snippets, references etc. for non-monetary purposes, satire etc., without permission and payment, are permitted by copyright law. What Google did was none of these. Coupled with the fact that they make it searchable and they profit from search advertising.
So to answer your question, scanning the novel for personal use, if you haven't paid for the original, is yes, illegal. You may not agree or appreciate it, but that is what it is.
As for memorization (electro-chemical copy) is concerned, in so much as the copy cannot be re-distributed would be okay. When the day comes when the brain copy can be distributed, copyright law will be sure to cover it.
It's Google's way or no way.
You're wasting your time, Apple-pi. This is C-Net / ZDNet. You are deep in Microsoft propaganda territory. Google and Apple are the sons of Satan here at CNet / Microsoft.
I mean, to pick a few lines:
1. 'A young man from the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information asked Clancy what kind of message was sent when Google decided to "copy first and answer questions later."'
The question assumes that what Google did was somehow unacceptable, while it just as well can be within the fair-use rights. It is therefore not a question at all, it is a statement, and a very misleading one.
2. '"The value of the book as data is greater than value of the book itself," said Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive and perhaps the most vocal critic of the settlement'.
What kind of logic is this? The value of a book already includes all the different possible uses of it, how can it be less than the value of one particular use, namely using the book for its data?
3. 'And who will control access to a valuable group of books? A for-profit corporation, which, by the way, paid just $125 million for the license to that information. It paid $1.65 billion for YouTube'.
What kind of access control are we talking about? If you can find the book elsewhere, say, in your local library, you can still have access to it. Google just adds one more way to find books, an option that currently simply does not exist. So we are talking about the company having control over access to books that no one currently has access to at all?!
And yes, Google is a for-profit corporation, so what? Do we have any non-profits or government lining up to do the job? Oh, yes, we have the Internet Archive - a "good" non-profit that also wants to scan books but says it does not have money to do so... and their issue with Google? That unlike Internet Archive, Google does have the money and is therefore up to the job! I mean, it is like me saying that NASA should fold their multi-billion space exploration program because I do not have enough space in my backyard to build a rocket!!!
Then, "just $125 million"? This is in addition to what, $30 * 10,000,000 books already scanned and more to scan more books? Plus, is the author of this article suggests that he is willing to pay more? I am sure that publishers are open to better offers, it is just that there are none! And for God's sake, what the price Google paid for YouTube has to do with anything? If the company paid $1.65 billion for it, it must be because they could not buy it for less. I mean, does the author of the article knows about things like supply/demand?
4. 'Microsoft folded its book-scanning project, once it realized that Google was aggressively going after that market, said Tom Leonard, the head librarian at UC Berkeley, which had been part of a book-scanning partnership with Microsoft'
Poor Microsoft, it folds a project due to aggressive competition... I mean, this is Microsoft we are talking about, they invented 'aggressive'!!! They have been abusing their OS monopoly for decades, "cutting oxygen" (and this is a true quote) to smaller companies left and right!
So let me understand, Microsoft no longer wants to scan books (must be because it is so profitable), but does not want Google to scan them either?
5. "Google damaged that trust when it began scanning books without permission, arguing that it was allowed to do so under fair-use laws. Publishers and author groups also harmed that trust when they turned over the key to the castle by bringing the lawsuit as a class action, suddenly making plaintiffs out of millions of authors who did not necessarily appreciate the future value of digital books in 2005, nor authorize the negotiation of the rights to their works."
So let me get this straight, Google, publishers, and authors came to a settlement, and then damaged whose trust? The article makes it sound like most authors and publishers are against the deal, which is simply not true. It also implies that whoever does not want to be a part of the settlement, cannot opt-out, something that is also not true. So whose trust is damaged? Microsoft's, Internet Archive's, that of the author of this article? The funny thing is that of these entities has anything to do with settlement. They are not part of it. So after all this noise, it is only noise about nothing.
1) See my post above. What Google did can not be linked to Fair Use by any stretch of imagination.
2) The value of the book is the cost of the media, distribution, storage, handling, employee salaries, royalty to the author and the profits therein. And the final price assumes that the book is used for personal and non-profit uses. Any commercial use would hence exceed that value, has to be paid for and negotiated with the author/publisher and BEFORE such use.
3) If the motive was simply to make books accessible, wouldn't it seem logical to create a separate, non-profit entity (.org) that would do it and be disconnected from the .com. Google (and any other commercial entity) could then license the content and/or various rights from this .org. Could this have been done? Of course, yes. Was this done? Hell no.
Just because Google was the first (or even the only one) does not absolve it of the legal (and moral) requirement of asking permission BEFORE the act.
4) I am no Microsoft fan (or any company's fan for that matter) but why mix the two and cloud your and everyone else's judgement?
5) I am not sure if you have this and other articles in detail. The issue about "orphan" works is still unresolved. And what about authors publishers that don't want the deal or to be a part of it?
Wouldn't it be logical and fair for an opt-in rather than opt-out? The former is voluntary and fair, the latter impositionary and audacious at best.
I did not understand why this new entity had the rights to negotiate for all of the authors in the country, and now it looks like that right was granted when a class action suit was filed on behalf of authors and copyright holders. I can understand that, but I would expect that the class action lawsuit would only give the plaintiffs the right to accept, on behalf of the entire class, a settlement of damages for making the copies (which I don't understand why there would be damages, if you make a copy and do nothing with it, you're not violating any copyright laws - it is only when you publish that copy, which google has yet to do). That makes sense, but why would a class action suit give anybody the right to negotiate future publishing rights? The class action suit is supposed to only address the copyright infringement by the defendant, not future rights to publish.
To me (I'm not an attorney), the ramifications of this case would go far beyond copyright law. Let's say a phone company illegally spies on its customers, and gets sued by many of them, resulting in a class action lawsuit. They agree to settle wth the class, giving each of them $100, and in exchange, every customer, even those not party to the lawsuit, give up the right to the phone company to monitor all of their phone calls and internet activities. Why would the class action platiffs get to give away rights? That is not what they were suing for, they were suing for an infringement of their rights. The only thing that could be negotiated by the plantiffs would be damages - and they can't bargain with future assets of people who did not opt into the class.
Whenever any company wanted to obtain a right from a large segment of the population, all they would have to do is **** off enough people to spark enough lawsuits that would then result in a class action lawsuit, and then settle it for a nominal amount, in exchange for future considerations. This is the part of the settlement that really scares me.
I actually don't see anything wrong with google scanning all those books, they just need to get the permission of the copyright holders or their agents before they sell them. I also feel that the copyright laws have been made a joke by the large studios, whose campaign contributions to politicans resulted in a huge distortion of the intent of the constitution, so much that I don't care if these out-of-print books get sold by a third party. But the precedent this settlement would establish seems patently (no pun intended) unconstitutional, and that is why google needs to re-think its' position. They may not have evil intent (and I don't believe they do), but if allowed to stand, I have no doubt this perversion of the law will be exploited by those with less than the public interest in mind.
Do you really think that Google was being altruistic by spending millions to scan books and make it available to the public and disabled? How about Google being told (by the court and/or authors publishers) to make the digital copy available to the public, in its entirety or snippets via search, but that Google would not be allowed to sell related search advertising? Do you think Google would still go ahead with the scanning? I am sure the answer is a resounding NO.
Even when the material gets into the public domain, the ownership still remains with the author/publisher. And Google scanned millions of book, not just the books that are in the public domain. The author/publisher is the one that controls the rights to the content and everything else. When Google scans them (and without permission), the access rights are stolen by Google from the owners. The only way around this would be for Google to DRM the copy and the owner decide the DRM policy. Did Google do this? Again, NO.
10 million books available instantly, and accessible to the disabled...truly evil I guess.
What this really hits upon is the ridiculous views of some authors that they feel that they should have exclusive rights to their published works forever, always controlling it and keeping it like some isolated capsule in time. Already with the indefinite copyright extensions for Mickey Mouse, etc. we see this, what I consider to be perverse, world view dominating. Copyright as framed by the founders of the Constitution is meant simply to promote the arts, not be used to bludgeon anyone who wishes to use your work for hundreds of years. Copyright was intended to promote the PUBLIC good, by allowing the reasonable remuneration over a reasonable time frame to allow authors and others to create works they would not otherwise be motivated to create, due to their need to feed themselves and their immediate families. Instead it has been perverted, again in my opinion, into this quasi-religious/marketing belief that once they have made their work PUBLIC, by PUBLIshing it, that they should have control over it forever. Instead of wanting to contribute to the advancement of culture, they want to simply contribute to their pocketbooks, even when these books are acknowledged to be out of print.
Meanwhile, it is almost certain that these authors will get more money from the proposed Google offer and publishing agreement, but they will still shoot themselves in the foot because they don't get to control their works. I would almost guarantee that most of the authors complaining are ones that this agreement doesn't affect anyway any time soon, since they are probably active authors with books not out of print. No, they are gnashing their teeth over the possibility that 20 years from now their first crap novel might fit into this category.
These are the same people that probably want to get rid of libraries and used book stores and probably eBay as well...
Ok...there was a little hyperbole thrown in there.
in summary: books no one cares about are being archived, which would otherwise not be preserved.
Do you really think that Google was being altruistic by spending millions to scan books and make it available to the public and disabled? How about Google being told (by the court and/or authors publishers) to make the digital copy available to the public, in its entirety or snippets via search, but that Google would not be allowed to sell related search advertising? Do you think Google would still go ahead with the scanning? I am sure the answer is a resounding NO.
Even when the material gets into the public domain, the ownership still remains with the author/publisher. And Google scanned millions of book, not just the books that are in the public domain. The author/publisher is the one that controls the rights to the content and everything else. When Google scans them (and without permission), the access rights are stolen by Google from the owners. The only way around this would be for Google to DRM the copy and the owner decide the DRM policy. Did Google do this? Again, NO.
Because they new if they did that they would of waited forever to get permission they needed, holding up the projects for years before they even got started on scanning books. That was also a additional reason why Microsoft pulled out.
Also keep in mind that the settlement covers every in-copyright book in the world published before early in this year. If approved, someone living in a village in India whose never heard of Google will have his treaty-granted U.S. copyright taken away without his knowledge or consent. It is just that bad. Google has been very careful to keep that fact from leaking out. I know a copyright lawyer very active in Internet issues who didn't discover the settlement applied to NZ authors until a few weeks ago. That is how dishonest Google has been.
And if Goggle is being dishonest about those facts, rest assured that there's a hundred other things they're concealing from us.
Oh, yes, it is so clear and simple that the judge pre-approved the settlement. You should go teach them.
"The Google settlement requires a formal opt-out (by next Friday) or Google will make lucrative use of an author's book without his knowledge or consent., essentially abrogating their copyright And the settlement, in essence, treats any out of print book as if it were out of copyright, something with no warrant in Berne or copyright law"
Eh, lucrative... We are talking about books that are out-of-print, don't we? It must be so lucrative to sell them that no one even wants to print them! And "abrogating their copyright"? They can always ask the company to remove the book, next week, a year from now, any time before the copyright for the book expires!
"I know a copyright lawyer very active in Internet issues who didn't discover the settlement applied to NZ authors until a few weeks ago".
So let me get it straight, the topic has been talked about for the last six month at least, your "active" friend does not know about it, and as a result, Google is bad? For God's sake, I saw the settlement ad in the "Economist", and I am not even an author!!!
The judge approved the settlement, he did not rule on the copyright issue. So, just because he approved the settlement does not mean that he ruled that copyright law was not violated.
Again, Google did not scan only the out-of-print books, but current ones also.
So, in your opinion, it is okay to steal first and ask questions later? This settlement being opt-out is ridiculous. What about "orphan" books? The books could be in print but the author dead/untraceable. Did they receive a copy of this settlement for them to opt out? Were there any efforts to contact them/their estates, whatever? No?
If really Google wanted to do it the right way, it would be to contact the required BEFORE and get permission. That is not what happened. So, it seems nothing but a clever and cunning plan.
Just as an example, in class action lawsuits (credit cards, cars, what not), don't you get a notice of class action by mail/e-mail? That tells you what the lawsuit is about, your right and your options. Did ALL authors/publishers get that? No. That would have to be not only a legal but a moral responsibility too.
You assume that just because you saw the ad in the Economist, all authors/publishers know of this settlement? Orphan works, or even a practical example of a retired author, settled in a faraway place with little outside communication, wouldn't know of this, would they?
Google did not seek prior permission, blatantly copied works, made it an opt-out settlement and hasn't contacted ALL about the settlement. That about sums it all.
From your previous posts, I was going to suggest In one of my previous posts in reply to yours, that you have never been an author (not neccesarily of a book). Your post now confirms this.
Countless millions of books are sitting on shelves in inaccessible conditions (euphemistically called libraries--just try to get around the guards in Harvard's library some time), and a company offers to scan and make the still invaluable information in these books accessible to the world. These books are "orphans"; their owners are no longer around and their copyright status unknown. This is the case for the vast majority of books printed before, say, 1970. And some 99% of the books published before 1980 are out-of-print and will never be printed again. These too are sitting on inaccessible shelves collecting dust, artificially imprisoned because of vague and antiquated copyright laws.
A number of research libraries recognize the invaluable contribution this company is making to humankind by doing this, and they join in helping the company scan books. Many publishers also recognize the commercial benefit in making these books available to the world again, and also move to support the company's efforts.
Since the author is neither a researcher nor a serious reader of books, he sees no personal benefit in having access to these books. For this reason he will concoct an ethically questionable house of cards out of vague and antiquated laws that do damage to society by artificially restricting access to information, with feigned "damage" committed to authors by taking away their intellectual property rights, and with publisher's lost commercial benefit. In his view, in order to protect a very small number of authors who may or many not be affected Google's efforts, all humanity must suffer the consequences. Google's efforts in no way affect the property rights of known authors whose works are still being actively published, since these are not orphan books and they will not be scanned. But these facts don't fit the evil scenario painted by the author of this article because...
like the Republican birther movement, these claims are vague and shadowy, and they give no specifics. Like the claim that Obama is an (evil) "foreigner", the author claims that Google really has evil up its sleeve, that its real intentions are to harm us.
So, per your argument, just because the out-of-print book is now in electronic form, there is going to be renewed interest in it? If there was enough interest, it wouldn't be out of print in the first place.
And Google did not scan only orphan books, current books as well. As far as rights/damages etc. are concerned, please see my previous posts.
If Google is the only one willing to spend the money on book scanning, that's fine, but that doesn't mean it should be the only company that'll have access to the scanned material. Even if google was the one to spend all that money on scanning, they must be forced to share the scanned data or not be allowed to use it. That's the only way to protect against google becoming an information monopoly.
Microsoft started but got scared off by copyright issues and the shear cost. The French governement libary got scare because of the costs.
An who will pay google for there efforts. They of circumvented the law which is questionable, but they were willing to see possible ways to make money from and to recover the costs and even to settle the copyright issues. If no one else can see it that way then that there problem and not google.
I agree with you on many points. I do not, however, think that monopolies are necessarily bad. They are a big part of how market competition works, in the sense that it is a dream of any company to become a monopoly. There are also cases when a monopoly is 'natural', in the sense that the cost of the original investment is so large relative to the size of the potential market that there is no room for more than one player. If you want, monopolies are necessary evil. If you prohibit them, many products will never come to market, because no one will be willing to invest money into their development.
I therefore think that if Google is the only company willing to spend on scanning books, it should be the one to decide what to do with those scans. However, if it does become a monopoly, it, like all other monopolies, should be subject to rules designed to promote competition. So, if, for example, Google decides to use its monopoly in out-of-print books to become a monopoly in selling postcards, it should not be able to have an unfair advantage in this new market.
For example, bundling of IE and Wndows is bad, because Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS market. Excluding Google voice app from the Apple store is potentially bad (depending on whether we consider Apple a monopoly, that is, depending on how we define the market). Scanning books to make them searchable may well be within the fair-use rights. However, if Google ever decides to abuse its position in the market, it should not be allowed to do so.
I am surprised I actually find myself agreeing with you on these points.
Going forward, in my opinion Google should do the right thing
1) either make it opt-in or contact ALL owners and seek their permission before making their works available in any form
2) create a separate non-profit entity to manage access to this electronic data. That way, Google won't be the only one that has access and harm competition
3) The non-profit would charge for access to recover its initial and ongoing costs.
4) Google itself would license it for their paid search advertising
I may be utopian when wishing for all these.
Not possible because the publishers forgot to keep track of the authors. It may have something to do with you know them keeping the copyrights payments to themselves. But I am not here to guest motives. There could be morally right answer.
2) create a separate non-profit entity to manage access to this electronic data. That way, Google won't be the only one that has access and harm competition
Then why should google invest in the first place.
The non-profit would charge for access to recover its initial and ongoing costs.
would that mean google would have sole access to all profits until it recovered it costs, expect to be close to half a billion. if not more and if there not much interest in these books, it could take awfully long time before google earnt there investment back and that with out the authors getting a slice of the money. Under the current deal the authors get paid pretty much straight off.
4) Google itself would license it for their paid search advertising
I presume that would be after they have recovered the initial investments. Or is someone else going to pay for digitalising the books is already done.
Scanning a book without permission is no more illegal than an organization purchasing a single copy of a book and allowing people to borrow the book for free... without permission. Over the past several decades libraries have done far more damage to the commercial enterprise of the publishing industry than Google could ever do. Because libraries have been deemed to carry out a service beneficial to society, special laws have been created to allow them to distribute information without permission (through circulation, photocopying, faxing, and even interlibrary loan). Interlibrary loan has been most destructive to publishers' interests: theoretically a single library can purchase a copy of a book and allow countless other libraries to also allow their patrons to make use of it. This is indeed happening on a massive scale, and it's all supposedly legal.
But is it legal? Well, as long as no publisher dares to take a library to court for such practices as interlibrary loan, the question will remain open. You see, the question of copyright infringement and piracy is a tort case, not a criminal case, and the law is tested only when someone suffering damages takes the entity responsible for the damages to court. There's no question that massive use of interlibrary loan has inflicted serious damage on the publishing industry, but no one has dared to test this in court because, well, everyone loves libraries.
Google is making a similar use of copyright law as libraries. If as part of its orphan book initiative an author, supposed missing or dead, comes forward with a claim to damages because of Google making his or her book available online, Google can immediately close off access to the book. Google's making orphan books available digitally causes far less economic damage to publishers than the circulation, photocopying, and interlibrary loan practices of libraries. Just as virtually everyone, including publishers, have accepted the damage libraries have caused because of the benefits that people enjoy from these practices, the same can be argued for Google's interpretation of the law in regard to orphan books. Libraries did not first ask permission from publishers to begin loaning books to other libraries, they simply began doing it... and they were a lot less polite and cooperative than Google has been in the process.
you gotta love these ridiculous statements from armchair legal experts. loaning = unauthorized duplication? forget my three years of law school. open up a dictionary. same goes for most of the comments on this blog
What sort of joke is this?
-- Mark (<a href="http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1617393">Infrared sauna</a>)
Absolutely. Librarians have long known that just as important as the creation of a book is providing access to it. There are countless examples in history of great works languishing for decades with very small print runs until someone discovered them. Access is critical to the life of a book, and Google is as intensely aware of this as librarians.
" If there was enough interest, it wouldn't be out of print in the first place."
This couldn't be further from the truth. There are a lot of reasons why good, even great, books are quickly forgotten and are overwhelmed by events or other bestselling books. Indeed, you only need to look at Amazon today to find countless important books of substance that are little known because of poor marketing or specialized interest. The biggest bestsellers, in fact, are often the easiest to forget in terms of value or importance.
As one of 100s of examples I could share from my own experiences, I recently was looking for a good general narrative to brush up on my trigonometry. Through Google Books I found William Hopkins' Elements of Trigonometry, a classic work that was originally published in the early 19th century and is still a valuable resource. Without Google Books I would not have encountered this book, since only a relative handful of libraries still have copies of it.
"Google has just done something rather wonderful. It is on the verge of an astonishing achievement that will benefit the U.S. for generations, bridging a major part of the digital divide and giving the country a global lead in a key area ? scholarship. Its reward: a lawsuit, public criticism from the hastily reconstituted and Orwellian-named ?Open Book Alliance? (Microsoft, Yahoo! and Amazon) and scrutiny by the Justice Department. Imagine what might have happened had they had tried to destroy a competitor?s business model by bundling its product into an operating system or attempted to corner the e-book market by making a proprietary closed system to force users to buy online books only form them."
His big point is that it?s unclear whether the Open Book Alliance is about ?sour grapes or genuine concern.? He also points out that it?s notable that Amazon isn?t yapping too loud. Why? Amazon could be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Google?s efforts. And then Lindsay points out the following:
"The truth is that both Microsoft and Yahoo! tried to do exactly what Google has just done ? digitize all books in print but both abandoned their initiatives in 2006. According to a 2006 Microsoft Blog Post from Satya Nadella (then SVP for search) announcing that Live Search Books and Live Search Academic were to be taken down: We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users."
Lindsay adds:
"Only Google stayed the course and so now only Google has the world?s largest digital book archive. So what is it going to do that is so terrible now that it has this archive? According to Google it is simply going to let people search it for free and if they want to buy the books direct them to a range of other sellers ? hardly cornering much of the value of book digitization."
- by Besh32 September 4, 2009 5:45 PM PDT
- Well, I found the most intelligent discussions here. It's a pleasure. I have several things to add ...
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(44 Comments)1. There are many libraries and companies in the world which scan books: Gallica in France, Government supported scanning program in Germany, commercial database of old printed English books which is sold to academic libraries. These are images of the books which nobody can search. Google is the only company that invented a way to read the images and has a computer power to process and verify the results. None of the existing OCR programs can do this.
2. This is not the library of the world, this is THE BOOK of the world which provides information on demand, bibliographies on demand, books on demand.
3. My concern is that it is all in one place. It is too important to loose!