Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: OpenOffice, SuitSat, Google Books
Sutor says "no way" to VNUnet OpenOffice story. Andy Updegrove writes "Earlier today a story by Tom Sanders at Vnunet.com covered by Slashdot didn't make sense to me, as it ran counter to the joint determination of Sun and IBM to make ODF succeed. In part, the story relied on an email exchange with Bob Sutor, IBM's Vice President of Standards and Open Source, so I asked Bob whether the story got it wrong. The answer? Sutor said: 'To be more clear, and on the record, IBM and Sun are working together happily and effectively on the OpenDocument Format. I think we've made a terrific amount of progress in the last year and that's because of the broad cooperation by the community. I'm not sure why we were dragged into the referenced story, but it was certainly nothing we initiated.'"
Google forgives BMW after delisting. dbucowboy writes "According to Matt Cutts, Google has re-included BMW.de in the Google index due to their willingness to cease supposed blackhat SEO practices." From the article: "I appreciate BMW's quick response on removing JavaScript-redirecting pages from BMW properties. The webspam team at Google has been in contact with BMW, and Google has reincluded bmw.de in our index. Likewise, ricoh.de has also removed similar doorway pages and has been reincluded in Google's index."
SunComm vows to make right their DRM debacle. Rinisari writes "SunnComm, creators of the highly controversial MediaMax DRM implementation on a number of Sony BMG and indie CDs have issued a statement through the EFF that they are committed to notifying consumers and issuing updates/patches to fix security holes caused by the software. MediaMax is one of the two copy protection schemes about which Sony is being sued class-action style."
SuitSat-1 weak but not dead. zark22 writes "Suitsat, the amateur radio transmitter stuffed inside a surplus Russian spacesuit and chucked out the International Space station is alive and well, if somewhat weak and staticky. Users can still follow its progress at the Suitsat webpage."
UMich President defends Google book search. eaj writes "University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman defended the legality and ethics [PDF] of the Google Book Search project to a meeting of the Association of American Publishers on Monday. The AAP is suing Google over the book scanning involved in the project. From the article: '[We] believe this is a legal, ethical, and noble endeavor that will transform our society. Legal because we believe copyright law allows us the fair use of millions of books that are being digitized. Ethical because the preservation and protection of knowledge is critically important to the betterment of humankind. And noble because this enterprise is right for the time, right for the future, right for the world of publishing, right for all of us.' CNet news also has a video."
Pinstripe? I asked. Flannel?
No, more like a bathing costume, replied Jeeves. An occupational hazard of the useful classes.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Google has no right to index all the books it wants and throw them online for anyone to browse. They are the property of the rightful owner, not Google.
Their policy of having publishers request to not have their books scanned would be similar to the government forcing one to request not to have their phone tapped. Some fundamental rights should not be assumed to be given up until they actually are, and intellectual property is one of them.
No matter how much they redact irrelavent text or try to keep users from gaining full access to the book, someone will. The Slashdot community, of all, should recognize this. Time and time again encryption schemes are hacked (DeCSS being the simplest example to point to).
Yes, I too agree that for too long now, libraries have been giving free access to books, periodicals, and music recordings that their patrons would otherwise have to pay for. Authors and recording artists are going broke and starving just so that children have a chance to learn unencumbered.
I recommend picketing your nearest public library at once.
dom
Google is only putting part of the books online.. The whole book is searchable but you can't download it. That is well within both the spirit and the meaning of fair use law. In fact if anything it will lead to more request to get the book both from libraries and to purchase it; both of which will ultimately increase sales of these books. Given that some of these books are not in print, it is also of great benefit to society.
http://www.hawknest.com/
Cracking CSS was one thing, someone had physical control of the media and a player to work with, software and a debugger.. It was just a matter of time. Google could put MANY roadblocks and switchbacks in any such interface to increase the time to source an entire work.
But when the effort of doing so exceeds the reasonable effort of walking into the library and scanning the entirety of said literary work, I would contend that Google has met it's burden (though I am sympathetic of the rights-holders desires). If you make the argument that it's a rare and unique book, then I think that the rights-holders arguments fall apart. I think in that case, those are the books most deserving of digital preservation.
A case could be made that someone could garner this same information from the Library of Congress by sitting there for hours on end. One thing that Google print brings is the possibility that a book will gain more exposure, and therefore potentially more revenue for it's owner.
"Some fundamental rights should not be assumed to be given up until they actually are, and intellectual property is one of them."
nom it is not a 'fundamental' right. It is a privilage granted by congress, which is a representation of the people.
Read the constitution.
Nice strawman you threw in there. Illegal search and seazure is written into the constitution.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Tell me this: What's the difference between browsing a book on Google and walking into a bookstore and reading the book on the shelf?
The point of either is to get you to buy the book. The publishers should be praising Google for making their books searchable.
I personally have bought several books based on text I have searched for using Google Book search.
My blog
This is probably the reason why she (and many other people and institutions) believe that Google is in the right on this issue, and why the publishers are trying to use allegations issued in the press, rather than the courts to fight against it.
If the publishers had a reasonably strong case in court for this issue, they probably wouldn't be trying their "ham-handed appeals" in their press releases and in the popular press.
Unfortunately, Google is proposing to do something which would be of great benefit to all of mankind, and it might have a negative impact on some publisher's profits, and they are fighting claw, tooth, and nail to avoid that!
I'm both an author and a publisher, but I welcome this change -- I'd love to see my work reach wider audiences and I'm not too worried about losing a few percentage points of profits. In fact, it might be that if more people could easily find my work on Google, more of them would go out of their way to purchase it!
I see people from my town (VE7xxx) are tracking the suitsat. Cool.
I also see there's noone with WTF in their callsign tracking it. Bummer.
The earlier story talked about control of OpenOffice, while this new article (along with the comments from IBM) talks almost solely about ODF. Those two things are not even remotely the same, and if these tech writers can't figure out that they're different, then God help the state of Massachusetts.
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
--KC0QBP
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
http://books.google.ca/intl/en/googlebooks/help.ht ml
# Why can't I read the entire book?
We respect copyright law and the tremendous creative effort authors put into their work. So, unless any given book's publisher has given us permission to show sample pages, you'll only be able to see the Snippet View which, like a card catalog, shows information about the book plus a few snippets - a few sentences of your search term in context. If the book isn't under copyright at all, you can browse the entire book in the Full Book View, but the aim of Google Book Search is to help you discover books and learn where to buy or borrow them, not read them from start to finish. It's like going to a bookstore and browsing - with a Google twist.
Google pitched BMW out an air lock, it's fortunate for BMW that they were let back in from the cold.
I wonder if Google's mercenary tactics to fight BMW's mercenary tactics were justified? Did they give BMW a day to remove the doorway page?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Seriously son, you just may be retarded. The point of the whole thing is to quickly figure out if a book is going to be useful or not. And although this might change at some point in the future, any book worth having is worth having a dead tree copy of. Even if someone were to figure out how to read the entire book online, so what. Have you ever tried to read an entire book online? It sucks. Many more people will see something that looks interesting and go buy the book than will spend hours and hours reading it on a monitor. Besides, if people had to figure out every way that somebody might possibly take advantage of a system before implementing it, nothing would get done.
I agree. I'm not opposed to the technology; not at all. It seems ingeneous and useful. But it seems patently obvious to me that the program should be opt-in, not opt-out. You wouldn't want an arbitrary commercial company -- a publicly-traded corporation, no less -- having access to your health records, or your business records, just because that corporation and some uninvolved, third-party academics said it was "for the public good." Why on earth should a publishing company be forced to turn over all the fruits of its labors -- remember its sole business is publishing -- because Google feels like it?
Fair use, my ass. The only reason Google wants this program to be opt-out is because that makes it better for Google. Google plans to use the fact that it has access to all this material as a way to market Google's products and services. If it only has a partial database, those products and services instantly become less valuable. But I ask again, why should a publishing company be made to market Google's products and services, for no benefit to the publishing company?
Ah -- you say there's a marketing benefit to the publisher. Fine. Then Google should do some market research to figure out what that benefit is, in dollar amount, and charge the publisher for it. Sounds like a great business opportunity for Google to me. But of course, that wouldn't work, because it would give companies the opportunity to opt out by not paying, and Google doesn't want that.
Suppose Google wanted to put my likeness up on its Web site. Should I have to write and ask them to take it down? Isn't it reasonable to assume that Google doesn't have the right to do that without my permission? So why is it any different for my words?
I repeat: Fair use, my ass. "Public commons," my ass! This isn't "public." This isn't "us." This is Google and Google alone. This isn't for the posterity of society. It's for Google's posterity, and longterm financial gain, at the expense of other businesses.
Promoting the good of society is the role of the government. If the world needs an electronic index of books, then let the federal government pass a law mandating it, provide budget for it, and let it be managed as a project of the Library of Congress. If, on the other hand, a commercial company like Google wants to spend its own money to do the same, then more power to them. But since it's not Congress, Google shouldn't be able to force anybody in this country to comply with its business goals -- in fact, you might think it would have the good grace to ask first, if it's really dedicated to "not being evil."
(And re: "not being evil" -- am I to presume Google is hiring philosophy PhDs as well as computer science ones?)
Breakfast served all day!
Google forgives BMW after delisting
So I guess if your site has been delisted, all you have to do is remove it, email Google, and watch it be re-listed. Right? More likely, if you are anyone other than a Fortune 500 company, you're email will never be answered. Or unless you pay some cash.
Google owns their search engine of course, but I think it's just a little evil to essentially make an entire company disappear from teh interwebs. If they weren't so pervasive then this would be a non-issue, but when I see these stories I get a little worried. Hopefully they won't expand their definition of "cheating" to include things we might think are OK.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Google has no right to index all the books it wants and throw them online for anyone to browse.
[sarcasm] Yeah, and libraries have no right to purchase books and throw them on shelves for anyone to check out for free. Heaven forbid someone quote a book in a scholarly paper! Those writings are the work of the author, and shouldn't be stolen by those wanting to piggy-back off their labors! [/sarcasm]
It's called "fair use". So, the debate is (or at least should be) whether Google's project consitutes fair use or not. To state point-blank that they have no right to do it based on the idea of copyright is to ignore precedent, which says reasonable exceptions can (and should) be made. The right not to have your book quoted, for example, is something you don't have unless you specifically reserve it (can you even do that? I assume so...).
No matter how much they redact irrelavent text or try to keep users from gaining full access to the book, someone will.
I could argue that libraries make it easier for someone to get their hands on a book (for free) long enough to scan and possibly OCR it, then share it online via P2P. Just because something can be abused doesn't mean it should be forbidden. You have to weigh the costs and benefits.
Copyright is not property. The books are the property of whoever owns the individual books. The right to copy those books are something entirely different.
No - privacy concerns and Governmental checks-and-balance have nothing to do with this issue; not even remotely. The interesting thing here is while Copyright is very useful, it also takes AWAY the public's rights. This is why people are so concerned about Copyright being truely limited. And this is also why there exists Fair Use within the very laws that establish Copyright. It might also be worth stressing that while much of our law is based on property, Copyright is not property - even with the use of snazy memes like "intelectual property".
Indeed. The easy access you're describing is called... a book. The access is already there in the form of book stores, public libraries, and personal libraries. If keeping something from being copied is your concern, don't publish.
Time to burn some karma. How the holy fuck does this nonsense get moderated insightful. This topic has been discussed repeatedly on /. Flogged to death in a rather ham fisted manner, one might say, if one were inclined to mix metaphors. And each and every time some number of posters need to be reminded, as does the parent here, that Google is not offering up entire copyrighted works for browsing, but rather just snippets. So, I ask, again: why does factually inaccurate nonsense get moderated as insightful? Anybody?
Like many people I've been booted out of Adsense without Google giving a reason. If they're willing to forgive BMW for a deliberate act will they forgive me for something I didn't do? Of course they won't.
Copying the contents of all those books into a database for search purposes, on the other hand, is a different matter.
Here are some alternative options:
On the other hand, Google seems to be choosing option #5 -- just copy the information into a database and offer it to the public without getting permission. Unfortunatley, under copyright law option #5 doesn't exist.
Breakfast served all day!
Indeed! But let us not stop at public libraries. Used bookstores are actually reselling copies of books! These books are the property of the publishers, right? Surely authors are being robed of income by these sales - none of which include payment to the author or, more importantly, the publishers.
I can understand why this action may not have much appeal. After all, public libraries and used bookstores hardly have Google-sized wallets. But then... Amazon and eBay sell used books too.
Regardless of the morality, there sure as hell is a legal distinction. Don't be so quick to assume that what you think should be right, is legal.
And as one legal blogger has pointed out many times, the publishers don't necessarily have anything to do with this. It's the authors who retain copyright, not the companies which sell their books.
Libraries have to purchase as many copies of a book or periodical as they want to keep 'in circulation' at any one time. It's really not a very complex distinction, though you seem to not get it.
Since when did copyright become a right equal in weight to a Bill of Rights provision? Copyright is explicitly granted by law.
Intellectual property has nothing to do with copyright. Copyright doesn't give you ownership, it only gives you a temporary monopoly.
Am I to presume Google is hiring philosophy PhDs as well as computer science ones?
Lately, it seems like they've been mostly hiring Marketing types.
(the diametrical opposite of techie 'geeks.')
And they're doing a durn fine job of shilling their bull to (some of) the geeks in the process.
> I repeat: Fair use, my ass. "Public commons," my ass! This isn't "public." This isn't "us." This is Google and Google alone. This isn't for the posterity of society. It's for Google's posterity, and longterm financial gain, at the expense of other businesses.
:) Putting that duty under the exclusive control of the government... oh, that's a good one! :)
A "commons" is something ANYONE can dip into. Even Google. Or Disney, for that matter, which did so extensively back when the public commons used to exist.
This, IMHO, is the sort of useful stuff copyright law ISN'T supposed to forbid. It's not like it's a substitute for reading the book, whether that means I have to go out and buy it or *gasp* borrow it from one of those libraries that steal the money due authors.
> Promoting the good of society is the role of the government.
Hahahahahahahaha! Well played! I fell hook, line & sinker for that satire.
I apologize, I didn't realize your post was satire until I read that line
...But when the effort of doing so exceeds the reasonable effort of walking into the library and scanning the entirety of said literary work, I would contend that Google has met it's burden...
... I just do what any script kiddie does best. Now some kind of argument could be made about Google's due diligence to quickly find and close such holes once they are opened... I'm just saying that the issue isn't as simple as your comparison might make it seem.
The analogy breaks down when someone goes to copy a second book. Presumably, a second trip to the copy machine at the library will take just as long as the first. OTOH, once a hole is discovered in Google's book protection, it could be scripted/otherwise automated such that downloading their entire catalog takes only a single click. When I want to crack the CSS on a DVD, I don't have to reinvent the wheel
BTW, I'm completely in support of Google Print, just playing devil's advocate here.
The whole book is searchable but you can't download it.
What's to stop someone from writing a bot that downloads the whole book by using the last words in a blurb as the next search term and concatenating the blurbs?
Print is dead -- Dr. Egon Spengler Seriously, most authors would probably kill to have someone actually read their book. For those who mind the freeloaders, they can opt out. Not a lot of harm in my opinion. But then again I'm not an author (although I did play one on TV once, but that is a whole other made up story).
Consider this: how much of the book is google copying into it's database? And for what purpose and use is google copying it? Then check the tests to determine fair use...
I'm on my way down to the local public library right now, with my Powerbook and a page scanner. I'm going to scan books in, and put them on my own website for others to search. I won't put the whole book online, of course, just the index. I'll start with "The Google Story"; I'm sure authors David Vise and Mark Malseed won't object -- I'm just following the example of their favorite company, after all. If the librarian objects, I'll simply refer her to Mary Sue Coleman.
Then I remembered Google's book search, which came up with at least five or six solid hits that actually helped - the books were in my local library, and their titles/subjects had absolutely nothing to do with what I was looking for, but the info was there. Without Google book search, I'd still be looking through stacks at the library. There's a time and a place for reading every available book tangentially related to a subject, but there are other times when an indexing service simply speeds up research.
I should point out that most of the pages I needed to read were blocked by Google; they only allow you to look at random pages out of certain books. But they index the entire book & tell you on exactly what pages you can find word references. A very, very useful tool, one that I will use in the years to come. I hate to sound like a shill for Google, but for what it's worth, this has been my experience with the service, and for this very specific and uncommon topic, it was very helpful.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
You're forgetting a very simple fact:
The library purchased all of the books it loans.
Google did not.
Google has no right to index all the books it wants and throw them online for anyone to browse. They are the property of the rightful owner, not Google.
I'm not trying to be funny here, but as long as Google buys the books before scanning them they are the rightful owners. I mean, what are we talking about here? Google is in the business of information searching and these books have information in them to be searched through. As long as Google isn't just scanning books for electronic distribution then they really haven't done anything wrong.
As far as I can see, Google wants to do two things:
1. Scan books into image form
2. OCR text to make content search-able
Those two things are not illegal or unethical. As an individual you have this right. Even if a corporation wants to undertake this type project, they can do it (corporations are protected as citizens under the 14th amendment), as long as they bought the books they scanned. In effect, they haven't actually copied anything, only transformed it to be computer digestible.
Of course being Google once this is done they want to let the world search the text. Fine, they aren't giving out the books so they have done even less than my local library does (which lends books out based on their right to do so, because the books are their property). Then again, my library doesn't let me search the entire text of the books they own.
Come to think of it, maybe we should be attacking those libraries that infringe on IP rights (ha!) and don't even give us a search function.
The only other thing I can think of is that maybe Google isn't allowed to display a page from a book that they don't have anymore; i.e. the book was destroyed or lost in storage. Maybe the publishers should institute audits on Google? The BSA would be perfect for this job, if they aren't available maybe there are a few Nazi's left around somewhere that will take the position.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I guess it's interesting, in a historic kind of way, that it is a Russian satellite that is beaming signals for anyone on the ground whilst on a self-destructive trajectory, given that it is - in many ways - a re-enactment of Sputnik. The biggest difference seems to be that this one was launched from space rather than from the ground, but the intended signal and audience seem to be essentially the same.
I wonder if it'll have the same impact, though.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I wish I knew. It seems to be quite a skewed perspective to use the service and claim that it is stealing books or destroying the value of books. Either that or they are going on other people's opinions rather than actually trying the service to see if it does what they think it does.When I tried it, the system only showed me the first three pages of a book, not the pages that I necessarily needed. The three line snippets aren't enough to base a paper on, even if they were, people writing papers probably aren't likely to buy books, they'll borrow them through the university library or interlibrary loan systems.
I wish indexing was done more so I can find what book and on what page. If I bought and read books, I would use this service to help me find what books I would want to buy.
Moderators are just logged in users who have been given a few mod points. It happens more often if you meta-moderate a few times.
So, log in, click that MetaModerate link, (and get to vet a few moderations), and then choose to participate in a conversation by modding up (or down) comments. You then make the moderation system better, or, maybe, more like you.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Actually, you, me, and everyone else on this planet has what are termed Fair Use Rights
Only if you define "everyone else on the planet" as "United States citizens." Britian, Canada, Australia and some other countries have what is termed Fair Dealing. It is a related, but ultimately different, doctrine from Fair Use. I haven't studied it enough to comment on it beyond it generally gives less protection to society at large than Fair Use does.
Other countries may or may not have a Fair Use or Fair Dealing aspect to their copyright law. I haven't yet formally studied international copyright, but hope to in my last two years of law school.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
We also need to gather and burn the library of congress to the ground for the FORCE authors to submit their precious creations to public record! How dare they!
If some innocent congresscritters get burned ot the ground as well... that is a small price to pay to protect the FREEDOM of authors from the TERRORISTS known as readers.
Join the FIGHT NOW! Bludegon the next person you see loaning a book to someone! overturn the tables at these ILLEGAL garage sales! and bring an angry mob the the unholiest of unholy... Church sale that DARES to not only sell books , but books that may even have (GASP) MUSIC IN THEM!
We most protect writers as they will surely stop writing if they dont make millions on every word they write!!!!
BTW: This sarcasim brought to you by the letter O.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Then I remembered Google's book search, which came up with at least five or six solid hits that actually helped
But even google books could not tell you what movies to watch. You should have just posted to "Ask Slashdot"...
Can be heard here.
Most of the books were read by someone else, and then GIVEN to the library.
I am shocked I tell you, shocked!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, you, me, and everyone else on this planet has what are termed Fair Use Rights . Some examples of Fair Use Rights are that you can quote brief sections of a copyrighted work for the purposes of literary review or criticism.
Conceptually, Google makes two copies of the book in order to offer it for searching - an entire copy of the book stored on its servers, and snippets of that copy offered for public consumption.
I contend that neither copy meets requirements for fair use. In the first copy, Google is making an entire copy of the work. The copy deprives the publisher of a sale (Google didn't buy the book), copies the entire work, and intends to use that copy for commercial purposes (offering snippets from it on a public web site). There's no review or criticism at that stage, because the public doesn't see it...it's just being downloaded into a database.
The second copy (from the database to the end-user) doesn't feel like Fair Use either. I don't see any literary review or criticism attached to Google Book Search...just sentences from the book offered without question, on-demand, at the request of searchers. It's not a matter of offering the same snippet to everybody, as a typical fair-use case would; instead, they propose to offer separate snippets based on what the user asks for. Again, this service is inherently commercial - its goal is solely to get people to visit Google so they can benefit from the increased exposure and hopefully sell an ad or two.
This is probably the reason why she (and many other people and institutions) believe that Google is in the right on this issue, and why the publishers are trying to use allegations issued in the press, rather than the courts to fight against it.
If the publishers had a reasonably strong case in court for this issue, they probably wouldn't be trying their "ham-handed appeals" in their press releases and in the popular press.
The publishers are using the court to fight this, and Google is also fighting this in the popular press - or did you miss Google's own press page and Eric Schmidt's "'ham-handed appeal'" in the Wall Street Journal?
Unfortunately, Google is proposing to do something which would be of great benefit to all of mankind, and it might have a negative impact on some publisher's profits, and they are fighting claw, tooth, and nail to avoid that!
I'm both an author and a publisher, but I welcome this change -- I'd love to see my work reach wider audiences and I'm not too worried about losing a few percentage points of profits. In fact, it might be that if more people could easily find my work on Google, more of them would go out of their way to purchase it!
I actually agree with you. I think the publishers that are fighting this are short-sighted, just like I think the recording industry should find a way to co-exist with peer-to-peer networks. I don't think anybody is denying that the program itself would be a benefit for publishers and authors.
What I am personally worried about is requiring publishers to opt-out, not opt-in, to Book Search. I think the legal situation is clear, and Google needs to do the "non-evil" thing and ask for permission before including these books. You'd give permission, right? If I was in the publishing business, I would too, and I can't believe we're the only two people with an ounce of common sense.
Amazon.com has been running Search Inside the Book far longer than Google, and nobody complains because they're doing the right thing and asking the publishers to participate, not forcing them to opt-out. Google's opt-out program is especially egregious, because not only do they want publishers to opt-out, they want them to opt-out every title, and won't accept a blanket opt-out from the company.
That's wrong, and I think Google should be ashamed of themselves. The way to get people to like you is not to force yourself on them. It's not the way the Old Google did things.
Think about the word "copyright" for a while and perhaps it will make sense to you.
Here's a quote from a fictional work picked at random (OK, it's Princess Bride, so it really wasn't random!!) from my shelf. (My Name is Inigo Montoya......)
emphasis (and typos) mine.So the publishers like to think that they have the right to stop this, but Google thinks (and I think that they have the right in it) that they don't, and can do this under "fair use" provisions.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
But here again you are wrong. I am allowed under copyright law, and owner of a work to make copies of that work for my own use. If I buy a book I can certainly make millions of copies of that work and distribute them all over my own property. (The problems of course come when you give them to other people).
YET! We have a great deal of legal precedence that says taking snippets of already published books, and including them into an "index" is perfectly legal. This was done for centuries before the internet hit it big, and was a useful tool for researchers who wanted to know where every occurance of the word "god" appeared in Moby Dick (since the author didn't include an index).
So the question I ask is how in gods name is what the author of that index did (and has been legal for centuries) different from what google is about to do. Google is creating a service that says "here is where in a book the information you're looking for lies". It's up to anyone else to go track down the book and find it.
Besides let us not forget that the only really questionable chunk of books (to you) should be those books that are in copyright but out of print. These are the only books google isn't asking permision to include snippets for and the only group of books that anyone seems to be contesting googles stance on. All books out of copyright, clearly google can do whatever it wants. All books in copyright and in print, the solution is easy... ask the publisher. But we're talking about a group of books, and information where finding someone to ask permission is often times flat out impossible, and in these times google includes a modest snippet... and index if you will.
~ Anders
"Promoting the good of society is the role of the government."
no, it's the role of the people.
this is no different then a book review magazine where they include an index and some snipetts of the text.
I do not need to ask the publisher if I can talk about a book I read.
I don't need to get permission to give someone a book.
I don't need permission to resell the book.
" Isn't it reasonable to assume that Google doesn't have the right to do that without my permission? "
If your photo is taken in public, then google can put it up if it wants.
If you think they can't I suggest you look at the covers of some of the rags in the checkout isle.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In the United States, authors are nearly always obliged to sign over control to their publishers. The authors might retain some kind of copyright, but the publishers retain sole publishing rights. This is why many authors get frustrated when their books go out of print and the publisher still shows no interest in giving back publishing rights so said author can go elsewhere.
http://heavens-above.com/ carries suitsat data.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Yes, I think Google currently has way too much power, and is getting away with things it shouldn't.
During the last round of Google/BMW fun, I suggested a less favourable way to view that kind of web site. I think the web is in serious danger of going down the same path as books and media, where big name middleman sites (search engines, portal sites, archives, etc.) pretend to be doing the public a favour, while actually gathering disproportionate amounts of influence in exchange for services that may not be as valuable as many people currently think they are.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"I'm not sure why we were dragged into the referenced story, but it was certainly nothing we initiated."
Note the power of geeks with a cause (and too much time)
Google does respect robots.txt.
/*
They won't touch content that you tell them they can't index.
Every book published whould include in the preface.
robots.txt
Disallow:
problem solved
If I were a book publisher, I would HATE this service to go to some Chinese, Russian, or African student who makes less in a month than my book costs, and thus is not likely to pay me.
What I will agree to, is that Google charges a monthly fee to search my books, and I get a cut for every page the subscriber views. Given a $29.99 for a 200 page book, $0.10/page is sufficient.
Fcuk you pay me!
Right. They just used their library card. Just like anyone else could. It's not as if they went and robbed Barnes and Noble.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I found the post about using Google Scholar to research soul-catchers interesting. My initial reaction was one of dismisal as anyone with access to a decent set of library databases (MLA, Wilson, J-Store, MUSE) could have found that information much faster with full text to boot. But what if you're a HS student at East HogWaller High, or an adult doing some independent research. If you don't have access to a substantial library with all the latest tools, Google Scholar allows you a level of access to scholarly materials you may not have otherwise enjoyed.
Still pissed about the China page, though.
Try it. Google won't let you get more than a few pages from any one book. You could set up elaborate proxies and thousands of Google identities (you need to be signed in to do most of this). But these books are in libraries. There's nothing (except geography) stopping you borrowing the books and scanning them yourself. Every current bestseller and many textbooks are already scanned, OCRed (more or less) and online if you look around a little.
Every author/publisher contract should contain a termination clause; generally it says something like when a book is "out of print" (defined in the contract, but certainly if the book is not on sale it's "out of print") for a defined period, say 6 months, the publisher's rights are terminated and the author is free to find a new publisher. More rarely the publisher may have bought the copyright outright and permanently, say for a commissioned work, but in that case they usually pay up front considerably more than the derisory advance authors usually get.
Some sleazy publishers though, particularly vanity presses, omit this in the hope of forcing the author to pay to terminate their contracts, so always read the fine print.
And what about books published 50 years ago, author dead, publisher bankrupt, but in copyright still for another or so? The book can't be bought new, or republished; but you may want to find a copy used or in a library if a Google search points you to it. If you disallow this, no one wins.
Well... if _I_ were to mod my own post, I would have used "Funny". It was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But it does borrow from claims made by the Music Industry... some of which have been, at the least, implied if not echoed by book publishers in the past.
Based on this plus a fair amount of well settled law and I expect Google to win most if not all legal fights...
The stronger Fair use is and the more settled the LAW is about Fair Use, the better it will be for other (IMHO) technologies that also require "Fair Use."
http://www.hawknest.com/
When I publish my health and business records, you'll have a point. Otherwise, it has nothing to do with the topic being discussed.
Apparently, you don't know Fair Use from your ass. Fair Use does not require either the author's nor the publisher's permission. And Fair Use does not preclude profit.
Furthermore, Fair Use applies just to Google just as it applies to you or me. Or, at least, it should. The difference is that Google can probably afford to take a Fair Use case to court - I doubt I could fund such a venture no matter how strong my case appears.
But these books are in libraries. There's nothing (except geography) stopping you borrowing the books and scanning them yourself.
You've hit the nail on the head. Copying books out of the library is also a copyright violation. This isn't an opinion, for pete's sake. It's simple logic. The law says x is illegal. You do x. You broke the law.
I agree, this moral highground spiel is such bologna. They are creating a derivative work (Google Book Search) from the FULL contents of each book. It is irrelevant whether or not any given end users can access the entire contents; the entire contents is being used. Arguments as to this encouraging book sales are also irrelevant, even if it is provably true, it is still up to those who hold the copyrights whether they wish their IP to be used in this way. What if one of the book publishers decided to compete against Google?
You can't imagine how useful Google's book search is useful for research projects until you actually experience it.
You can't imagine how useful it is for the police to stop every car and search it at will, until you actually experience it.
You can't imagine how useful it is to lock people out of poling places based on their race, until you experience it.
You can't imagine how useful it is to arrest a demonstrator because he opposes the current administration, until you experience it.
You can't imagine how useful it is for employers to refuse to hire women, until you experience it.
You can't imagine how useful it is for landlords to refuse to rent to people with children, until you experience it.
You can't imagne how useful it is for the government to tap your phone and read your mail, until you experience it.
You can't imagine how useful it is for prosecutors to simply throw people in prison without a trial, until you experience it.
You can't imagine how useful it is to deploy the military to quench civil protests, until you experience it.
The violoation of every individual right is unimaginably useful to someone.
Because "more exciting" versions of stories to suck in readers are occasionally used in the articles that are linked to, in Slashdot summaries, often used in posts, and so forth.
Since the very beginning, Google has said that it's just providing a search service. Unless you're going to somehow find out that a single quote is in a book and plan to buy the book to get that one quote, Google is not costing publishers any money.
I can understand that publishers are leery of this being "the beginning of the end" -- after all, if they let Google get away with this, who knows what will happen tomorrow, with this used as prescedent? Still, though, the ability to have a free text search of all published works is phenomenally valuable for society, and not something that has been available to us before now.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Fair use, in its statutory defintion, is not a right. Nor is it statutorily what it is commonly considered, an affirmative defense- although lawyers and judges usually treat it as such. Fair use is not an infringement copyright. It is not considered a right, unfortunately- if it was, the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA would have been much harder to be made into law.
I looked for instances of a certain term in a database that doesn't display the full-text of most books. I then took these references, most of them long out of print, and looked them up in a library. Yup, call the police, I'm definitely abusing the system!
If you honestly think that Google Scholar will lead to the propagation of facism and the obliteration of civil liberties in the world, you need to take a good, hard look at *real* injustices being perpetrated across the globe.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Yes, yes they did.
Google is building the world's largest index of electronic books, and is physically stealing each and every one of those books.
Bookshops of the world, beware! Googlites come for YOU tonight!
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I agree with one of your premises- Google is performing this action to benefit Google. They may have more idealistic views in mind, but they couldn't do it unless the company benefits as well.
If Google's use is fair, however, Google does not need to pay the publisher anything. I don't find it particularly evil that they use fair use. It exists for a reason, and it doesn't automatically preclude commercial gain.
Google may have the right to put your likeness up on its web site. Are you a public figure? Are you in a public place? Answering yes to either of those may allow Google to do this.
Now, I don't agree with all of what the University of Michican president said. The confusing issue is that Google is acting as an agent of the University of Michigan library. Google, however, is not a library. If the library was doing itself, it could take advantage of Section 108 provisions of copyright law for the copying. Google can't do that for the copying or for the display of snippets- it must rely on fair use.
It would be nice if the Federal Government would act in that manner, but it won't. Electronic intiatives are not well understood, much less funded, for the Library of Congress and the National Archives, although there have been promising activities in the last few years- but nothing to that scale.
Yes- but the creation of a derivative work may be fair. I don't know if this use is fair, although I'd like to think it is. Google is partly relying on the Arriba case, which allows the use of thumbnails like you see in Google's image search. That also relies on copying the entire work and then displaying it in a different (derivative) manner.
It is not necessarily up to those who hold the copyrights. If it's a fair use, it's not up to them. If it's not a fair use and does not fall into any other copyright exemption, then it is probably up to them.
If one of the book publishers competed against Google- great. That's competition.
Offtopic? That's bullshit. Two points for the wise-impaired, as in a word to the wise is sufficient:
1) Google books just searches books, you miss other materials.
2) The movie is called "dreamcatcher" but that is just hollywood taking liberties with the name. The soulcatcher doohickey is a central part of the story. The story may not be of any use to a serious researcher, but then again it might be and google books don't know about it.
The way I see it, Google is not publishing a derivative work involving the whole of the book. I believe the page that's served up is what may be conflicting copyright law (not the contents of the server, in which case even private data stored on any networked computer would be a problem). When Google Book serves up a reply, the whole book is not displayed. This brings up the question: Is an author allowed to publish several fair use publications that, taken separately do not use too much material, but together use an entire work?
I didn't say copying books wasn't a violation. I was saying that Google isn't enabling copying more than (actually, less than) libraries already do. So Google is not exposing copyright owners to new risks.
The answer to this is to fix the copyright laws, not give Google a free pass to break copyright. Copyright should require maintenance, so that abandoned works get put into the public domain. I also think something like 10 years should be the extent of copyright, not the insane amount of time it is now.
I didn't say copying books wasn't a violation. I was saying that Google isn't enabling copying more than (actually, less than) libraries already do. So Google is not exposing copyright owners to new risks.
If Google's violation goes unchallenged, then it will indeed expose copyright owners to new risks.
Can't see anything wrong in University of Michigan putting its books online...
h igan-and-china-history/
However, I fail to see why US taxpayers should be burdened with the cost of facilitating the cost of educating Chinese students at a time when American students are suffering severe reductions and the American workforce is lagging in educational resources. China can afford to pay to educate its own students.
http://www.umich.edu/pres/china/university-of-mic
(or try googling digital library, China, Michigan)
If the University of Michigan is recieving ANY public funding, ANY information from those books should NOT be available outside the United States and protected territories and the consequences to the University should be very severe if that happens, including a loss of all public funding and requirement to pay back any funding it has already recieved during the period when it was exporting material paid for by US taxpayers.
It surprises me to see how Andy talks about OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument as being the same thing. The article talks about control over OpenOffice.org and without blinking Andy quotes IBM on their great cooperation on OpenDocument. That's weird. It's bad enough when the politicians in MA get it wrong, but Andy knows better than that. Much better.
;-)
Apart from that it surprised me to see Andy make a comparison with the Linux kernel. Linus accepts contributions to the Linux kernel as long as such contributions are licensed under the GPL. Unlike Sun, Linus does not require the contributor to hand him over the copyrights. As an IP laywer, Andy knows better than anyone else what the difference is between a non-exclusive license and a grant of copyright. Much better.
It's almost as if someone from Sun mistakenly posted on Andy's blog
Domain names were never supposed to matter anyway. URLs were never supposed to matter. The idea of hypertext is that you click on well-labelled links on a page (ie, "tracking openoffice in spacesuits" rather than "here" or "get it there"). You'd click these links, and you'd go to a new URL, and you never had to care what the url was. Google is doing exactly what the net was supposed to do, as best it can given the bad links being used, and the spam, etc.
OK, so they COULD release security fixes for their copy protection software... ...or perhaps they could not install their shitware on unsuspecting peoples' PCs in the first place, and have a CD just be a CD.
Just a thought.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
There was an amazing ammount of chicken little when Elvis' recordings were about to come out of copyright in the UK by the publishers. They are putting efforts in to changing the law to make copyrights last longer still. And do you honestly think that they will allow a change to copyright law in ANY direction that reduces their power???
You may have meant your post to be "funny", but it's a serious business for used booksellers.
I shop regularly at a couple of used bookshops, and both owners are quite well versed in the battle to eliminate their livelihood. Brussels (the Commission and the Parliament) have been heavily lobbied by publishers to change the rights around "right of first sale", and criminalise the re-selling of books. The lobbying currently is following in the footsteps of the recording industry, in the hopes of making a complete overhaul of copyright law in Europe, pointing to the gains made in the US and asking for equalisation without debate.
The moves to criminalise libraries and used bookshops are quite well advanced in the US, but until now common sense is resisting the corrupting influence of the almighty dollar. Give the US congress a little more time to accept some bribes^Wlobbying dollars, and we could see used bookshops outlawed soon enough.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
why does factually inaccurate nonsense get moderated as insightful? Anybody?
It's probably publishers' marketing drones using sock puppets to astroturf and mod. Also posting Dorothy Dix'ers. Anything to get their viewpoint as much mindshare as possible. At the expense of every other viewpoint of course.
There are probably dozens of such lying lowlifes on slashdot, and possibly hundreds or even thousands. They justify their lying by claiming that "the message speaks for itself" and "marketers have a right to free speech just like everybody else" and "it doesn't matter who says it". All bullshit of course. If they weren't lying at a minimum they'd have the common decency to put the companies they're representing in their sig's, knowing full well they'd be largely ignored. Guess why?
Misrepresenting company propaganda as an objective, third party viewpoint is fraud and it's a real shame that the law hasn't caught up with them yet. They call it undercover marketing, part of guerilla marketing, but it's really just fraud.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
You're assuming that they are breaking copyright. Obviously this is arguable. Like their Google News service, they are not publishing anything that could replace the original work. The cases publishers make against it are, in my opinion, either bloody-minded obstructiveness, or atttempts to go for the deep pocket.
Well, what new risks?
You can't imagine how great it would be if you would just shut the fuck up and stop inventing strawmen arguments in a pathetic attempt to back up your Sky is Falling "argument".
All legal rights are like that, including physical property rights, free speech, due process, etc.
The natural default is that might is right. The only "natural rights" you truly have are those you are prepared to die defending; anything else can be taken from you with sufficient force.
With time and evolving society, we have discovered that making agreements among the population to respect other kinds of right is useful. Moreover, when we act together like this, we have overwhelming force with which to defend those rights against the few who would not honour them; we call this a legal system.
I always find it ironic when people starting talking about how IP rights are artificial, government-granted monopolies, and then say that because of this we shouldn't give them the same respect that we give physical property rights.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I had not heard anything mentioned about the ISS' cross-band repeater being in operation to retransmit SuitSat. Do you know what its output frequency would be?
I don't really have the equipment to monitor it (just a HT with a 5/8-wave magmount, indoors) but some of the guys in my club regularly get the ISS, although I don't think anybody has had success getting SuitSat itself. It would be nice if they're boosting the signal for us.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Google News is a good example of fair use: The information is already publically available on the web. The analogy does not extend to books, where Google is copying whole books that they did not pay for. Should I be allowed to walk into a library and photocopy a complete book, so that I may then review it later and claim fair use?
If Google paid for the books they are copying, like the library did, then I think scanning and displaying excerpts for searches would be fair use.
Thanks for the insight. I had heard of publishing industry members making noise along these lines... I was naively assuming this was a vocal minority.
An interesting distinction. Many publishers would like to claim that even if you did buy a book, you have no such right. In any case, the word "copying" is open to interpretation. The digital images and OCR that Google does are not "copies" of the book. Does a purely digital version that is never published or made available to anyone as a whole count as a "copy"?
Secondly, practically, many of the books scanned are out of print, i.e. can't be purchased.
The purpose of copyright was to encourage creation and dissemination of knowledge. Recent revisions of copyright law tilt to protecting the right of the owner to profit. Both ends are served by this scheme.
Breakfast served all day!
I think the point is that publishing rights don't necessarily apply to what google's doing... they're not publishing the material in the traditional sense. They're creating a huge database out of it, which is a type of derivative work. The author still needs to give permission for that sort of thing... I probably have the terms/details wrong, but I know that a publisher doesn't have exclusive rights on every form of reproduction.
The way an individual is using the page search is obviously fair use.
As long as Google limits use to small pieces & indexing, but the really interesting thing is the possibility of using the aggregate data in new ways. What makes Google special though? They do interesting things beyond just indexing, bringing up metadata from accumulated resources. While this is fine with the web, with print books, I'm not so sure. For instance with a website, the links are part of the published content, so for google to use those to rank pages is of course fine. The google pagerank is essentially new content created from the existing work.
Offhand I don't have the greatest examples, but lets try something analagous to pagerank. What if google creates some novel content out of the collected bibliographies? Is this still fair use? Of course, you could get bibliographies at the library, but that is uniderectional (i.e. what books does the current work reference?) With a huge collection of works, you could just as easily build a bidirectional bibliography, and easily find at all books that reference the current work, a feat impossible in a library.
Let's say they use this giant scanned library to automate the creation of taxonomies. Probably fine, although the authors of included taxonomies & books on the subject would almost certainly disagree.
Maybe the issue only comes up if Google uses these databases to create content, but that line isn't exactly clear either. As bad as my examples are, I'm not sure, but I'm just not entirely convinced that the really interesting possibilities that such a giant database makes possible still fall under fair use.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Of course they are copies. The medium has changed; the words have not.
Secondly, practically, many of the books scanned are out of print, i.e. can't be purchased.
And now we have come full circle. I have already responded to this in my original reply. Change the law so that abandoned works become public domain. Reduce copyright limits to something sane, like a decade. But don't argue that Google has the right to clearly violate the law just because it has practical benefits.
But don't argue that Google has the right to clearly violate the law
There's no "of course" or "clearly" about this. Not everyone agrees with you (not just myself, who you can discount). As you said, we're just going in circles. You make your assumptions, I make mine.
I can't believe I came back here to say that you're so wrong it hurts... but I am. This is _EXACTLY_ what google proposes. You clearly haven't read up on this. They will index a book that is in copyright and in print sure (becuase there is NO dubious legalize in this case) but they won't include snippets.
~ Anders