Slashdot Mirror
Second Google Suit Over Print Library Project
linumax writes "The Association of American Publishers, an organization of book publishers including Pearson Plc's Penguin unit and McGraw-Hill sued Google over its plan to create a digital Web library of printed books. The Association of American Publishers sued Wednesday after talks broke down with Google over copyright issues raised by the Google Print Library Project. Publishers say Google will infringe copyrights unless it gets advance permission for the scanning. The suit is the second by the publishing industry against Google's library plans and underscores the worries sparked by Google's expansion beyond Web search." From the article: "Google, which is working with five of the world's great libraries (Stanford, Harvard and Michigan university libraries, the New York Public Library and the Bodleian library in Oxford) to digitise their collections, stopped scanning copyrighted books in August after protests from publishers. However, it intends to resume its work next month."
We are mere months (maybe a year) away from the ability to completely scan any book and convert it accurately to text based PDF in under an hour. It will likely be F/OSS software that does it, released ostensibly to save old books in the public domain.
When this happens, books will end up on P2P just like movies, music, porn, and images. Just as P2P helps people find interesting musicians and performers, it will help people find interesting writers and authors.
No one can stop it. The big delay was caused by lack of available hardware to handle the intensive scanning and converting. We've seen software that can use a webcam or cellcam to scan documents quickly. This is processor performance driven. PCs aren't getting slower.
5 huge libraries and a multibillion dollar corporation can not compete with hundreds of millions of end users volunteering a few hours a year to copy their favorite books. The entire published collection of books for the last hundred years could be online by 2007.
Google should be embraced by publishers, not sued. Google could track interest, topically sort similar novel(list)s, and provide a great research tool and froogle-to-buy source.
If the RIAA had iTunes before Napster, who knows where we'd be. If the MPAA embraced e-distribution at a reasonable price and quality, the same is true.
People don't become pirates for financial reasons of theft, but of supply and demand. Hundreds of millions of BT users would rather pay $1 than waste hundreds of hours on low quality, low speed, high risk piracy.
One of the bigges online collections of data will be violating copywrights by copying information provided by libraries...
Guess we need to outlaw coppiers in libraries...
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
This is a monumental waste of money.
I mean, just because it's online, it's not something of a 'public library'? How so? Do libraries have to get permission from every single publisher of every single piece of media they release? I think not. Why? Because they're not using the content in their own works. THAT is where infringement would be applicable. In Google's case, you're purely and simply going to see the content of the book, including copyrights and credits. So, again, how is this different from a library? I'd say they're very much in the clear here.
"Crime fighters fight crime. Fire fighters fight fire. What do freedom fighters fight?" -George Carlin
Books are so 20th century. It it's not made of pixels I won't look at it.
I once almost collided with Pat Schroeder crossing the street in downtown Denver. Maybe I should have (we were both on foot, btw).
I'm surprised Pat Schroeder is involved with or leading the charge in attempts to throttle Google. She offers tepid reasoning (probably not enough prep time spent with handlers) (from the article) :
She's right! This does go far beyond creating a digital version of a card catalog! Google's super-sized revved up digital card catalog qualifies as a godsend to the publishing industry.
The ability to do Google indexed book searches will spur reading, and sales, not muffle it. How many slashdot readers have been thankful for the Amazon.com feature of letting you peek inside their books? Many times this has been the feature giving me the final nudge to buy (though there also have been times where that nudged me the other direction).
When people start "discovering" books with Google's book searches, the very worst thing that would happen would be that people would be briefly exposed to books they otherwise might not have. But for "searchers" who find an interesting book, they won't be ripping the publishers off by printing (stealing) or downloading (stealing) these books, since Google isn't offering that as an option.
And assuming for the moment some figure out how to download a copy, they're left with a book on their computer... not convenient to read (e-books, still on respirator), and way too expensive to print (and aesthetically "not a book").
So, the most likely result would be a library visit, or purchase.
Come on Pat!, think again.
... the RAIN! Yeah, Yeah. I mean, the rain don't mind and the rain dont care. And you gotta blame it on something
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
...They're hitting walls that they don't (for)see. Between this and the multitude of other legal issues that have arisen like the "name copyright" issue in the UK and the similar problem in Germany that forces them to call it Googlemail, I have begun to wonder how many more sectors/markets Google can possibly penetrate before hitting a legal or societal brick wall. They might do something that deems them as a "big business" or "monopoly" with all of the associated negative connotations. They've already infringed a little on privacy recently with their policy on using users' data. It will be interesting to see how far Google gets.
I hope Google wins this one, and wins it big. I'm tired of living in the 19th century, and being told I should remain there by people who consider an electric typewriter to be too advanced for their use. Google believes they are within the current copyright laws, and they have more expensive lawyers than I do.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I guess we'll all have to memorize our favorite book.
It's interesting to note that authors don't really have any say in this affair even when they're in favour of Google Print.
Books are a bit like software, and the try before you buy model works well. I have a hard time imagining most people deciding to read the entirety of a long book on their computer, even if it's available for free. I can imagine quite a few people looking at a new book online and using that as the basis for choosing to buy the book if they're going to read it though.
Fortunately, at least a few companies display a bit of understanding. The people initiating these lawsuits should read the introduction Here, and then check Baen's profits, and note that they're still in business and doing reasonably well, thank you very much.
Of course, everybody else should go there simply to check out some books for free, and (perhaps) to support Baen Books for being decent people and doing good things.
--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
These associations of book publishers should be careful with what they do, or they could quickly find themselves in the position of the RIAA and MPAA amongst far more people than just geeks. I'd wager every single person I know has been to our city's library system at least once in their lifetime. (Columbus, OH) And I'd also be willing to bet that should the courts be stupid enough to allow this to spill over eventually to the library's that there would be a lot of people pissed that they might cripple our city's library system which happens to be the best one in the nation because there are about 30+ library's "linked together" across the city. In other words, I can go to my local library building (or even online: http://www.cml.lib.oh.us/) and reserve just about any DVD, CD, book, or magazine that I could ever want. It's like a physical version of Kazaa, eDonkey, or any other P2P system, except all the content IS stored on the central "server". (The library drives trucks of books around all over the city, transporting them from one location to another based on patron requests)
So, how is Google any different, except that it's potentially more massive, EVEN faster than the library system I'm used to, and available to even more people?? It's just an extension of the concept that's been around in my city in "snail-mail" form for quite a while now. Keep it up and they're liable to piss off a vast majority of the population of the US if the laws about copyrights keep getting extended further and further away from the original intent of copyright law.
No, this isn't my most well-though-out post ever, but I wanted to highlight this facet of the debate over Google's LIbrary Project.
There is gutenberg project which is slowly converting Public domain text into the digital platform but doing it w/o violating the copyrights. Google, being the 800 pound gorilla of the digital space, wants to say, "I do whatever I want and you can not do anything about it" which, in my opinion is not right.
Some people before my post said, pc's are not getting any slower and scanners any weaker and this is supposed to happen sooner or later. Well, I beg to differ. One person scanning his own, paid, copyrighted book/document and putting it on P2P is not right to start with, but after all, looking at the percentile of the internet users sucking up everything in their sight are not the people to worry about. Think about the mega-downloaders of the pirated music and movies and books. How many of those have really sat down and watch/listen/read all they downloaded. Not even close to anything comparable to what may happen if google start to offer them. There is not enough hours in a day to both be on the computer and suck up all the media content.
Whereas, if google wanted to offer whatever is in libraries, quite hefty portion of which is still protected by the copyright monstrous laws (which is a subject of aniother discussion but regardless how bad they are, they stand on a legal ground). And do you think if people can look up in google what they are looking for and get their daily fix of reference/literature using the free resources, they still are going to walk to the Borders or B&N and buy the print media. I sure would not, for nothing else than eliminating clutter in my home.
Google, the darling of internet, doing it now, does not make it right. I am against any mega conglomerate like RIAA/MPAA and alikes but this is not the way to deal with those morons. Two wrongs still does not make one right in my books {pun intented}
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Actually, many recent translations of the bible are still copyrighted (such as the New International Version).
I work with one of those academic library institutions.
This is more like an effort by the libraries, and Google is basically under contract to do the heavy lifting of scanning and technology, because they're good at such grand data projects. Traditional libraries simply aren't scaled and don't have the budgets to do it all by themselves. There's major cost savings in consolidation and expense-sharing. Why scan 7 times when you can scan once?
It seems like the publishers are really aiming for a for-fee privatized electronic library system, cutting out traditional non-profit libraries.
You're kidding, right? Have you never heard of the amazing work done by Project Gutenberg? They have something like 16,000 books and counting. All digital and all in the public domain. In many ways, it's the F/OSS equivalent of Google's project.
From their site:
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
We are mere months (maybe a year) away from the ability to completely scan any book and convert it accurately to text based PDF in under an hour. It will likely be F/OSS software that does it, released ostensibly to save old books in the public domain.
When this happens, books will end up on P2P just like movies, music, porn, and images. Just as P2P helps people find interesting musicians and performers, it will help people find interesting writers and authors.
As an author, I couldn't agree more.
Most people want to curl up with a good book and read in comfort, lying in bed, on their couch, in their recliner (cracking fire and comfortable cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate optional). A few folks don't mind sitting in front of a computer to read, but the rest of us like good old fashioned, physical books in our hands, and what Google is doing is not only NOT a threat to the sale of traditional bound books, it is a boon.
What it isn't a boon for is old guard publishers having a stranglehold on exposure anymore, meaning that self-published, POD, and other less traditional forms of publishing gain more leverage in attracting interested eyes, without having to somehow get ahold of that coveted shelf space in a brick-and-mortor store.
Not that I don't covet that for my novel (I do), but the more accessible the information is to those looking for it, the more people will buy the physical version of the book.
The AAR has its head up its ass, and win-or-lose on this particular lawsuit, they and their constituents are going to lose bigtime if they don't update their mentality to fit with the technological reality of today, and begin exploiting the opportunities it offers.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
They are carrying out the greatest copyright violation in the history of...well...all of history. What possible argument can they have in their favor? I can't even see where they'd start such an argument and I can hardly imagine a more clear cut case against them. Copying entire books wholesale can hardly be called "fair use" and they're using the copyrighted text to drive up hits on their ads. I think print.google.com is a great tool, I've just printed out a few useful pages from a book with it myself, but I don't think they have a legal leg to stand on. If I did the same as them as an individual I'd be considered a copyright thief.
The substance of what you said has an implied presumption that when something is coppied, distributed, or even sold without the creators permission, then the creator/publishor is in some way violated. While I understand that's the theory, and we have all been spoonfeed that that is an "intellectual property" right, the reality is quite different.
While protected rights, naturally lead to incentives - protected incentives do not naturally lead to rights. Perhaps somebody feels violated when you freely copy, then again perhaps plantation masters feel violated if you steal, oops I mean free, slaves from the plantation. That is what I mean. Property and incentive are not an ends in themselves, to be just they need to derive from the real world - like the fact that not everybody can use the same resources at the same time, but with information they can!
Copyrights are particualrly evil because they have the effect of stealing away our culture and giving it to hollywood. They also have an effect, that to secure them, you need to microregulate the internet and everybody that uses it. They have an effect that leads to anti-trust behavior in large software companies, and tend to make the information itself more valuable then the people who provide the services. The cost of having them in the information age is simply too high and they can not survive the information age any more than micro-controll of the labor market (slavery) could survive the industrial revolution.
Google should have worked with the publishers and copyright owners of the books rather than a public library to do this job? I mean making all books in world online is not a monstrous task just because of the efforts involved in scanning, but for managing the relationship with all the stake holders. Think of it - anyone with a lot of cash and copy monkies can scan these books, but it needs lot more skills to get all the relationships right. Google took a short-cut by bypassing the people who put years of their life creating the books, and no wonder these people are unhappy. This particular lawsuit is from major publishers of the likes of Mc Graw Hill - there is abosolutely no way Google can proceed with this project without their blessings.
If you think that's flamebait, it sure goes to show you don't know what debate is all about.
Well, I've seen this sort of thing come up time and time again, and in the hopes of contributing something that will keep the discussion informed and to the point, I'm just going to shoot a couple of things down right now, and raise a few more:
1. Google is NOT doing something new and revolutionary, they are instead extending what is already a good idea and already extant. Sample chapters have been up on the 'net for years. The ability to search for millions of books in dozens of different libraries at once by particular keywords has existed in university libraries for at least a decade, if not longer. Project Gutenberg (sp?) has been digitizing out-of-print public domain books for years as well. Google is extending this general idea, but they did not invent it. And, if they are stopped by these lawsuits, it will NOT bring the world to a halt, damage authors or the publishing industry, damage readers, create some weird heirarchy of those who have information and those who don't, or anything of the sort (in fact, we already have an overload of information in modern society).
2. The argument that what was in the first draft of the U.S. Constitution is exactly what copyright should be is extremely flawed, both historically and logically. It is flawed logically because the argument revolves around the U.S. Constitution, which has little or nothing to do with international law and the Berne Convention (and the libraries in question have books by authors from around the world). It is historically flawed because the first draft of the U.S. Constitution was an 18th century document written by 18th century people for an 18th century world, and society, including the situation of authors, has changed since then. There's a good reason why Jeffersonian democracy hasn't existed since about the 1830s. Copyright may require some tweaking to function properly in this new age of the Internet, but regressing two centuries is not the answer at all.
3. The main issue here revolves around whether Google asked for permission from the copyright holders before scanning. And, both morally and legally speaking, they should have. And, the fact is that if they had asked first, they quite possibly would have had the publishers and authors bending over backwards to help, because it IS a good idea. However, the ends do not justify the means, and quite frankly, I don't think they ever have.
Now, those issues aside, there are some good issues to raise - how do you protect copyright in this digital world? At what point is something no longer fair use when you're dealing with credited electronic excerpts? How does copyright need to change in order to balance the needs and rights of the author with the needs and rights of the reader?
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Penguin have a good reputation in the UK. However, I found out that they actually use every legal means to protect IP as their own, even when legally that IP is legally in the Public Domain.
Case in point - Beatrix Potter - the cute bunny children's stories - Penguin owns the company that publishes Beatrix Potter books.
Nearly all of these stories are in the public domain, and even a lot of the artwork. However, you try to publish any of it... They have trademarks on all the character names and images, so although the copyright is public domain, the character names count and images count as trademarks of the company so you can't use them.
Doesn't seem right to me that a company should be able to prevent public domain works being published because they have trademarked the character names...
There is gutenberg project which is slowly converting Public domain text into the digital platform but doing it w/o violating the copyrights.
What happens to PG once all notable English-language works first published on or before December 1922 have been scanned and digitally republished?
I discovered this as I tried to read parts of a fairly recently (2004) published book. In addition, the pages of the books are images, and you have to click to read each page. Also, you cannot skip to a specific page in the book, like in a physical book. That would be a real pain in the ass for anybody who wants to read a whole book.
The publishers are freaking out about nothing. This is a tool that will increase book sales, not decrease them. More of a "teaser," if you will. This is not evil.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
You're forgetting that if the author isn't protected from theft, he/she will be less inclined to produce the culture that's being "stolen." Creation takes work and that work needs to be compensated otherwise it'll cease. Slavery arises when a man is required to work for nothing which from the jist of your post, is exactly what you think creators should be paid. After all, it costs them nothing to duplicate their work so why pay them?
It's not the protection from theft that's evil, it's the theft itself that's evil.
Surprised this wasn't in the article but you can read Google's response from Eric Schmidt here.
I'm afraid some people are ignorant of the Fair Use limitations on copyright. Berowell must be, if he thinks that the resolution of Google's Fair Use defense is clear.
Schroeder, on the other hand, knows perfectly well that Google's Fair Use argument is plausible. It won't necessarily win in court, but it is no way a clear loser. Schroeder does what all big publishers do: pretend that Fair Use doesn't exist, and hope that they will get people to abandon their Fair Use rights.
Except that Google, isn't making the digitzed books available.
Their project is different from Gutemberg.
Gutemberg projet, is about making old books freely available online. Because the *FULL* content *IS* distributed online, they restrict to texts that are :
- either too old and the copyright has expired
- for author gave explicit autorisation to publish and make freely available to everyone
- are in public domain for some other reason (obviously, a public speech hasn't a copyright).
Google on the other hand, make digitised copies of the books, for *themeself*. They do *NOT* publish the *FULL* text, but only small excerpts, to illustrate context of the search results. This is allowed the same way as you're allowed to do citation.
*NO* ebooks are made available by Google, there's no way this google project could compete with book sales. On the contrary : as pointed elsewhere in this thread, the search results include links to where the full book could be purchased.
They aren't making any money by *providing pubicly copyrighted texts* (which is piracy).
They're publishing their own datas (search result) which they obtained by their own mean (keyword search by search engine) by analysing their *private* collection of digitalised books that they keep for them self, apart from a few citation next to search result.
And these books where obtained legally, by borrowing them from a public instituion (a library) which pays corresponding license to be able to make those books available to the public (either readers, or in this case to Google). No copyright violation, google *can* access them to do their work, because the library pays for such access.
------
Compare to music :
- You can buy legally CDs.
- You can do whatever you want with your own CDs, including coasters.
- You can rip thoses CDs and build your self a digital library of FLACs/OGGs/whatever.
(I mean *you could*. Copy-protection systems make this very difficult, but in theory, it's perfectly legal).
- *ONLY* if you made the *CONTENT* available to everyone on internet without paying a license for that, that would be illegal.
- On the other hand, if some friend asks you on IRC/GoogleTalk/MSN "Do you know how many disc Prodigy has made", you can say "Hold on for a sec", quickly search your library and give an answer. *it IS legal*, as long as you don't make those disc available to everyone to download.
Same is true for google.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Free scan, free search, free marketing. Of course the book publishers would be against it. It might mess up their carefully constructed marketing plans by creating a demand they were previously unaware of
Creating a digital library is different than a public library. In a public library, the library pays for the books and the authors earn money over the purchases, while in Google's digital library people are going to read the books without paying and so the authors dont earn from it. I agree that some of the books are overpriced but making digital copies is not an answer. Google is doing EVIL here and i think they should come up with a mutual solution with the publishers and the authors. Digital library is a very good idea but should not be unfair to anyone.
You're forgetting that if the author isn't protected from theft, he/she will be less inclined to produce the culture that's being "stolen."
Yes. But so what? The goals of society are to both encourage the creation of works and to have those works be in the public domain. While we can cause a lot of creation to occur by slightly delaying entrance into the public domain, and only granting a modicum of protection even during that initial period, there does come a point of diminishing returns. In fact, we eventually reach a point where granting more protection reduces the amount of creation.
So there will always be unprotected authors, because some works just aren't worth protecting to the extent that it would take to cause them to be created.
Furthermore, we should be responsible with copyright policy. We should provide no more incentive than the minimum amount necessary to get the maximum amount of net public benefit (i.e. the benefit of creation minus the harm caused by their not being in the public domain). To provide more of an incentive would be wasteful.
Slavery arises when a man is required to work for nothing which from the jist of your post, is exactly what you think creators should be paid.
Failure to give artists an economic incentive to create works is hardly comparable to forcing them to create. If artists aren't incentivized, they can be accountants or something. There's no one cracking a whip over them, so please stop with your useless hyperbole.
It's not the protection from theft that's evil, it's the theft itself that's evil.
It's not theft, and neither is evil. Copyright is utilitarian and essentially amoral.
Although if there were a moral component, it'd be in favor of pirates, who spread and enjoy knowledge and help ensure that works will survive, as opposed to authors, who act as gatekeepers.
-- 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.
... could it spell the end of search engines?
If Google loses these lawsuits, can I then sue Google for caching [and copying] my website without my permission?
If not, what is the difference? Whether I create my copyrighted work in physical book form, or in digital web form, it's still copyrighted. What is the difference?
The logic Google is following for Google Print appears to be established reasons why a search engine can scan, cache and allow people to search websites.
Now, I believe Google is in the right, however if they told they are wrong it could open the pandora's box and thus increase lawsuits from greedy people....
-Z
I don't see that Google really had any choice, though. If they had tried to go book-by-book and get permission for each one, it would've taken a decade to produce a useful product, and by that time certain publishers would've foolishly forged exclusive deals with other search engines. Most would've demanded fees and payments for use of their books, and other things that would've completely removed the usefulness of the service. For just doing it, Google forced the publishers to either accept the deal that was acceptable to Google (and search engines in general), or to sue them. Some have chosen the first option and even made deals with Google to provide enhanced service for their publications, and others have chosen to duke it out in court.
This will be an interesting battle to say the least. We'll see just how far "Fair Use" actually goes.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Here is a possible sequence of events that I can forsee:
1. Google indexes all the books in the world.
2. People are able to find these books online.
3. Authors begin to give the rights to distribute their works through google, google takes a cut of each purchase. (this will probably yeild a better deal for the authours given the enourmous market and subsequently small profit margin per sale that google can get away with)
4. Publishers no longer are needed.
Granted, this process could take many years.
I think that bringing these lawsuits up against google may be the only way to keep publishers running.