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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."
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
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?
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!
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
I think the goal was more along the lines of cultural enrichment, but perhaps that is an outdated idea.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
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.
About a month ago I was talking to my wife (a librarian) about the prospect of these books being available for electronic "readers". Basically a tablet you could download the books to and read. I thought it would be great if the display was good enough.
She looked at me like I was some kind of alien or something.
Apparently for some people, the tactile (feel of the paper & book), auditory (sound of the pages turning) and olfactory (smell of the book) senses are all part of the "reading experience". And they take it serious!
I just had to ask her if she really preferred to spend her time with heavy, smelly things that mostly just sit around and take up space.
She just mentioned something about being married to me.
Plus they don't go obsolete.
They don't require special equipment or power sources to use.
One book is very cheap compared to a digital book reader.
Can be dropped, kicked, thrown, sat on, with no real damage.
Can be partially destroyed without total data loss.
Can even stand a fair amount of water damage, with proper care for recovery.
Books don't have all the advantages, but they sure do have some real big ones.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.