Slashdot Mirror
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
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 It's very handy considering reference material can become outdated so quickly.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.
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
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.
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.
ignorent
I think that sums up everything you said right there.
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."
But, yet, you cannot post the O'Reilly Bookshelf to your website...
Click here or here.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.