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Tim O'Reilly on the Google Library Project
dkleinsc writes "The New York Times is running an op-ed piece(free registration required) by Tim O'Reilly arguing that the Google Library Project is a good thing for authors in general, and suggests a lawsuit by the Author's Guild against Google is acting against authors' best interest."
Since their suit was announced, I have wondered why the Author's Guild would object to MORE access to their works by offering snippets to Google Print. Obviously there is much to be lost by publishers who, like the RIAA, act as gatekeepers on published works. If the Author's Guild really likes the current system, then why do so few works circulate more than 5,000 copies? Wouldn't their members be better served with wider distribution?
The Author's Guild looks like just another out-of-touch union that is trying to straddle the fence on this issue so as to not piss off their benefactors in publishing. Perhaps they are secretly hoping their suit will fail.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Of course Tim O'Reilly is going to in favor of the Google Library Project. O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf is already putting the content of books online (for a fee though).
Bradley Holt
move on author's. move on. forget about it. make it available.
The access to literature this will bring is double edged; searchability will make the entire published works of man into some kind of uber cliffs notes. In the end there will still be those that understand what Melville was writing and those that read a book about fighting a whale.
Note that O'Reilly has their own electronic book service called Safari. Most of their own books, and those of a few affiliated publishers, can be completely read online and fully searched. It's very handy considering reference material can become outdated so quickly. So rather than spend $100 on 2 paper books you can look at 5 at a time for one year of their service. And you can change what's on your "bookshelf" every month.
They have a lot to gain by people getting used to electronic books.
Developers: We can use your help.
The author suggests that the main issue at hand is that the "whole work" must be digitized and stored (the writer's main sticking point). When a Google books search is conducted, only snippets (a couple of sentences) would be displayed. Ok, but through some recursive Googling lead to disclosure of the entire work? While I agree that it's easier to go to the library and check out the book, there is a way to circumvent the system. I am not a lawyer, but this does have some perceivable holes.
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/c9f39e0a8a543c694 dfe466032f26f6b/index.html
No registration required.
Google isn't making books available for free. You can't simply browse through an entire book with their service. If you want more than an excerpt you'll still have to go to the publisher and buy it.
Developers: We can use your help.
Resistance is futile, you will be put online....
Time for people to get into the 21st century
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It's just a guess on my part, but my guess is that the Author's Guild is not very technologically literate. Their opposition seems somewhat Luddite inspired.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Last I checked, Google wasn't putting books up for free download, just snippets. And I think they even have links to other sites to buy the book.
This will really help folks find books that they want to read. Instead of spending countless hours combing through books at the local bookstore, all I would have to do is enter a keyword into the Google Library Search Engine, such as "snatch" and see what it turns up.
In addition, is going to make it sooooo much easier to fill out the bibliography section on those pesky college term papers!
Go! Go! Google Library!!
I'm still waiting for Mr O'Reilly to make all his books available for free.
You obviously do not understand what the true intention of the Google Library Project is. That's ok, though, as a lot of people don't. It is not an attempt to put the full test of every book on line so that you can access the full text for free. It is an attempt to make a fully searchable database of every book. It's main beneficiary will not be cheap bastards who think everything should be free, but rather scholars doing research: they'll have, ostensibly, only one database that they will have to search. The people who actually have the most to lose from this are companies that currently provide database services of this sort (like ABI/Inform) to university libraries.
As such, O'Reilly is not in any way being a hypocritic if he supports Google's efforts in this particular enterprise.
my pet machine
but they are not stupid. When considering this plan, I'm sure they anticipated the objection & litigation, but after consulting with their attorneys, they must have reached the conclusion that their position is defensible, and therefore winnable. It will be an interesting court case, that's for sure.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Hey, man pages are for free, so why can't I make some quick bucks?
Sincerely (sort of)
Mr O'Reilly
The Google-Borg
Hey, you think your house is cool?
I'm really sick of this. Why are we being subjected to this ignorent free registration again and again? The New York Times (insert witty pun on free registration) articles are a rotten egg in the Slashdot omelette. It stinks!
Please stop posting links to the new york times eds. For the amount of ad click they'll get, the NYT should be begging us to come in free of registration.
And no, I don't think I should have to go to the trouble of using bugmenot.
May the Maths Be with you!
You've got it backwards. They're not trying to protect their rights. The guild wants to limit citizens' rights. They don't like fair use rights. They can only lobby against fair use so strongly today because their money easily influences our politicians. I agree they should be concerned about Google completely indexing books. But they should work with Google to ensure nothing beyond fair use is allowed. Instead they're trying to stop Google completely.
This isn't about the rights of the members of the guild. It's about their money.
Developers: We can use your help.
No doubt there are two problems with this: the first seems to be that authors (to the best of my knowledge) haven't been asked either piecemeal or via organizations like the Authors' Guild for permission. The second is that Google will no doubt be making money as a result of providing this service and everybody else wants a cut.
However, we have reached an unfortunate point with copyright and fair use where we'd rather halt innovation than admit that copyright holders' expectations have reached a point of making it cost- and time-prohibitive to meet their demands and are to the point of stagnating not only the public domain but technologies and services that deliver or even touch upon copyrighted content. In this sense, creating a scenario that is not unlike the movie industry's dire predictions about the VCR in the early 80s.
It would be best, of course, for Google to attempt to work out an amiable solution with authors without crippling their service to an unreasonable extent, but I feel that the intent of fair use (if not its prevailing interpretation) falls in their favor... as does the bottom-line for both Google and the membership of the Authors' Guild.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
The guy who made soft cover high quality technical books the norm in Computer Science. I know they're not cheap, but compare with Don Knuth's (admitted classic) hard cover ones. He's got the right idea, the Author's Guild is thinking like the RIAA or the MPAA, and yet their argument is a hundred times weaker - no one is going to P2P their books!
They obviously want an 'opt-in' system, because that reduces the number of books competing to just the current commercial books, and removes possible public domain, orphan works and smaller publishers authors.
,just not index everyone elses. That's what the lawsuit is about, getting an opt-in to reduce the number of competing works. All the 'copyright infringment / worried about security / worried about snippet size' claims are just bollocks that make no sense. Since Google has offered them an opt out, if they were truely worried, they could just flag their books as opt out and that would end it.
Joe public on the other hand, *is* best served by 'opt-out' because that includes orphaned work & possible public domain books.
So they want Google to index their books
They lied, Google called them on their lie and now they will go to court and look real dumb. By giving them the opt-out Google has outmaneuvered them. So now they will lose, but if they could win it, it would have be in their interests.
They will say "we are worried about Google scanning our books", Google will say "but we are not going to scan your books, because as soon as we realised you didn't want that, we took you off the list", end of case.
LOL YOU ARE HILARIOUS HAHA
"and make them available online "
Not so, it makes tiny snippets of these books available. Less than a typical Slashdot review extract.
1: Google digitizes a significant percentage of the books in print and actually makes them searchable. This is a significant undertaking that very few other companies can even consider doing, although Microsoft will certainly try in order to keep up with Google.
2: People actually use this index, finding out about books in their areas of interest they never knew existed before. (And that was always the true magic of P2P music sharing. Finding performances of your favorite song by artists you never knew recorded it, or songs by your favorite artist you never knew existed in the first place. There was no way to ever find stuff like this before.)
3: Google becomes even more popular than before. PROFIT from AdWords and other synergies.
4: Google acquires Project Gutenberg and expands on their free, public domain, efforts. PROFIT - at least if you're associated with PG.
5: Public Domain is strengthened for all of us because works in PD are now more accessable to everyone. PROFIT - more traffic to Google to get these works, and society overall is richer!
6: For books still under copyright and in print, Google becomes the biggest referrer to purchasers to Amazon and Barnes & Nobel, which are now only one click away. PROFIT!
7: With everything already digitized, the moment the Author's Guild gets away from giving themselves a self-induced colonoscopy, Google starts selling full e-books of everything they already have digitized. PROFIT to Google, AND THE AUTHORS!
Yup, pull in that truck and load up my stock!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The problem is with google digitizing the entire book. I don't think author's guild is craping about showing snippets or even digitizing summary of the book. The way google is making this thing work is to scan entire book and store it in their database. Really, usually copyright holder is publisher and if publisher gives permission to google to store the book then what can Author's guild crap about?
But, yet, you cannot post the O'Reilly Bookshelf to your website...
Click here or here.
There's nothing legally or morally wrong with profiting off others' works. What do you think used bookstores do? And not every library is non-profit--membership libraries are fairly rare these days, but they still exist.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Not only that, but O'Reilly already has a service that allows his books to be searched just like Google wants to do.
So not only is he not a hypocrit, but he beat google to it.
The cake is a pie
Simply put, you would not "being subjected to... free registration again and again" if you simply filled out the registration form once and remembered the user/pass pair you made up.
As you are a self-professing math freak, I would like to pass along a little tidbit from the world of writing and engineering: Use the same thing as your user *and* pass -- that way even *you* have a chance to remember it. Oh, and from the business management and programming world, one additional tidbit: Since this isn't an important login, grab a Sharpie and write "NYT: $YourLogin" on your keyboard. (Use a paint marker if you have a black keyboard.)
Or you could just go here and read them all for free: http://www.unix.org.ua/orelly/
Not that I condone this kind of activity.
Tim O'Reilly arguing that the Google Library Project is a good thing for authors in general
Horse Crap. As an author, I can assure you that most technical publishers are interested in just filling the pipeline, then being done with the book. A majority of the revenue that comes in to a publisher is from the initial sales to Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etcetera. After the first quarter, it's just nail-biting maintenance to have to go after PR leads, re-orders, and reprints - all the meantime paying your staff to sit around and wait for this stuff to happen. Sure, there will occasionally be a very successful book that will pay off to do this, but for most technical books it's in the publisher's best interest to just sell the first ten or fifteen thousand and then be done with it. My own publisher wanted to put out an unencrypted PDF of my book for sale just two moths after it was released. What a stupid idea. There's no better way to kill a book than to make it available for anyone to read for free. Sure, perhaps 6 or 8 months down the road - but publishers these days haven't got a care in the world for the continuity of their books, so long as all the maintenance is involved. Google's not acting in authors' best interests, and neither is Tim O'Reilly.
I just sent them the following e-mail:
l king.htm
To: staff@authorsguild.org
Subject: Google Lawsuit
http://www.authorsguild.org/news/charity_handy_ta
Let me imagine a moment that I'm a publisher, or Writer's Guild.
Let me further imagine that a corporation wants to offer a free search engine, to make it easier for potential customers to search for and find the works written by the writers I represent.
I'll continue this pleasant little thought experiment by assuming they don't want to charge me or my writers any money. We don't even have to sign up.
It's not unlike what Amazon.com does for the books it sells, except this corporation wants to not only make the entire book searchable, while only making small segments available to readers, but offer a selection of purchase options, so potential readers will be even MORE likely to purchase the books.
What do I do?
Do I thank them for offering this free service that will only pour more money into the pockets of the writers I represent?
Do I start making arrangements to get them electronic copies of the books, so the writers I represent can get into the index that much sooner?
Oh, I know, I'll sue. I'll ignore all the long term benefits, and try to kill the project by blackmailing the corporation with a lawsuit and demands that THEY pay ME for providing a service to MY writers!
Brilliant.
I selecting the last option, I've guaranteed that the up and coming writers will never look twice at me or the organization I represent, assuming it's nothing but a club for Luddites, afraid of technology and more interested in scraping up a few pennies here and there than in actually turning a profit.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The difference is that he is providing access to only books that he is the publisher of and holds copyright on, or has the permission of the copyright holder! He also pays the copyright holders that paricipate in his server. On top of that, he requires a fee to use his service.
The difference here is that Google will make it freely available and is not the copyright holder of *any* of the materials and isn't asking any authors permission and isn't offering any payment to the owners of the copyright.
So, yes, Tim is wrong and Google is wrong.
If I were an author, and worried about my IP rights, my only objection would be that although they're providing me a service by allowing searches to bring up my book and thereby advertising it, any security problem might expose my work and allow it to be downloaded freely. Depending on how Google structured their service, it might even prevent me from asserting my IP rights against people redistributing the work. I don't know whether the Author's Guild is worried about this issue or is just completely hidebound, but it's something to think about.
Perhaps they are secretly hoping their suit will fail.
I've read the talking points they have online.
They're convinced that this is a BAD thing, and want Google to pay a license fee to them for the right to index the books in question.
They want Google, to pay them, to provide a free service to their writers.
They're a bunch of scared Luddites, trying to kill something they don't understand, and if they can't kill it, milk it for all the cash they can.
It's just another scum sucking parasite organization.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
It will be an intersting opportunity for the evolution of copyright law. Right now the copyright concept hinges on the antiquated notion that the right to make a copy is what matters.
Google is making full text electronic searches of scanned books, and has clearly made a copy. The scale of this copying clearly falls outside of "fair use".
On the other hand, the intended use of the copies they hold would be of great benefit to authors and society at large, but antiquated laws restrict the right to make copies to the owner of the copyright.
Hopefully the money will be here to get an opinion from the courts that clarifies these antiquated notions.
The courts are the friends of the people in this case. The courts are the only ones that can bring balance to the force of copyright since Lawmakers have already been bought by the vested interests of copyright exploiters.
The best thing that could happen to bring the balance of copyright back toward benefiting the public good in the spirit it was granted in the first place, is going to court oposing someone with $84,000,000,000 valuation.
At this URL, they make it pretty clear that they want Google to pay the AG to index the AG works and offer free search services.
It's a bit like me demanding the trash man pay me for the right to take away my trash. After all, it's my property he's hauling away, so I should be compensated for the loss! Just because he's offering me a service isn't relevant!
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
"Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy."
A-fucking-men.
Write that down and stick it up the tight-suited asses of the golf-loving, lexus-driving, greedy-mother-fucking-artist-screwing RIAA executives and tell them to go blow a taco.
I haven't seen such an erudite string of profanities directed against the RIAA in quite some time.
7: With everything already digitized, the moment the Author's Guild gets away from giving themselves a self-induced colonoscopy, Google starts selling full e-books of everything they already have digitized. PROFIT to Google, AND THE AUTHORS!
You missed a point.
The authors represented by the AG won't be part of ANY of this! The AG wants Google to pay them a licensing fee for the books. After the lawsuit, the AG will be out of the running, and it's members will have the handicap of not being in the largest index around, and will, as a result, not get any of the profits to be had from being in the index.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Correct me if I'm wrong:
1) Google takes the entire book, and with or without the author's permission, copies it (to Google's own personal harddrives).
2)My understanding is that they are "raiding" libraries, and perhaps not necessarily even buying a copy of every book they do this with.
3) They make only bits of it available, but in fact, a person could, with proper searching, get the whole book eventually.
My understanding of Fair Use means only a small part of a book can be "quoted". Given that maybe it's okay for Google to copy the books if they want, they are, however, effectively making the entire book available.
It would be something like having a thousand reviewers quote one thousandth of the same book. Reading all the reviews would give you the whole book. Only, it's not a thousand reviewers, but in this case just one - Google.
I have a problem with their "Opt-out" presumption. In general I think it should be "Opt-in".
Finally, it doesn't matter whether the authors will ultimately profit from Google doing this or not. IT DOESN'T MATTER. It is either legal or it is not. Here is a bad analogy: A maid breaks into my house and cleans everything up and then leaves. It doesn't matter that the maid's actions ultimately benefitted me (I got a clean house), breaking into my house is illegal.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Yeah he said that, but is it really because the majority readers of his books are people who are for online indexing, and he'll be able to recoup revenue one way or another because of his audience, while majority of books by other by 'authors/publishers' targeting 6-pack Joe?
"He also pays the copyright holders that paricipate in his server. On top of that, he requires a fee to use his service."
Yes, the service is called Safari. The fee is because you can download entire books (which is also why the authors are payed). Google isn't planning on doing this. They just want books to be searchable without showing the user the entire book. Google and O'Reilly arn't doing the same thing. If you want to wander over to safari.oreilly.com and search through the books that you *could* have access to for a fee then you can do so. THAT is more like what google is trying to do. Let you search books without having full access to them, which is IMHO a very nice idea.
Why are google and Tim wrong? They want to enable people to search books to see if they contain useful information before they go out and buy them. Kind of like flicking through a copy of the book at the bookstore.
Silly rabbit
There seems to be a bit (hah!) of confusion regarding Fair Use Rights. People seem to think that it means that you can just copy part of something and that's all hunky-dorey, which it isn't. Fair use is a doctrine (though in the past 3 decades codified) which describes an exception to the basic copyright. What Google is doing here isn't directly covered under section 108 of the copyright act (archival/library copying) is therefore definitely not solid. Those that fall outside the exemption were dealt with by a 4-4 Supreme Court tie in Williams & Wilkins Co. v. United States. A big mess.
Additionally, the reproduction of works must be targetted, and fair use doesn't extend to research that is done for commercial purpose. So google would have to make sure that any research that was done with its engine was not-for-profit and for educational purpose. From section 108 of the copyright act: "[applicable if] the reproduction or distribution is made without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage." So not only is copying for a commercial purpose a violation (ala Texaco), the section that defines copyright also includes as part of the balance "(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole." Harper & Row in particular ruled that 300 words was enough for infringement if the words were important and there was a significant economic impact either to the benefit of the infringer or detriment of the rightsholder.
There really needs to be some education about copyright laws before fair use doctrine gets thrown around as a justification for copying world+dog. People seem to think variously that there's a constitutional right, a blanket gaurantee of it, no limitations on it, and a hard and fast rule for its application. The response to all of those beliefs is a very emphatic NO.
It is precious that a great representitive of the book publishing industry can stand up and defend Google Library Project. O'Reilly does not only sell good books, he values the good projects as well.
Good job O'Reilly. I am happy as one of O'Reilly's regular customer.
The lawsuit brought on by Authors Guild against Google is less about ignorance and more about paranoia.
Writers are not dumb, after all, most of them know full well they cannot get rich writing books. But for some odd reason, the folks who are on the board of Authors Guild have determined, rather erroneously, that having Google digitize their books is equivalent to giving away their books for free on p2p networks, like in the music business.
The unfortunate reality of the book publishing is this: books, especially fiction, are nowhere near as popular as other media like music and cinema. Last year, when the five finalists of the National Book Awards were announced, it was quickly revealed that only one of them sold more than 2,000 copies of her book. Sad, yes, but that is the reality -- people do not think buying books is a priority in their lives. This ambivalence of authors who want their books to sell and yet resist the help from new technology is beyond any satirical interpretation.
Sun and Fun
Lessig reminds of an interesting supreme court case that centered around the invention of the airplane. In early days, your 'property' was the area of the land you owned, all the way up to the heavens. The case was a farmer suing a pilot for flying over his land, on the basis that doing so was trespassing. Thankfully, the courts were (at that time) smart enough to figure out that technological innovation was much more important than maintaining the status quo.
We're running up against the same class of problem with the Internet - old ideas need to go to make way for progress. Microsoft (and the industry of proprietary software developers), the RIAA, the MPAA, etc all stand to fold if they don't find new business models, because technological innovation and peer-to-peer Internet society threatens to make them totally irrelevant.
The proper decision for these business to make would be to adapt, but blinded by their own greed (indeed, they built these huge empires on bloody money), they've sat on standby while technology blew them by. Now, facing annihilation, they're resorting to the courts and their elite lobbyist teams to try and place the onus to adapt on new technology -- to unfarily restrain and disable new technology in such ways it not only caters to their outdated ways, but makes them even more bloody money in the process.
Ladies and gentlemen, our rights are at stake; but moreover than that, they're cheating consumers out of vast technological innovation. The onus should be placed FIRMLY on these businesses to adapt in the face of new technology. If our courts, our government representatives cannot defend our right to innovate, then I think it is time we consider their next replacements. In the mean time, we need to let these organizations know that we're tired of contributing to their pile of bloody money, and remind them that even the biggest couch potatos of our ranks all have their breaking point.
When I attended the Canadian Copyright board's meetings on copyright changes, there was a guy there from a publishing house. He was vehemently opposed to anybody doing *anything* to "his" works, regardless of whether it might benefit him monetarily or not. His attitude was "it's *MINE*, and you can't have it!"
The topic was ebooks, and legal protection. The prospect of a blind person using a screen reader to read one of his ebooks absolutely horrified him, because it meant that someone is reading something from his company that wasn't being used the way he wanted it.
The core of his objection went something like "if I want blind people to read it, they should have to pay me extra to produce a version on tape."
The question "what if you could produce one version that could be used by everybody" was met with "doesn't matter, it's mine, and nobody else should be allowed to do that."
The return of "but it would be cheaper to produce one version, rather than having you spend money making separate versions for blind people, which would make you more money" was met with "doesn't matter, it's mine, and nobody else should be allowed to do that."
It seems to me that the Authors Guild has the same mentality as this publisher. They don't care that it will make them money, or that it will increase readership. All they care about is they don't want to do something, so nobody else should be allowed to do it either.
Personnally I'm sure the Guilds' plan is not so badly thought out.
Clearly it is in the Guild's _members_ best interest to publicise their books, and Google print would certainly help in that case.
However this is not the issue. The Guild is not about to shut Google Print down, they simply want a piece of the action.
For Google to build their index they have to scan the whole of all the books. Furthermore it is not unreasonable to think that Google are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they are in it to earn a piece of the earnings on each book sold through their portal somehow, be it by arrangements with Amazon, etc ; or like they do with their web search engine via relevant, unobtrusive yet money-earning adds, or perhaps something similar.
OK, so if you read the US law on copyright/fair use, you realize that for fair use to apply, only an unspecified subset of the work can be copied, scanned, etc, and it must be for research/study/personal use, etc, but certainly not commercial.
So Google is probably not in the clear there w.r.t. fair use. If they are this will be great news for them, and for future services that depend on whole bits of commercial works that can be indexed, but I don't believe this will be the case.
BTW it doesn't matter than only a small bit of copyrighted work is shown to the public. This is to ensure that the public does not commit copyright infrigement. This is not the issue. The issue is that Google has scanned the whole lot without permission. *They* are being sued, not us !
So the Author's guild wants a piece of the action, and they want control. For every dollar that Google is going to earn via Google Print they want something for them too.
What do you think ?
No, they are providing SEARCH access to the complete contents, NOT view access. Also, Google allows ANY author to opt-out of the index. Fair use rights are set in law to provide for EXACTLY this kind of thing!
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
The New York TImes actually cut out a paragraph because of a 750 word limit, the full text, including a key paragraph on why this is actually beneficial for authors and publishers is here:
s _op_ed_on_authors_guil.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/09/ny_time
The first is their Open Books project which includes out-dated, out-of-print, or community produced texts.
The second is their embracing of the Founder's copyright, under which they will release hundreds of books in decades to come, in collaboration with their authors.
It would be great if those books were released earlier, but at least they have taken a stance on releasing them earlier than necessary.
Where is google GETTING the books to digitize? The LIBRARIES.
Are the libraries permitted to give 3rd parties their books for digitization for OTHER than archival reasons (read commercial intent)? I suspect no.
If no, why isn't the AG going after the libraries for illegally disseminating copyrighted works?
How can you possibly argue that having no control over how your works are copied and distributed is a good thing? Even if it does increase sales in the long term? Of course, if someone wants to say that what you wrote is good, bad, sucks, causes deep emotional distress or whatever elese legitamate or ludicrous criticism they come up with, they should be allowed to say it. But that is just free speech. How is that equivalent to anyone copying your work in full without your permission? Maybe you don't want your work to be searchable by anyone who does not having physical access to it. It is after all YOUR work.
How is Google's argument anything but "it's good for you so we'll do it to you whether you like it or not" type of argument? I am not a fan of perpetual copyrights and ownership of culture, but we can all agree that it is beneficial to the society to have short term copyrights, can we not? We can all agree that other people can't use what the law deems is your property without your permission just because everyone says it will be good for you, can we not?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"What do you think used bookstores do?"
They buy books the author and publisher have been paid for already and resell them. This is perfectally fine. But if they made facimmile of said books, it would indeed be illegal in the United States.
"And not every library is non-profit--membership libraries are fairly rare these days, but they still exist."
No one is making you join them. They don't get public funding either so they must buy their own books or get them donated.
My whole point is Google wants to make avaialble any book they choose and make a profit from it. How about Google digitizes all these books and gives all this data to some non-profit library who can post them and make them searchable without ad-words? This won't happen? Exactally, because Google would not profit then. I like Google as much as the next guy...well maybe not as much as they filth that hangs around here often, but Google is simply wrong here.
They and you have no right to a vast majority of the content they wish to for all intents and purposes, sell without compensation to authors.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
actually, you can. search within a book for a common word, you can then read the entire book (minus the 1 or 2 pages they keep off limits).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If the parent poster bothered to find out how Google Library works, he would have learned that Google only displays 1-3 sentences per page found in the search, and is providing links to help find a copy of the book. Google will only display the entire contents of a book that's in the public domain, and their interpretation of public domain is that it was published before 1922.
Basically, if people don't know about a book, they're not going to buy it. So you're totally wrong about this not being in the author's best interest. All this can do is lengthen the long tail.
However, from the OP's standpoint, Google Print, which is a corollary program at Google, might not be in the best interest of the author, since Google Print allows people to view anywhere from 20% to 100% of a book. It appears that the copyright holder can opt-in, and have the version scanned in through Google Library be used as the source for Google Print, in which case much more of the work would be available for viewing.
Finally, there is some anecdotal evidence that making digital copies of a work available for free can be beneficial for the author, although I'm sure it's not true in all cases. Example of this in a technical book are Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java" and "Thinking in C++"
That hurts. Not only rejected on a story well before it showed up on the main page, but it was duped!
Grouse, grouse, grouse.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
He requires a fee if you want to read the entire book. He doesn't require a fee to search. His service is free if used the way google's print search will be used.
You don't need to pay anyone for fair use. You don't, for example, need permission to print an excerpt of a book in a book review, nor do you need to reimburse the author even if you charge for your review.
The cake is a pie
"However, we have reached an unfortunate point with copyright and fair use where we'd rather halt innovation than admit that copyright holders' expectations have reached a point of making it cost- and time-prohibitive to meet their demands and are to the point of stagnating not only the public domain but technologies and services that deliver or even touch upon copyrighted content. In this sense, creating a scenario that is not unlike the movie industry's dire predictions about the VCR in the early 80s."
I agree with your sentiment, however your angst is misdirected. Copyright holders want to keep things private and out of the public domain. By that logic then we have reached the FORTUNATE point (fortunate by their perspective) where all other innovation is halted and they have a monopoly hold on intellectual creativity.
By definition, copyright gives the copyright holder the EXCLUSIVE right to decide how to distribute or disseminate his work for the duration of the copyright.
The problem is not that copyright exists, but problem is that they last far too long. 50 years after the authors death? Why do long lived authors deserve more compensation than short lived ones? It should be a fixed period and it should be a few decades at most.
If searchability is such a great thing for the AUTHORS then they will find a way to implement it. The fact that it is great for the consumers is absolutely irrelevant to the issue at hand. Copyright is by definition an infringement on consumers. The ability to copy whatever you want whenever you want for any reason would also be convenient for consumers. That is NOT an issue here. The consumers dont matter from the ethics of copyright. Only whether or not copyright law encourages authors to create more IP in the short term so that in the long term more work enters the public domain (eventually).
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
More important long term is variable opt-in for pre-defined templates of online reading. A fiction author might well want to offer 1-2 chapters to reassure your interest and to get you involved. Some authors might allow a page or several non-cintiguously. A dictionary may squirm over 3 sentences and prefer something else (1-2 lines or # of entries/day or opt-out).
I think the primary fair use issue for me is whether Google needs to own the book ripped to its database (1-2 million books/yr x ~$30) and the Library of Google.
The question is simple: is Google giving public access to entire books which they do not hold copyright on?
The answer is yes. It's immaterial whether or not you can search and find a certain part of the book. The fact of the matter is simple... you can view entire copyrighted works via Google's service.
So, O'Reilly is wrong because his situation is different from other copyright holders, and Google is wrong because the entire book is still available via their website without the consent of the copyright holders.
You can go to Amazon right now and view sample chapters of books on their website to pique your curiosity as to whether a book is sufficiently informative enough to purchase. The difference is that Amazon has been given the authority to do so. Google has not.
OK, so if you read the US law on copyright/fair use, you realize that for fair use to apply, only an unspecified subset of the work can be copied, scanned, etc, and it must be for research/study/personal use, etc, but certainly not commercial.
Actually, none of that is true.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Whatever the fair use status of Google's work, they have given everyone the option to opt out. I'm sure the lawsuit represents "opting out" and so those works have been pulled. When everyone *except* the Author's Guild works are represented in the index, I suspect some members of the guild will reconsider why they are members. I don't see Google knuckling under to extortionist tactics when most of the industry seems to understand that they stand to profit from having works accessible (even if a few others have grumbled a bit).
There was an earlier comment about an author who was objecting to the idea that a screen reader could allow the blind to access an e-book. The idea that he had total control over his work trumped any moral objections to preventing the blind from accessing a work as well as any argument that showed he stood to profit *more* from allowing that market to exist. For him, it was control first and last. The author's guild is in the same mindset... in both cases they stand to lose customers by stubbornly adhering to their rights. So let them opt out and call it a day, as only those who do opt out stand to lose.
Sig under construction since 1998.
It seems that people have forgotten the purpose of copyright. The copyright is not a God-given or constitutional right, it was created to encourage authors and artists to create works of art by allowing them to profit from it for a while, with the assumption that the work would later be released into the public domain. Copyright was supposed to increase the amount of works in the public s\domain by giving the author or artist a temporary monopoly on the distribution of his work. A copyright was the incentitive to create new works (again for the public domain); without a copyright very few people would invest the time and enery to create new works.
In our selfish, me-first society this ideal has been corrupted. The author or artist is no longer creating something for the public, but for himself. He sees the copyright as a restriction on his right of ownership; instead of what it really is, a special privilage. Our culture of idea ownership has lead to the obsurdity of several hundred year old works, such as the Bible and church hymns, being copyrighted. What next, copyrighting the Constitution?
Through out history, anytime an author or artist released a work to the public, it becomes part of the public domain. They had no legal ownership of their work. It has been suggested that Shakespear (along with many other famous authors) committed what would now be considered plagerism but was fine back then. Also, the authors of the first three books of the New Testament are thought to have based their books on one older manuscript. Some parts of the Gosples of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are almost identicle to each other. Yet no one accuses them of plagerism. Back then, if an artist wanted to protect his work, he just did not release it to the public. Hence the idea of a copyright to encourage artists to release their work to the public but still retain control of it for a while, I think 15 years was the original period. Over the years publishers, authors, artists, the RIAA, and the MPAA have been brainwashing the public that they have full ownership rights and the copyright laws restrict them. We need to return to the original ideaology that says that all released works are part of the public domain and a copyright restricts the rights of the public for the benifit of the authors and artists.
This must be why I'm not a lawyer, when I read
107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Release date: 2005-08-01
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Points (1) above seems to me to rule out commercial endeavours, and point (3) seems to rule out copying whole works. Are there counterexamples?
Thanks.
There are some pages that will be inaccessible to *ANYONE* according to the FAQ. Therefore, all those people who keep coming up with ideas on how to abuse this service are completely wrong in attacking that point--no amount of collusion can result in people getting the whole book.
Now, why scan it all, then? Well, someday, copyrights might actually *expire* (no, I'm not going to hold my breath, but copyrights *are* supposed to do that). Moreover, I suspect that Google will allow you to search based on *all* of the content--you just won't be able to see the pages most relevant to your search (and you don't know *where* in that 80% of the book the relevant parts lie)--but you at least know that Google thinks the book somehow relevant to your search.
There are few things in life, more amusing and at the same time equally heartbreaking, than to observe such presumably intelligent and educated folks going to such great lengths to shoot themselves in their collective feet.
.....
And considering the rebuttals by some folks here, claiming to be authors, one only begins to hope such dimwittedness is not rampant.
Dear Lord. I had such respect for writers. Help me to regain it.
Folks, just RTFA.
Perhaps, perhaps, the lawsuit itself, is only to set and establish the rules under which the works will be made available. Else, mayhap authors and artists really do take vows of poverty to remain pure, and this is just designed to protect said purity.
Heaven protect us from such
I think I've figured out why so much of the discussion of Google Print so completely misses the point: we're too used to thinking about copyright law through the lens of the GPL.
The GPL licenses unlimited copying of a work without restrictions. The GPL's restrictions attach only upon the re-distribution of the copyrighted material (or of copies or of derived works). So when we think about "copyright violations," we think first about re-distribution.
Discussion about Google Print has been confused by this pre-occupation, because what Google proposes to re-distribute (bibliographic information and very short extracts) arguably falls under the ambit of fair use.
But books -- with a few exceptions! -- aren't covered by the GPL. Making a copy of a book, even if you re-distribute none of it, is illegal unless you receive prior permission from the author, publisher or whomever holds the copyright.
We all know this. We know that we can't just stroll into a library and start making photocopies of entire books. And we know that if we set out to make copies of every single book in the New York Public Library, there'd be trouble. And rightly so.
And we also know that if Microsoft announced that it had decided to copy millions of books, without the copyright-holders' permission, we'd be up in arms.
The other argument one hears is that copyright-holders should welcome the chance to be included in Google's database. Perhaps. But shouldn't the choice be up to them? Shouldn't they have the opportunity to negotiate the terms of the deal, or simply accept or reject whatever terms Google happens to offer?
Opt-out is not only a bad answer, it's dishonest.
Opt-out is a bad answer for exactly the same reasons we reject it with respect to privacy and spam. We shouldn't have to do something "extra" just to get a spammer or a credit card company to not violate our rights.
Opt-out is also a lie. Go get a book from your bookshelf, and flip to the copyright notice. In many cases, you'll find a little statement with words to the effect of, "All rights reserved." Now, this notice isn't required by U.S. or international copyright law anymore. But it's still there, in millions upon millions of copyrighted works: "All rights reserved." Translation: "I OPT OUT!!!"
Naturally, Google has no intention whatsoever of respecting this perfectly clear and unambiguous denial of permission to do exactly what Google proposes to do.
And that's what the issue really boils down to: Google is doing a plainly illegal thing, in the face of explicit prohibition by the copyright-holders, with a simple justification: "Oh...you don't mean us."
The Author's Guild is simply answering: "Yes, we really do."
The downside (for O'Reilly) is that having an electronic book service makes every single book easily available for transfer over p2p. And the small relative file size means that you can download all of the O'Reilly books in less time than it takes to download a movie.
I humbly disagree. Presuming the more proper interpretation of consumer as anyone who uses the content rather than anyone who purchases the content (it's important to specify this as it's typical to conflate consumers with customers in the world of business) copyright's "ethics" or intent is all about ultimately benefiting those who consume.
As you say, it does so by offering an incentive to create -- those who release new content to the world are permitted "ownership" of their material for a limited time such that they may exploit their work commercially or permit others to do so, therefore allowing profit from new works to be realized and making it possible for careers like acting, writing, and software design to exist and flourish. And by having a fixed (and formerly short) term that ultimately lapses and permits the information to enter the public domain, recognizing the importance of benefiting those who consume by not allowing the indefinite monopoly over protected works.
But it's important to recognize that, in particular with the length of the modern copyright, we've got rights in the U.S. to excerpt copyrighted material (sadly, rights which must be determined on a case-by-case basis). Even if the rate at which works entered the public domain was returned to what you or I thought was a proper term, the fact remains that there is a significant benefit to everybody involved in permitting Google this particular use of copyrighted works. Assuming the "ethics" of copyright are as I laid out (i.e., maximize the shared benefit to creators and consumers in the short run, maximize the benefit to consumers in the long run), why should the authors/copyright holders be the sole arbiters of what is ethical and proper?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
"Finally, it doesn't matter whether the authors will ultimately profit from Google doing this or not. IT DOESN'T MATTER. It is either legal or it is not."
It matters tremendously if we have good or bad laws, and as far as I can see, any law that makes what Google is doing illegal is a bad law. True, the case needs to be tried (if it comes to that) according to current law, but that doesn't mean current laws should dictate things like this infinitely into the future.
Dead people don't need money.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
1. Transformative Fair Use--Taking a lot.
The first form of fair use is what Judge Laval in the 2nd Circuit referred to as transformative. In this case, you can take quite a bit from the original, but you're within the law because you transform it into something else by your labor and thought. Literary criticism is a typical example. To do good criticism, you have to discuss the plot, describe characters, and even quote the author. But you're being transformative because you are turning it into something different from the original, something with a completely different use and often something the author would never do.
Making a movie from a book isn't transformative. Movies are derivatives and the copyright holder owns derivative rights. And one factor the Courts looks at to the tell transformative from derivative is whether the new replaces the old. A book about Tolkien's characters doesn't harm an interest in reading the book and may even add to it. But watching The Lord of the Rings movies may keep someone from buying and reading the books. That makes it a dervative. Ditto with etext. Having the etext means you don't have to buy the printed book. That's why Google is being sued. Is what Google doing an etext or an index?
When I wrote Untangling Tolkien, the first and still the only book-length chronology of The Lord of the Rings, I regarded what I was doing as fair use even though my book of necessity lists in chronological order virtually everything done by every character in the tale. I argued that my thought and labor sorting out Tolkien's complicated and often hidden (in the narrative) chronology was legitimate scholarship and thus fair use. Unfortunately for me, no court has ever ruled on whether a chronology of a complex fictional work was fair use or not, but when the Tolkien estate sued me in federal court, they were forced in the end to recognize that my argument was strong enough they were likely to lose at summary judgment. So, they bailed out and the judge later tossed their case out "with prejudice." I'd taken an awful lot from Tolkien's tale, so you can see the plot in infinite detail in my book, but was safe because I'd transformed it from a story to a commentary.
2. Non-transformative Fair Use--Taking just a little.
A 9th circuit case that weighed in my defense involved a web site that indexed art and pictures on the Internet. Want a picture of a "fat horse," that site could find it for you. In that case, the webmaster was doing little to transform the original. He was simply using automated software to prowl the web and turn the large images it found into small thumbnails. If you wanted the large image, you had to go to the copyright holder through the link he provided. That's very close to what Google wants to do and, in that case, both the district and appeals court ruled what he did was legitimate fair use. (The webmaster also had an opt-out scheme like Google's.) But a major part of the court's rationale for their decision was a recognition that thumbnails are virtually useless for any purpose other than finding the original. If the website had been taking a 600x400 image and turning it into a 599x399 image, it would have been in big trouble.
Google is claiming that what they're doing is like thumnails. The excerpts are so brief, they suggest, that most users will have to track down the original to get any real value out of them. Google has good reason to want users to do that. They get a kickback when the user goes to Amazon and buys the book.
But authors and publishers can legitimately ask if Google is going to keep drawing the lines where they now draw them and if they're going to be careful to make sure some clever programmer can't come up with a way to extract the entire text. Other search engines can be manipulated just that way. I saw someone who wanted the entire text of a book even though
2.5 U of M Digital Copy. Google agrees to provide to U of M a copy of all Digitized Selected Content that has been "Successfully Processed" with thirty (30) days after the Selected Content is Digitized... the U of M Digital Copy will consist of a set of image and OCR files and associated information indicating at a minimum (1) bibliographic information... (2) which image files correspond to that Digitized work, and (3) the logical order of those image files.
So Google is giving the library a digital copy that is not just an index -- it is a full copy of the original, probably PDF or TIFF images of pages plus the OCR. Were Google discarding this copy rather than making a copy for the library, then the "it's only an index" argument might hold. As it stands, it doesn't.
I just read
You need to consider the fair use as a whole. It's not just whether one of the elements is not satisfied, or even whether most of them aren't. It's about whether the use is fair, not just the arithmetic of the four factors.
Commercial parodies are dirt-common, and the Pretty Woman case is probably the most appropriate. The Betamax case, meanwhile, indicated that under the right circumstances, copying an entire work by means of a VCR could be a fair use.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
For all those saying that repeated searches would allow you to read the entire text of copyrighted books, this is simply not true. Google has three sets of pages for each book that is not public domain: there are a few pages which are unrestricted, anyone can view them; there are more pages which you can view only by logging in with a Google account - and Google keeps track of how many you view and only allows you to see a certain number - and there are pages that are never available to anyone, logged in or not. There is no way you can read the entirety of the book. More information here: http://print.google.com/googleprint/help.html (of particular interest are questions 2, 3 and 4)
Here is the entire text with the missing paragraph and some comments by Tim O'Reilly. And no registration is needed.
I'd pay five dollars extra (to the standard book cost) to have both a digital and physical copy of the books I own. I dunno how many times I'm looking through a book and my mind moved my hand to press Ctr+F.
I'm sure book sales would go up if there was a way like this to actually gain access to digital books.
For the longest time, I've searched for a book I read about a decade ago that was originally written in the late 60s or early 70s. With Google's setup, their engine will most likely be the best to actually find it. Searching by keywords on Amazon is the hardest thing to do since it finds books that aren't in the genre I'm looking for.
77 HITS
Really Long Off Topic Combo
You clearly do not understand Google Print. Go look at their screenshots and come back when you have a clue.
That doesn't make sense. Not only does Safari charge a fee, they have explicit license agreements with the rights owners (i.e. the dead tree publishers) which allow them to offer the service. This is not like the AG v. Google Print situation at all.
When the NYTimes argues against the content restrictions and then forces you to log in... what's that?
Pot...kettle...black.
Having better access to a written work before purchasing? It benefits only good authors. If I am able to take a quick peek in a book, to say "what a moron" and to go searching further - I will not buy the moron's book. So, since most authors are indeed morons the lawsuit looks quite reasonable...
Clearly everyone's interests are basically aligned here. Readers want to find useful/enjoyable books. Authors (and guild) want to sell more books. And what does google want? They aren't altruistic in this - google wants to sell ads to booksellers like amazon and B&N. So all of this legal wrangling is really about google and the authors coming to terms on how the money will be distributed. Google would like to get all the ad revenue and not pay authors anything (let the book sales pay authors). Authors basically feel like they deserve a piece of that ad revenue because it's their content that's being used to sell the ads. This is what big business is all about - wheeling and dealing about how to split up the pot.
Not: cut the mustard!!!
I mean, imagine you're a candy manufacturer. A big mall network buys the candy from you. They put ads for these candies on TV and give away free samples. And then you want the TV and people who distribute the free samples to pay you extra because they use your candies in their ad campaign which is about promoting sales of your candies.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
If that were my choice, I'd choose to buy the book almost every time. The only times I'd rather just read the book online (or download it) is if the book sucks and I only need a small portion for some reason, or the book is not available to buy. The only book I've ever "pirated" was an out-of-print book that I couldn't find anywhere. For me, I love actually reading books; that is, I love reading physical books that I can hold. I'm currently writing a book (albeit slowly... very slowly) and I'd have absolutely no problems with Google scanning that book in (assuming it gets finished) and letting people view its content online. I'm assuming that most folks are like me and prefer an actual physical book to one online. Sure some people are cheap and would just download it, but I think the Author's Guild is seriously dropping the ball here. Free advertising with Google? Come on, where else can an author find that much exposure for free?
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
If you found a reason, any reason, to sue someone and get some money out of them AND prevent them from doing something new and scaarry, wouldn't you? The issue here is not whether or not someone should sue, or how good their facts are, or if they know the law or not. Someone will always sue. Let's get past that. What's important is the defense. If Google can withstand the force of the many lawsuits that are sure to come because of the new way they are doing things, then who cares about the particulars? Might makes right, and the best offense is a good defense. This is CYA times, after all.
1) Is the Google Library Project a Good Thing(tm) for an author?
2) Is it legal for Google to scan books without the owner's express permission?
The answer to question 1 is a guarded yes. What research has been done suggests that the more your stuff is on the net, the more you sell. Check the notes on the 'Baen Free Library' http://www.baen.com/library/ for more details.
The answer to question 2 is a resounding 'No'. Google does NOT have the right to digitize and make available portions of books, chapters of books or even pages of books without the owner's permission.
Those two questions don't really have a lot to do with each other. Please make sure that when the question is "Is It Legal?" you're not answering "Is It Beneficial?"
Thank You.
Dead people don't need money.
I am tempted to ignore this comment since it practically gushes of youthful ignorance, however it may contribute to further dumb ideas in the minds of others if I leave it unchallenged, so I shall reply:
Copyright law grants a monopoly until 50 to 70 years AFTER an author's DEATH. The question is, that if an author lives for 50 years after he publishes a book, why should that book garner 120 years of monopoly protection? whereas an author who only lives for 1 week after a book is pubished only gets 70 years + 1 week of protection? (in canada deduct 20 years from those numbers).
In both cases the author is DEAD and NEEDS NOTHING.
MOREOEVER: The purpose of copyright law is NOT to fulfill any needs of the author. It is to encourage the creative process itself and speed the rate of creative works entry into the public domain. Since you don't know in advance that you are going to
live to 70 or 40, then a fixed term of compenstation (say 50 years) would be as much incentive for authors destined to
live to 100, as those who are destined to live until tommorow.
So the question remains.. why do long lived authors warrant MORE monopoly INCENTIVE than short lived authors? ( Why not used fixed terms for everyone?)
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
"1. The character of the use. Google will be using the works for primarily commercial purposes. Their aim is for users to visit their web site, search for snippets in these books, and hopefully either click on an ad or purchase the book from a link on their site. They are not providing criticism, commentary, newsreporting, or parody, which are all factors that weigh in favor of fair use."
No, but they will provide search and context analysis. Don't forget the alternative here, the book Guild could opt out of Google book search and create their own search with their own books and profit from their own adverts. That people will use Google is because its search analysis is considered to be good, so they certainly do add value to the work, which is what the "criticism, commentary, newsreporting, or parody" tests are all about, adding value.
"2.Since these books will be checked out from libraries"
Recall the libraries scan right, Google doing the scanning is not checking them out, its simply scanning them as an agent of the library, there is a contract there. The question is whether it can go on to index the digital version.
"3. How much will be used...Google is planning to copy everything."
How much of the music is used when I convert CD-> MP3, all of it.
How much is used when a webcache caches my webpages? All of it.
How much is backedup when I backup my disk? All of it.
In each case these come under fair use, no new person gets to use the copy so its not a copy that can cause a loss of potential income. Google's computer may have a word index representation of the book, but if nobody can read it, it is the same principle.
"4. Net economic effect. This question asks, if this behavior was widespread, would the copyright holder suffer economic loss? Clearly, the answer is yes; if everybody went to the library and scanned in a complete copy of all the books, there would be a much smaller incentive to purchase them."
Again, nobody can read the copy in the Google index, what gain is there if you can check out a book and take an *unreadable* copy from which you can only view snippets among hundreds of others? As to whether appearing in Google search results is a benefit or a loss, is it a benefit or a loss to have extracts appear on Amazon with links to buy? How is the Google thing different?
All this is very moot. Since the Guild are aware of the system and could simply opt out.
How much does it cost to opt out? A few pennies to run off a list of books. So they go to court and argue the potential damage of opt-out vs opt-in, and it is a value measured in pennies because thats what they weren't pepared to spend, and the example authors they take to court as part of the class action will automatically have been opted out so their 'damage' claim will be zero.
Balance that against the potential extra sales by having their books indexed and no judge will find in their favour.
Holy shit, you changed your sig from that misquoted proverb.