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Google Subpoenas Microsoft & Yahoo
eldavojohn writes "Mercury News is running a story reporting that Google has filed subpoenas with Microsoft and Yahoo, in relation to their legal battles with publishers and authors. Google faces charges of massive copyright infringement surrounding its online book project. The company claims that Microsoft and Yahoo have taken the exact same steps in acquiring print-related rights. Google therefore wants to show that 'everyone is doing it.'" From the article: "McGraw-Hill Cos. and the Authors Guild, along with other publishers and authors, contend that a Google project to digitize the libraries of four major U.S. universities, as well as portions of the New York Public Library and Oxford University's libraries, ignores the rights of copyright holders in favor of Google's economic self-interest ... Is the library of the future going to be open? Or will it be controlled by a couple of big corporate players?"
This first posting crap is barely worth it anymore.
Well I guess that makes it OK. If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I must have missed the bill where the "everyone is doing it" defense was made valid. Pirates of the world, unite!
If my buddy and I violate someone's copyright, and the copyright holder sues me and not him, guess what? That's his or her decision. Their copyright does not somehow become "less valid" because of whom they take legal action against, or do not take such action against.
Now, for _trademarks_, it's a different story. But, clearly, scanning in entire books has far more to do with copyrights than trademarks, at least in this case.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
mabey google should change their slogan from "do no evil" to "do less evil and tattle on everyone else when we get in trouble."
Now we can read all the posters wildly misinfomred legal opinions.
Sweet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Google certainly has enough cash.
The optical fiber cos bought the phone cos.
The dot.coms bought the networks.
Rockefeller bought his competitors.
... ignores the rights of copyright holders in favor of Google's economic self-interest
No. The public has also the right to digitized, freely accesible publications. And since these books are already freely available in public libraries, why shouldn't they be on the Internet?
By limiting the number of pages of a book I can view, Google is providing me information under fair use (their assertion). Distributing the entire book (which they do not do), would be illegal. The groups bringing the suit, though, are saying that several highly relevent pages from the book is too much for it to be fair use.
"Is the library of the future going to be open? Or will it be controlled by a couple of big corporate players?"
I'd rather see the Library of Congress do something like this instead of having it controlled by the publishers or Google or Yahoo or Microsoft. One would be very foolish to have anyone entity control this, and I'd rather it be free to all and not plastered by Adsense everywhere.
The more you know, the less you understand.
Is the submitter upset at the amount of knowledge and culture McGraw-Hill controls, or the amount of culture Google will soon control? Both are corporate entities and not private.
On the other hand, this experiment with copyright is getting out of control. It's difficult for modern works to achieve classic status. Just last week I was reading that many anthology creators pick and choose their contents based more and more on what rights they can afford. Some modern authors might make a splash, but they're pricing their work out of range for posterity.
You could say that the market will sort this out -- but it's a tragedy what happens in the mean time. Good works will moulder and die as publishers and author's families try to pimp them for the final dollar. All I can think is, doesn't it make more sense to SHORTEN copyright periods as technology improves rather than to extend them? A book can be published, shipped, promoted, bought, and read the world over in a few years now rather than a decade.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Neglecting the fact that Google is already 'rich'. Copyright, in its current implementation seems to be in place simply for the rich to get richer. Yet most Americans are in the middle class. So I think its fair to assume that most US-Slashdotters are in the middle class. So how is it that laws, continued by rich, enforced by order of the rich, and that benifit mostly the rich get so much support on /. ? Does the money earned from copyright go directly back to the economy? I was of the (possibly incorrect) understanding that it just goes into the bank account of the rich.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
By limiting the number of pages of a book you can view, they are pretty much admitting that it's illegal.
Taking a couple pounds of cheese off the store shelf is illegal. Taking a couple of the sample cubes is not.
KFG
The way people interact with Information needs to be completely re-drawn. I believe what is needed is compulsary licensing of most information. Your Internet bill just had a $25US fee attached to it. And in return you get all the downloads you can suck through the tubes. Seriously. Video, audio, books, and software. Your fee is divided back to the copyright holders. Then through regulation mandate that all browsers need to include some kind of bit-torrent like functions to increase the reliability of information access as it would be distributed (vs the current centralized points of failure). Fixing copyright law to reflect the Information Age would make the symptoms of the industrial to information conversion sickness (such as DRM) disappear. Compulsary licensing is the key - like what the Library of Congress evolves into in Snow Crash. Derivative works could explode in this kind of environment - imagine the increased revenue to copyright holders as portions of their works are remixed later on (such as Anime Music Videos).
If you could, what would you do to fix copyright?
Shh.
If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?
Of course.
Because if I didn't, "everyone" wouldn't have jumped off the cliff - violating the premise.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The question revolves around the fact that a digital scan of a book, isn't a copy of a book, since it isn't paper. This is similar to taking a photo of a statue, which doesn't infringe copyright of the statue. Same with taking a photo of a painting, it doesn't infringe copyright, since a photo isn't a painting.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
In the short term, you are correct; but lawmakers consider both the short- and long-term.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Whew! That's a good one. You did not notice the perpetual copyright we now endure, and the ongoing disintegration of works created over the last 30 years? Lawmakers consider lobbying dollars and have happily sold out our future so certain companies can make tiny percentage more money with less competition.
In the long-term, copyright provides an incentive for people to create new things, and that benefits everyone in society.
Interestingly, even the US supreme court disagrees with you and states that in their opinion the current copyright laws are obviously not benefitting society. Only through a technicality of the wording have they not been struck down (Congress claims they are merely incompetent not being malicious and the supreme court does not have the authority to judge that they are lying).
Arguably, without copyright we would have many fewer interesting works as part of our culture.
Arguably with copyright we would have a lot more interesting works as part our culture. Have you heard the story of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life?" Sit down and take a load off and I'll spin you a tale. It was crap. It was a huge box office flop. It was tossed in a warehouse and left to rot. It was thoroughly unprofitable. There it sat until the copyright expired, many years later. PBS, strapped for cash, aired it near the holidays and it became a classic overnight. Like most great works, it was not immediately recognized as such. Under our current laws, that would never happen. No one would have ever heard of the movie because no one would have though it might make money for them.
No work has entered the public domain in 30 years and it seems unlikely that many ever will. In 130 years or so they'll probably extend copyrights again and if they don't most works will have been lost entirely or DRM will prevent them from playing. Under our current system the criteria for being available to the public is some executive's guess about profitability and that usually means anything unusual is out. Almost every one of the most popular TV shows of all time was either cancelled in its first season or saved by some weird chance.
So you're sitting here and telling me you really think the fact that 99% of the works for the last 30 years being unavailable to the public benefits society? I'm sorry, but you're nuts. Motivation is great and all but a 2 year copyright will work fine as motivation as 99% of works make most of their money in the first 2 years. And money is not even the biggest motivator for most artists. And finally, there are plenty of ways to make money without copyright, especially in this day and age of technology. Half the money made by Disney, or more comes from trademarks, not copyright. Do you really think if copyright went away entirely or was limited to 2 years, they'd just close up shop and go home, leaving those billions for someone else? Not a chance.
The damage to society our current laws are doing is more severe than the benefits it is bringing. We need to fix it. If we can't fix it, abolishing it entirely is better than what we have now. I say this as someone who makes most of my living writing and selling copyrighted works.