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."
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.
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?
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.
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.
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