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Publishers Protest Google Library Project
gollum123 writes "A group of academic publishers is challenging Google Inc.'s plan to scan millions of library books into its Internet search engine index, highlighting fears that the ambitious project will violate copyrights and stifle future sales. In a letter scheduled to be delivered to Google Monday, the Association of American University Presses described the online search engine's library project as a troubling financial threat to its membership -- 125 nonprofit publishers of academic journals and scholarly books. The university presses depend on books sales and other licensing agreements for most of their revenue, making copyright protections essential to their survival."
My favorite take on the "loss of sales" argument comes from Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing on March 3, 2005:
i s_why_a.html
"When reporters ask me why I give away the full text of my novels online, for free, the day they're available in shops, I tell 'em: "It's about word of mouth. My readers have large social circles of friends whom they never see face to face. Books like Sisters of Ya Ya Sisterhoood became a success because one friend went to another friend and handed her a copy of the book, saying, 'You must read this, it changed my life.' I want to give my readers the same ability, so I have to give them a form of the book that they can 'hand' to their friends over the Internet. Even if it displaces some sales, the most valuable thing an author can get is a personal recommendation, it's the thing that is most likely to sell more copies of my books."
Linky: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/03/wordofmouth_
Why is it that Google is scanning copyright-protected works?
I thought that was flagrantly illegal, and the fines for willful copyright infringement are steep, even for a company with Google's money.
What's going on?
D
Remember, that libraries generally have one copy of a book (sometimes more, but rare) and that a person is borrowing it. So if you read a book at the library and wanted to have your own - you had to buy it. By having all of these publications online, people will have a digital copy of them for free. This *will* hinder book sales. While some people might want the nice hardbound copy - most people will just settle for the digital copy which is just as good.
FOr example, in my life, there are very few books that I have read in digital format that I have bought to have as a hard copy.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
described the online search engine's library project as a troubling financial threat to its membership
The horror.
Making the texts searchable - provided they only show a small snippet and a reference to the book for the rest - sounds EXACTLY like fair use to me.
Especially for academic papers, where being able to find the reference is critical to advancement of the field, and the citer would have to obtain and read more than the snippet anyhow.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If the journals don't like being published online by google, they will stop publishing, fizzle, and something else will come and replace them...
Now if only the RIAA/MPAA would have the same fate... Google, help me out here!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Honestly, this can be a great financial gain for those publishers, if they get together with Google on how to best select enticing pieces of their copyrighted works in order to drive sales, the academic community will have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
If I can get for free at my library I should be able to get it free on my computer.
Dear Association of American University Presses:
Please rename yourself University Presses Association of America so that we may refer to
all evil bastard organizations as *AA.
Thank You!
Non-profit doesn't mean No-money-at-all. They still have to pay for the ink, paper, binding, (possibly)writers, rental space, light bulbs, heat... Or do you expect these people to donate money to something they're working on for free?
Also, very frequently, non-profit organizations pay their workers. Where do you think that money comes from?
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
With a caveat...that author chooses to have his books in digital format to give for free. Again, he *chooses*. Each author/publisher should have the right to choose.
Google, in the end, is making a profit from offering this service. So there plans to scan these copies (at no direct monetary benefit to the author/publisher), make them available *for free*, and they make a profit... That is a bit unfair...and even if they didn't make a profit - the author should still have a say. A lot of people put time and effort and it is their right to choose - not some third parties right.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
In a letter scheduled to be delivered to Google Monday...
Did anyone else do a double take on this? I almost crapped myself (Google fanboy)... "OMG, Google is going to customize my weekdays!"
Saturday will be in Beta 18 months.
Cleaning the net one sed at a time! s/sex/sermons/; s/hot/holy/; s/goats/thebible/; www.holysermonswiththebible.com
Non-profit does not mean that they don't make money. It just means that whatever money they make goes into paying salaries and stuff and not to expansion.
How dare Google make information more readily available to the general public while reducing the need to use physical resources at the same time! How dare they!
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
The publishers may have a reasonable issue with Googles intention to copy some copyrighted works. If the project were to limit its accessibility to Public Domain works, the publishers would not be able to legitimately gripe. I suspect that the copyrighted work at issue is such that it is no longer in print & therefore generally unavailable for purchase.
However, a more serious concern is that Congress seems to perpetually insist on extending copyrights to the point that they are virtually perpetual. (I suspect that they are up to about 100 years.) If a publisher has a copyright, but decides that a work should not be in print - it is effectively censored.
This perpetual extension of copyrights (likely soon to be followed by business process patents,- Quick, give me $.05 for viewing this web page;) limites the use of useful works to those whom can pay the entrance fee. Assuming that the works are still in print.
If a publisher has a work that is unavailable (e.g. not in print), but copyrighted then they should have some way to disseminate it before they complain. The perpetual extensions of copyright are an issue that everyone should have their representatives address. (I can't help you. I live in DC, my representative has not voting power on the floor of Congress)
If you want change, you have to speak up.
Are these people complaining the ones responsible for the fact that at my university, the only way to get some info about something published in a journal was to log into some arcane heavily protected system and be told that the journal you are looking for is at another university, four stories underground, and protected by forcefields?
Are they the ones that feel that its justified to charge 200 dollars for a 5 dollar-value book ('journal') because they control the distribution... in which case... I hope they DO lose out.
As I creative person I am offended that someone could possibly catch a glimpse of something I've toiled over without giving me shiny gold coins.
.01% - 'artists'
I think we've got to nip this problem in the bud, and pronto! I think the most expedient system would be some sort of coin operated hood that could be welded onto consumer's heads. If you want to see or hear art, you simply need to drop some coins into the mechanism to open the shutter for a set amount of time.
This would mean a constant flow of income that could be distributed to all creative people as follows:
46 % - 'administration'
28 % - Lawyer fees
22 % - car payments
13 % - more lawyer fees
21 % - distribution
12 % - math consultants
8.2% - contingency
The only possible flaw with this plan is that the percentages add up to more than %100 percent, meaning that there would be an actual loss of profit, but I think the 'artist' could kick in an make up for that loss since they started this whole thing.
air and light and time and space
of course universities would hate a freely searchable index ... means they can't sell the 17th edition of "Introductory Number Theory" or something equally trivial [and well covered in the textbooks spanning the last CENTURY]...
... last I checked Calculus hasn't changed that much [specially at the level 1/2 levels] in the last century to require a 2nd edition let alone a 7th.
If you can look up quotes/citations/etc without shelling out for overly expensive dead trees... they'd lose their valuable money pit.
Personally I'm glad to be out of College. Not that I bought the books while I was there [well the ones I could avoid I did]. Even in my community college we had 7th edition level 1 and 2 calculus books
To me "7th edition" says two things. Purposeful re-write and "sloppy editors".
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Like street-sweepers protesting the loss of horse manure to sweep, these publishing houses seem to have trouble following historical trends.
Another way to look at it is that they have missed their first calling, which is to disseminate academic information, by becoming enslaved to the profit they make on a particular method of doing so.
Cynically, perhaps they are afraid that once the bulk of their collections are online people will discover that most of what they publish is rehashed from older work. No, I don't seriously think that.
But I do seriously think that the academic publishing business, like the newspaper business, is transitioning to the Internet.
It's time to lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Google makes it extremely clear that they won't be violating copyrights. So what more do these publishers want?
Perhaps they just want to cast a pall of doubt over something that (quite legally) diminishes their reasons for existing.
I always mod up spelling trolls.
People will use this to find a resource, then go to the bookstore or library and BAMO it works, the customer wins finding obscure resources, and the vendor wins with more sales.
Call me naive, but isn't the main mission of a university press to disseminate information as widely as possible? They exist mainly because Penguin and Random House and the like don't see a huge earnings potential in publishing narrowly focussed academic material. Google can be a huge help to academic publishers by helping potential customers locate their material. At the same time, Google will help customers to be more discriminating in their purchases. Academic publishers will need to streamline their operations. They should really hop on the print-on-demand bandwagon so that they print only what they sell.
I am sorry but I feel no pity for the Universities and book publishers. They 'make money' on selling the same recycled crap year after year and calling each one a new edition.
I think the key here is that the typical use pattern for academic works is different than for works intended for the general public. Frequently the reader of an academic journal is interested only in a specific fact, and they will often be able to glean this fact from the small amount of context provided in the Google search results. This threatens the revenue model of academic journal publishers, which is a form of bundling, namely, charging the university libraries for the whole journal or for several related journals put out by the same publisher.
To quote from an article in Chronicle of Higher Education, reprinted in Prime Palaver #10, Michael Jensen (their director of publishing technologies) said:
// TODO: fix sig
I think you're looking for "In the Net of Dreams"
by William Mark Simmons.
The key is the "small snippets" and how they're given out. TFA didn't say, but I suspect that the questions that they sent to Google concern how Google is going to keep people from coercing Google into giving them the whole book a piece at a time.
It's been done before; some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were first released because somebody reverse-engineered a concordance. One could imagine somebody writing software to pull up part of a book, then search on the last sentenece of each snippet to get it to reveal some more (as context). Repeat and get the whole book.
It might not be all that simple or all that effective, but publishers do have a right to worry about the possibility. It takes a lot of work to publish a book, and it would be nice if Google were able to give them some assurance that it wouldn't become common for people to get the books for free.
Even without that, even publishing small snippets of reference books can be problematic. Sometimes you only want a short snippet of the book at a time, and the rest of the book goes unused. The publisher spends money assembling the whole book, so they want you to pay for all of it (amortizing the cost), or at least use the library's copy (which can be very expensive if they expect to sell only to libraries).
Personally, I'd like to see Google honor a publisher's request not to index a book, the same way google honors the robots.txt file. If they're losing sales that they might otherwise get via Google's free advertising, that's their own lookout.
If copyrights holders had their way, there would be no libraries. Libraries usually buy one copy of a book and let multiple read it without paying additional royalties to the copyright holder. It is only through the Doctrine of First Sale that libraries are even allowed to do this. Although some academic publishers do make much of their money selling books to libraries, there has always been a somewhat conflicting relationship between libraries and book sellers, who would rather sell lots of copies to individuals than a few to libraries.
"...making copyright protections essential to their survival.""
That is so wrong. Copyright has nothing to do with their survival as it has not played a real role in publishing profits for centuries(expect for betwixt publishers). Libraries have always provided copyrighted materials to the public free of charge to a limited use. The publishers have relied upon the library as being too bothersome, too far away, too hard to use, etc for their survival. Most people would rather order a book than sift through their local library to try to garner the same material or item. Publishers have depended on that, not the copyright, as books have always been free for the asking.
Now Google is poised to remove a significant portion of the 'library hurdle' that stops most people from using that resource before their local Barnes and Noble retail outlet. That is what they are upset over, not the copyright. The copyright is the only legal paper the have to hang onto and cry into. Therefore they try to raise your ire over that and hope you will miss the real point.
Do you really know anyone that steals books? Do you know anyone who downloads books illegally? Doesn't that sound a bit proposeterous when the same material can be had in an hour or two from your local library? It sure does to me.
As information moves to the electronic format, as most all of it will in the coming years, are we ready and or willing to lose our access to published materials freely? Will information truely become a comodity for the wealthy only too? Shame on the publishers for clouding the issue in such a way. We are not the dumb (are we?).
There should indeed be choice by the author. These academic publications generally prohibit the author from making any other choice than assigning copyright to them, effectively tying the spread of knowledge to the financial interests of the publication.
The point is moot. Google is only going to offer those works that are out of copyright (70 years after the death of the author I *think*) so no one should be making money off them in the first place.
non-profit means that all profits go right back into the business. they can, in fact must, expand their business. The non-profit part means that their are no owners or CEO's that get more money if the business makes more money. All the money goes back into the services that the company provides. if non-profits weren't allowed to expand, then OSDL's recent announcement that they are going to expand operations in Europe and Asia would be a violation of the law.
my pet machine
i thought they were only putting up books that didnt have authors because they were dead and their copyrights ran out in the 1920s or something. those non-profit companies are also third parties, what gives them the right to hoard great literary art?
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
If the publishers believe that Google's effort will negatively impact their goals, they should oppose it. If they believe it will negatively affect their revenue streams, but achieve their stated goals more efficiently, they should get the hell out of the way of progress.
There's a serious problem here in inviting publishers to submit their material. Publishers seem eager to submit their reprints -- for which they only have copyright over the book's design -- of public domain works. As a result, completely free works are listed in Google Print as "Copyrighted Material" -- in turn, allowing the publisher to misappropriate copyright w/in G. Print over written material they do not have copyright over.
See, for example, The Canterbury Tales in Google Print. This was written in the 1300s. I would very much like to see Penguin's proof of copyright over the works of Chaucer, who died in 1400.
Likewise, see Romeo and Juliet , written by Shakespeare, who died in 1616. Or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow , first published in 1819. Clearly no present-day entity has copyright over any of these works. Regardless, the publishers who have submitted their versions of them are able to enforce a 3-page-view limit on them without legal right to do so.
Google Print should be scrapped, and instead, the spotlight shined on Project Gutenberg.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Q: Who said that Google was giving away free copies of books?
A: Nobody!
I believe what they intend to do is:
Google isn't some magic fairy company that is above copyright law, and Google isn't dumb either. This is probably just another example of an idiot scared of a disruptive technology crying wolf. Google's new feature will probably just bolster book sales for these folks in the long run (and the short run too!).
why? if the work being 'published' is either not copyrighted or public domain, why should they pay?
If someone sees his business model threatened by that, well, time to think of a new way to make money.
You can't stop this kind of thing (which would significantly facilitate access to information and benefit society in many ways) just because it hurts someone's sales.
As someone said before, where would we be now if the pony express had managed to outlaw the telegraph because it 'hurt' its sales?
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
From "about Google Print"
However, uneversity presses are generally non-profit organizations, so they generally price their materials to cover the costs associated with producing, storing and distributing them.
If the materials are available free online, then all those costs are eliminated.
If someone still wants a nicely bound hardcopy, then that person has the choice of getting one printed at a local print shop. The university press can also offer on demand printing for a cost covering fee.
I guess I don't understand their objection to having their materials available without any work required from them.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Indeed. And that, as I've pointed out here before amid cries of trolling, does make legal justification for other Google features -- Google Cache in particular, but also Google Groups and potentially things like Google Image Search -- uncertain at best.
If anything, it sounds like this project would be on much safer legal ground, as long as (a) they really are only reproducing content that's no longer covered by copyright, and (b) they pay suitable licensing fees for all the material they transfer to their database that's still covered by copyright.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It defies logic to deny that people who make money selling books will not be harmed if someone else provides free copies of those books.
I don't know about you, but I hate reading anything over a few pages online. Who wants to read an entire book on computer? Not many people I'd imagine. Printed books are far superior technology to the electronic kind.
The publishers should sue Google and Google should be required to pay the publishers each time a publication is accessed via Google.
Unless of course Google only provides short 1 or 2 page excert of a copyrighted book. Google then sells "buy this book" links to booksellers. Everyone wins. This seems far more likely than Google making the entire book available online. Obviously that's breaking copyright law.
AccountKiller
Being able to read a contract doesn't help when they all say "We own you". It's an industry standard contract and they like it that way.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Doctorow's assertion, of course, is entirely anecdotal. Where are the numbers that might substantiate it?
Reminds me of an "anecdotal proof" that I like to use to confuse people who think that anecdotes can't prove anything.
Hereabouts there are a number of "tech" bookstores, mostly at colleges but not entirely. If you walk in, the first thing you see is the display of the current tech bestsellers. A quick check will verify that almost all of these are available online, usually in PDF form, and most of the downloads are free. But there the hard copy is, sitting in the display that's reserved for bestsellers.
It's even worse: If you open the books, most of they have a foreword that tells you about the online download. Most give the URL.
So how can the sales possibly be nonzero? They're being given away free, and they tell you right up front that you can get them free. But people walk into the bookstores and buy them. Are these people idiots? Given the usual clientele of these stores, I'd guess not.
Now, I'll point out that this is in fact "just another anecdote". I haven't given any numbers. I haven't said anything that would prove that there are any sales at all.
But these books wouldn't be on those particular shelves unless the people running the store thought that they'd sell. Some of these stores have been there for years. The people running them aren't idiots. They are successful businessmen making the judgement that these books are good ones to display up front.
So here we have rather convincing "anecdotal evidence" that giving things away free doesn't necessarily kill sales. It may well be helping sales (but that's really hard to infer from anecdotes).
Actually, I also wonder if there are real numbers on the topic. I haven't yet seen any that I trust. But seeing things being listed as bestsellers when they're available free online is sorta convincing that something funny is going on here.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
"Doctorow's assertion, of course, is entirely anecdotal. Where are the numbers that might substantiate it?"
Baen free library has some pretty solid numbers to substantiate that. They've seen clear increases in the sales of books which are available for free (both compared to similar books which aren't available online, and compared to the sales of that same book before online distribution)
That is because, usually, the author is selling his/her license to the publishers who provide the upfront money to produce the books/pay the author.
At least with peer-reviewed journals, that does not hold true. The author usually has to actually pay to have their submissions printed in such publications.
For textbooks, it depends. For few-author textbooks, the author makes a few bucks, so your argument holds. For the sort of textbooks with dozens of authors, in some cases the authors don't even know they have their name attached to the book, and those who do usually get "non-financial compensation" only, ie, no cash but they can list the book on their CV as a publication.
Don't mistake the world of academic publishing for the "real" world of publishing. Academics publish for fame, not fortune, and the leeches that do the physical printing get to rob both ends of the process (thus the massive interest in purely on-line peer-reviewed journals, with a massive backlash by traditional journal publishers such as Elsevier).
Being able to read a contract doesn't help when they all say "We own you". It's an industry standard contract ...
True in general, but there are some interesting exceptions in academia.
For example, last year the publishers of Nature changed their copyright rules. They now require that the authors retain copyright of anything published in Nature (and require a contract stating that the copyright can't be assigned without Nature's permission, preventing heavy-handed university admins from demanding the copyright after publication).
They have announced that they are returning the copyright of all previously-published papers to the original authors.
They also stated that papers published in Nature can be put online, but only on sites that give the authors complete control over the paper's files. In fact, they actively encourage putting your papers online, six months after publication. They also strongly encourage making all original data available online, unless there's a good technical reason that it can't be done. Information on obtaining physical materials (such as biological samples) should also be available.
This is significant in a number of fields for which Nature is the top-status publication. If you've accepted research money that requires giving the copyright to the funding agency, you can no longer get your results published in Nature. If your institution claims the copyright on your work, you can't be published in Nature.
Their stated goals were that published authors should retain the rights to their own work, and that others should be able to build on your published results.
There is serious discussion going on in academia about forcing other publishers to adopt a similar policy. This may not be possible with for-profit publishers. But many publications are produced by professional societies that are controlled by their members. There's a good chance that they will all soon adopt similar rules.
Loss of control of your own work is a growing scandal in much of academia. But people are figuring out that they just might have the power to fix the problem. After all, if Nature can do it, why can't every other academic society?
(It'll be interesting to see if Nature maintains these policies)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I'm not a huge book fan or anything, I actually love computers, but come on!
I like the fact that I don't have to worry about a book running out of batteries or recharging it.
The display never gives me a headache (reading small, lit displays in the dark sometimes does)
If I'm on a page that I know I will want to get back to, I can stick my finger between the sheets. For longer storage, I can place the bookmark there.
If I want to reference a previous event, I can usually flip to it within seconds.
I have a great indexing system called a bookshelf. I don't have to remember which CD I put it on or if canceling my audible account will make that book go away for the rest of my life (Well, that's for audible books, but I'm sure the same applies to any DRM controled media).
I can set it down on it's face to save the place if I have to jump up, and if I don't get to come back for a few days, it'll still be there.
None of these break me out of the character I'm living through the book.
You know, honestly, this excersize is kind of pointless because I can't come up with a single reason to read a book online. I even print out source code to read when I really want to think about it/mark it up. Why would I do that if paper wasn't a superior medium?
In ever peer-reviewed journal I've ever published in, page charges are always optional. Along with the copyright form that gives the journal permission to reproduce the author's work, the page charge form allows the author to decline -- no questions asked -- the page charge fee.
Unless I read this incorrectly, this goes completely against what copyrights were intended for. Copyrights were not about ensuring that the creator wuld make money, but instead that the legal monopoly they provide will encourage them to create and be creative, and/or bring further reasearch and information public. With copyrights lasting beyond what is needed, sometimes for 100yrs+ easily now, and the fact that people now care more about using copyrights for financial gain instead, we can say goodbye to conventional copyrights... for now.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I am in graduate school and when my boss says 'hey, read this book' i have to drop about 100 bucks on a book.. that is, if Dover publishing hasn't made an older text on the subject available for 12 dollars instead of 112 dollars.
I dont think that google providing free access for books is the solution, but i KNOW that paying some university publishing company 100 bucks for a book that i might read once isn't the awnser.
yeh and when your copyright ends in 70 years or whenever and your work becomes public domain and google v3 puts your stuff up on the net, no one will need to go to the library to read it. if you index something it doesn't mean you will show all of it, the work will just be searchable. and these are non-profit why do they have a financial stategy other than "don't go bankrupt"?
i suggest you read print.google.com before acting like google is trying to rip off all the poor authors
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?