$125 Million Settlement In Authors Guild v. Google

James Gleick writes "Authors, publishers, and Google are announcing a huge settlement deal today in their lawsuits over the scanning of millions of copyrighted books in library collections. Google has agreed to a huge payout for books that were scanned without permission, but now they'll be allowed to scan the books legitimately. Most important, they'll be able to put millions of books online, including those still in copyright — not just for searching and not just in snippets. There is a groundbreaking new licensing system meant to make the books as widely available as possible while protecting the authors' copyrights and enabling them to share in the revenue. Some will differ, but personally I think this is a wonderful outcome, for readers and for authors alike."

Comments

I can has source material?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good now it will be easier to find source material for all the obscure topics on my Wikipedia to-do list.

Re:I can has source material?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Which will only encourage your "obscure sources" to keep trying to suck money using an obsolete business model, all the better if somebody with deep pockets(Google) is willing to pay.

Hell, they should be paying Google for the free and wide-reaching exhibition of their writings.

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

I'm sorry- How is an author's desire to get paid for his sweat, labor, and time "obsolete"? On the contrary, I consider that progressive.

Certainly more progressive than the 10,000-year-old practice of "shackling a man" and forcing him to work for free (slavery). The Romans built a whole culture around "educated slaves" who produced written documents and other useful arts. Caesar himself had several enslaved writers. That doesn't mean the American and European Unions should follow down the same path.

When you steal a book, and keep it permanently without compensation, that makes you no better than the Plantation Masters. IMHO.

Re:I can has source material?

[SatanicPuppy]

If they wanted their writings available for free, then why would they bother to publish in the first place?

Content creators deserve some rights to their works.

Re:I can has source material?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

When you steal a book, and keep it permanently without compensation, that makes you no better than the Plantation Masters. IMHO.

Wow. Hyperbole anyone? Last I checked we are not:

1. Whipping the authors
2. Raping the authors
3. Taking their children away
4. Denying them any personal rights

In case you weren't aware, you can dislike a particular viewpoint without making strained comparisons to slave holders (or any of the other favorites, e.g. Nazis).

Re:I can has source material?

[Chyeld]

And when you wax overly dramatic and descend into hyperbole, you become no better than a bombastic neocon like Rush Limbaugh, IMHO.

The project we are discussing did not present even a single page to the user unless rights to do so were specifically obtained.

Otherwise, all that was shown was a brief snippet of text surrounding the search term. This not only is fair use, but given the point was to highlight books that discussed a topic you were interested in, would have resulted in more money for the authors as their texts were purchased for a more through perusal.

Or in your world are used book stores and libraries also "Plantation Masters"?

Re:I can has source material?

[hierophanta]

If they wanted their writings available for free, then why would they bother to publish in the first place?

Content creators deserve some rights to their works.

just because its free for us to use does not necessarily mean the authors are not getting compensated-- TV is an example of this business model.
i dont think they ever lose their rights on their work - that is to say if the book becomes a movie, they will need to be contacted for permissions.

im not a writer but i do freelance photography - when i get my stuff published im pretty much just happy that its getting to the public. regardless of how little i might compensated. declaimer: i did not RTFA

Re:I can has source material?

[Anonymous Coward]

Roll for initiative: Advance straight to Godwin's law.

Re:I can has source material?

[A nonymous Coward]

Ever hear of fair use?

Copyright is a state-enabled artificial monopoly, without which authors would have NO protection from copying. In exchange for getting this artificial monopoly, authors are supposed to give up something in return, such as fair use.

If the public wanted to grant a full monopoly, they would have.

If authors actually needed any kind of copyright, music and writing would not have existed until copyright was created, but no one would have known copyright was needed without music and literature already existing without copyright.

Which came first, creativity or copyright?

Re:I can has source material?

[Matheus]

OK.. slow down a bit:

We are not telling the authors to give all of their books for free (nor work in dark dank dungeons with burly leather clad masters whipping them into submission)

The issue is part of the complicated world we are moving into. In the past a work had severe cost to bring to the people and so the business model made as much money as possible from distribution over a short period of time and then those resources were moved to a newer piece of material.
Those books in their remaining form dropped in price significantly leading to an excellent used book market for extremely cheap (or free at your library) spreading the knowledge to the masses.

Now those costs are high in the short term but the work can now be distributed extremely cheaply AND indefinitely.. The issue we've run into with just about everything is publishers trying to now keep their old entry level pricing going forever with a perpetual hold on the material. Think all the fun battles with MPAA/RIAA this is the same thing ONLY with the help of a massive "donation" by Google (services and settlement $$$) plus a very solid outlook on the part of the literary big business (at least the educational institutions involved) we get a MUCH better solution that benefits all involved.

I know someday (maybe/probably even now in the dark) Google's power will corrupt as power always does but for the time being it is enjoyable to watch what they may accomplish trying to follow a "Do no evil" philosophy.

Re:I can has source material?

[Tharos]

Which came first, creativity or copyright?

1. creativity
2. printing press
3. mass distribution
4. copyright
5. the Internet
6. the RIAA

pretty simplo IMO.

Re:I can has source material?

[PopeRatzo]

his sweat, labor, and time

What? Is the writer wearing weights on his fingers or something?

It is a privilege to be a writer, artist, musician. One should expect a living, but never, ever, riches.

The reason we're having this big to-do about "copyright" is because the advent of mass media made it possible for creative people to become super-wealthy. The only group of people who benefited from that were TV and movie execs, record label owners and publishing giants.

They dangle a small handful of uber-wealthy artists in front of the world, which creates millions of wannabe "stars" who will only be disappointed and poor. It's been bad for the arts and for the psyches of several generations of college dropouts.

I'm encouraged and hopeful for a return to a more workmanlike model for making a living in the arts.

Re:I can has source material?

[Rennt]

I'm sorry- How is an author's desire to get paid for his sweat, labor, and time "obsolete"? On the contrary, I consider that progressive.

The desire to get paid for your work is not obsolete. Distributing data on physical media is. Especially obsolete is the idea that you need some kind of agent to distribute it for you (while he collects most of your potential profit).

Thats not to say that there is yet a perfect system for compensation, but that is the price you pay for living in exciting times.

When you steal a book, and keep it permanently without compensation, that makes you no better than the Plantation Masters. IMHO.

Firstly - it is not stealing, as it has been pointed out in many /. discussions, it is copyright infringement.
Secondly - Nice trolling. That has to be the dumbest thing I have read on the internet this month.

Re:I can has source material?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you flash your noonies while getting off a car, then it is perfectly reasonable to strike it rich. Or if you run in a field with an ovoidal ball kicking the daylights out of other people, then it is fine too.

But god forgive you slave away writing a book good enough that someone still wants to read it 50 years later or a decent software app that is useful enough that people want to cough up good money for what is, in the end, a collection of 0s and 1s.

The oddest thing is that geeks here, of all people support this attitude.

Re:I can has source material?

[A nonymous Coward]

RIAA must have been before the intertubes. I remember RIAA equalization curves for stylii.

Re:I can has source material?

[mcgrew]

If they wanted their writings available for free, then why would they bother to publish in the first place?

Cory Doctorow answered you question in the forward to Little Brother far better than I can.

I recently saw Neil Gaiman give a talk at which someone asked him how he felt about piracy of his books. He said, "Hands up in the audience if you discovered your favorite writer for free -- because someone loaned you a copy, or because someone gave it to you? Now, hands up if you found your favorite writer by walking into a store and plunking down cash." Overwhelmingly, the audience said that they'd discovered their favorite writers for free, on a loan or as a gift. When it comes to my favorite writers, there's no boundaries: I'll buy every book they publish, just to own it (sometimes I buy two or three, to give away to friends who must read those books). I pay to see them live. I buy t-shirts with their book-covers on them. I'm a customer for life.

Neil went on to say that he was part of the tribe of readers, the tiny minority of people in the world who read for pleasure, buying books because they love them. One thing he knows about everyone who downloads his books on the Internet without permission is that they're readers, they're people who love books.

People who study the habits of music-buyers have discovered something curious: the biggest pirates are also the biggest spenders. If you pirate music all night long, chances are you're one of the few people left who also goes to the record store (remember those?) during the day. You probably go to concerts on the weekend, and you probably check music out of the library too. If you're a member of the red-hot music-fan tribe, you do lots of everything that has to do with music, from singing in the shower to paying for black-market vinyl bootlegs of rare Eastern European covers of your favorite death-metal band.

Same with books. I've worked in new bookstores, used bookstores and libraries. I've hung out in pirate ebook ("bookwarez") places online. I'm a stone used bookstore junkie, and I go to book fairs for fun. And you know what? It's the same people at all those places: book fans who do lots of everything that has to do with books. I buy weird, fugly pirate editions of my favorite books in China because they're weird and fugly and look great next to the eight or nine other editions that I paid full-freight for of the same books. I check books out of the library, google them when I need a quote, carry dozens around on my phone and hundreds on my laptop, and have (at this writing) more than 10,000 of them in storage lockers in London, Los Angeles and Toronto.

If I could loan out my physical books without giving up possession of them, I would. The fact that I can do so with digital files is not a bug, it's a feature, and a damned fine one. It's embarrassing to see all these writers and musicians and artists bemoaning the fact that art just got this wicked new feature: the ability to be shared without losing access to it in the first place. It's like watching restaurant owners crying down their shirts about the new free lunch machine that's feeding the world's starving people because it'll force them to reconsider their business-models. Yes, that's gonna be tricky, but let's not lose sight of the main attraction: free lunches!

Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp, for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing.

In case that's not enough for you, here's my pitch on why giving away ebooks makes sense at this time and place:

Giving away ebooks gives me artistic, moral and commercial satisfaction. The commercial question is the one that comes up most often: how can you give away free ebooks and still make money?

For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity (thanks to Tim O'Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who faile

Re:I can has source material?

[JesseMcDonald]

How is an author's desire to get paid for his sweat, labor, and time "obsolete"?

The GP never said that it was. The exact phrase was "obsolete business model", which refers not to a general desire to get paid, but rather the specific way in which that payment is sought.

Certainly more progressive than the 10,000-year-old practice of "shackling a man" and forcing him to work for free (slavery).

Voluntarily spending labor on something no one is willing to pay you for, regardless of the reason, is not slavery. Nothing compels authors to write; if they do so anyway, at their own expense and in the absence of any contractual guarantee of payment, then they do so of their own free will.

When you steal a book,....

Likewise, this discussion is not about theft. These authors are not being deprived of anything.

The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid your neighbors' wallets and give you their money.

Perhaps you should pay attention to your own words of wisdom. This is exactly what copyright is: an act of government which forces others to play by your rules, artificially subsidizing authorship, artistry, and invention by transferring money from their wallets to yours.

Re:I can has source material?

[billcopc]

It's not specifically the book business that's obsolete, it's the concept of money that's long removed from its fundamental purpose.

Money was created as a currency to represent work/effort. Millenia ago, humans used to hunt their own food, their survival depended on it. Well you and I no longer have to hunt to stay alive, so we do other things like programming and writing and pumping gas. We get paid for the effort.

Authors, "artists", movie stars... they get paid for their popularity and performance, and that's the big hole in this economy. They don't earn $x.00 per hour, their compensation has little or no relation to the effort involved. It's all aboug being "big".

A person could theoretically write one book, in one month, and make it big, living off the royalties for the rest of their life. Where is the logic and fairness in that ? Who cares whether they're good or not ? Who cares that we've had the Harry Potter empire shoved down our throats with advertising and propaganda ? A job is a job is a job, and should be paid fairly.

The lovely mess the U.S. has created for itself is a direct result of this total lack of equilibrium. When celebrities and bankers siphon all the money away into their little vaults (and/or exclusive real estate), the government has to inject more money at the bottom of the pyramid to keep things flowing.

Excessive personal wealth is no different from slavery. Everyone beneath a certain threshold is effectively shackled, but instead of having leather-clad gimps with whips, we have interest rates and inflation and rising taxes. At least a slave has the possibility of slaying their master. How the hell are you going to slay the status quo ?

Re:I can has source material?

[plague3106]

It is a privilege to be a writer, artist, musician.

Oh, is it? I didn't realize we could tell people not to be writers artists or musicians.

One should expect a living, but never, ever, riches.

How arrogant of you to decide that someone in a given profession should never make more money than you deem necessary.

The reason we're having this big to-do about "copyright" is because the advent of mass media made it possible for creative people to become super-wealthy. The only group of people who benefited from that were TV and movie execs, record label owners and publishing giants.

Really? It seems only a few of the creative people ever become "super wealthy." It's interesting that actors, writers, and musicans can afford million dollar mansions, since you claimn tney haven't benefited from copyright.

They dangle a small handful of uber-wealthy artists in front of the world, which creates millions of wannabe "stars" who will only be disappointed and poor. It's been bad for the arts and for the psyches of several generations of college dropouts.

Honestly? You don't think that perhaps those that don't make it don't have the talent? If you've ever watched reality TV, it amazes me how highly some of these "artists" think of themselves, when in reality they are actually really awful.

I'm encouraged and hopeful for a return to a more workmanlike model for making a living in the arts.

You mean where only the rich funded artists, and thus were the only ones that benefited from the artists' work?

Re:I can has source material?

[blahplusplus]

"I'm sorry- How is an author's desire to get paid for his sweat, labor, and time "obsolete"?"

The same way technology displaced the desire of the horse and buggy peoples desire to get paid for doing horse and buggy stuff, and hence put those guys out of work. The same way technology replaced a plethora of menial jobs. Instead of paying people who have desire for more pay - you have a machine do it. If technology was advanced enough there would be mass unemployment or no one would have to work and some other economic system would have to come about --> capitalism obsoleted/transformed by automation technology, why pay an expensive human when creative robot AI 3000 can design and make your IP, software, games, entertainment, etc?

When virtual actors get good enough real hollywood actors will become even more a minority then they are now, or who will only stay aloft because people will bay for the "reality" of real actors, over AI and computer generated characters and movies. So yes an author's desire to get paid can be obsoleted by new technology, engineers are authors of physical stuff, while writers are authors of information. Which in the information age has highly fluctuating value due to ease of copying, etc.

Most books written by authors on technical subjects suck because such books are beyond the scope of a few people. It is rare when you can find a person or group of persons to author a book that hits all the bases. IMHO the nature of authorship is greatly enhanced by the internet because now you can do mass collaboration with wiki's and forums, which is beyond any single or single small group of human beings.

Re:I can has source material?

[Prien715]

Wow. Hyperbole anyone? Last I checked we are not:

      1. Whipping the authors
      2. Raping the authors ...but if that does sound appealing to you, visit my new paysite: whippedbookers.com (NSFW!)

Re:I can has source material?

[ElizabethGreene]

Completely changing the direction of these comments..

Thank you Google. As divided masses we could never have negotiated something with this scale.

I just unblocked your unobtrusive text based ads in Adblock plus.

-ellie

Re:I can has source material?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah woah woah! Comparing someone to Rush Limbaugh?! That's just mean man. No one deserves that. I bet if Hitler were alive--

--- GODWIN BOT AUTO STREAM TERMINATION ---

Re:I can has source material?

[bigstrat2003]

Firstly - it is not stealing, as it has been pointed out in many /. discussions, it is copyright infringement.
Secondly - Nice trolling. That has to be the dumbest thing I have read on the internet this month.

First, it IS stealing. /. can scream until it's blue in the face that it's "infringement" and not stealing, but it is still stealing. Poop is poop, it doesn't matter if you give it a fancy-sounding name.

Second, although the GP doesn't mention the reasoning, his conclusion is reasonably sound (if needlessly dramatically stated). When you steal IP, you are taking without paying. If the artist required payment for his work, that means you are forcing him to work for you on your terms, not his. That's remarkably like slavery, even if it isn't exactly the same.

Re:I can has source material?

[bigstrat2003]

This is exactly what copyright is: an act of government which forces others to play by your rules, artificially subsidizing authorship, artistry, and invention by transferring money from their wallets to yours.

Yes, in the same sense that any property law is "an act of government which forces others to play by your rules". An artist has the right to attempt to pursue the "sell copies for small amounts of money" business model. Copyright is merely the government prohibiting others from interfering with this business model by stealing their product for free. Copyright forces no one to buy anything, it merely says, "If you want to benefit from this person's work, you must do so under the terms they made their work available to you."

Re:I can has source material?

[Beezlebub33]

A person could theoretically write one book, in one month, and make it big, living off the royalties for the rest of their life. Where is the logic and fairness in that ? Who cares whether they're good or not ? Who cares that we've had the Harry Potter empire shoved down our throats with advertising and propaganda ? A job is a job is a job, and should be paid fairly.

The lovely mess the U.S. has created for itself is a direct result of this total lack of equilibrium. When celebrities and bankers siphon all the money away into their little vaults (and/or exclusive real estate), the government has to inject more money at the bottom of the pyramid to keep things flowing.

Excessive personal wealth is no different from slavery. Everyone beneath a certain threshold is effectively shackled, but instead of having leather-clad gimps with whips, we have interest rates and inflation and rising taxes. At least a slave has the possibility of slaying their master. How the hell are you going to slay the status quo ?

Ooooh...nice rant.

Ok, let's assume that you are correct and that we have a 'lack of equilibrium'. Who gets to decide what the correct 'equilibrium' is? You? Me? The government? I'll agree to it if it is me, but not anybody else.

Nobody forces you or anybody else to read or watch Harry Potter. I happen to like the books, as do my kids, and so I pay the market rate and enjoy them. Ah...the market rate? And who get's to decide the market rate? We all do! Isn't that a neat system?

And further, there is nothing, absolutely nothing preventing you from doing the same. You write your own stories, sell them, and make as much as you can.

Gosh, it's as if there is an invisible hand that improves the good of the community while everybody tries to make as much money as possible. Someone should write about that.

Re:I can has source material?

[Arthur B.]

An author has a very legitimate desire to be paid for his work. The legitimate way to do it by selling its release.

When you steal a book, and keep it permanently without compensation, that makes you no better than the Plantation Masters. IMHO.

You're not preventing the author do to anything. When you steal a physical book you owe a physical book. The content isn't property.

Re:I can has source material?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Damn you Rule 34!

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

>>> 1. Whipping the authors. 2. Raping the authors. 3. Taking their children away. 4. Denying them any personal rights

Nope. You're just making them work without pay for their creations. How would you like to spend time creating a beautiful piece of programming & your employer just says "thanks" and takes it w/o paying you?

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

>>>Otherwise, all that was shown was a brief snippet of text surrounding the search term.

Not true. I've read whole books on google. If it had been fair-use such as a single page, then you're right, it would have been okay. But google presented searchers with virtually the entire book.

>>>Or in your world are used book stores and libraries also "Plantation Masters"?

Not the same. They PAY for their books, whereas Google did not; google just took. ----- Furthermore the library book eventually falls-apart, requiring the library to purchase another book. So in effect a library is purchasing a limited-use license of maybe 10,000 reads. The authors didn't mind a $25 sale of 10,000 reads, followed by another $25 sale of 10,000 reads, and so on.

But a $25 sale with millions of reads, they understandably find objectionable. I would too if I was a writer. You can't live off a single sale of just $25.

Re:I can has source material?

[Just Some Guy]

If they wanted their writings available for free, then why would they bother to publish in the first place?

...says the man publishing his writings to Slashdot for free.

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

>>>the work can now be distributed extremely cheaply AND indefinitely

That is true. Distribution is essentially free. So perhaps instead of "cost of book", an author should start charging for labor. Minimum wage is $6/hour last I checked, so maybe authors should freely-distribute the material as password-protected text files, but if you want the "key" to unlock the file, you must pay for 1 or 2 hours worth of labor.

Stephen King: "Here's my latest work. I am charging two hours of labor for each copy. Please use paypal or major credit card to pay for my wages. Thanks!"

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

>>>It is a privilege to be a writer, artist, musician. One should expect a living, but never, ever, riches.

It is a privilege to be a programmer, engineer, or salesmen. One should expect a living, but never, ever, riches. You will work for $6 an hour and like it! /end sarcasm

Obviously I disagree with you. The writer deserves to get paid for his work the same as you do.

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

The average TV writer only earns $15,000 a year. Book authors earn much much less. Hardly what I call rich.... in fact it's about the same rate as a Walmart employee. THIS is how you "thank" the people who provide your entertainment???

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

A lot of people forget that taking people's labor, without payment, is ALSO stealing. That's why I compared it to slavery, because slavery by itself would have been okay, if the plantations owners had simply PAID the people doing the work. It would have been similar to how Migrant workers operate today.

Re:I can has source material?

[gilgongo]

It is a privilege to be a writer, artist, musician. One should expect a living, but never, ever, riches.

MOD THAT UP!!

This simple fact so often overlooked. The logic always seems to be that if something doesn't make you a zillion then it's not worth doing ("Micropayments on MySpace? Pah! You need a *real* promotion like SonyBMG behind you!").

I'd far rather have millions of artists who also work in a post office twice a week than thousands who live like kings and support millions of people who create nothing.

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

>>>Voluntarily spending labor on something no one is willing to pay you for, regardless of the reason, is not slavery.

Microsoft generates new versions of Windows without pay. Why? Because they expect to recover their costs upon release (circa 2010). In this respect an author like Stephen King is no different.

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

>>>Authors, "artists", movie stars... They don't earn $x.00 per hour

If I write the "Windows killer" OS all by my lonesome, and release it in 2009, don't I fall into the same category as an artist? I don't get paid by the hour, but don't I still deserve to get paid for my labor/effort?

You seem to have the strange notion only people who get paid "by the hour" deserve to earn money. And the rest of us do not.

Re:I can has source material?

[gilgongo]

First, it IS stealing. /. can scream until it's blue in the face that it's "infringement" and not stealing, but it is still stealing. Poop is poop, it doesn't matter if you give it a fancy-sounding name.

If you regard copyright infringement as "theft," it prevents you from addressing the central issue that we're dealing with here: what to do about the problem.

I assume you know that copyright infringement IS a problem?

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

Ye would feel differently if, after you finish writing a beautiful program, your employer said "thanks" and took it without paying you.

What you are doing when you take a book without payment is no different.

Re:I can has source material?

[theaveng]

Ye would feel differently if, after you finish writing a beautiful program, your employer said "thanks" and took it without paying you. What you are doing when you take an electronic copy of a book without payment is no different.

Re:I can has source material?

[swillden]

If they wanted their writings available for free, then why would they bother to publish in the first place?

This comment displays a woeful lack of understanding of copyright

By publishing the author is choosing to place his work in the public domain. In exchange for doing this service to society, we grant him a temporary monopoly on reproduction and creation of derivative works -- but it's temporary and his work will become fully public domain at some point.

If the author doesn't like this deal, he's free to use contract law to create his own deal. He can keep the book to himself, register it as a trade secret and then ask each buyer to sign a contract that includes a non-disclosure agreement. A bit of a pain, but by taking that route, the author can maintain complete control over his work, forever. This actually is done with some technical documents, and there's no reason it wouldn't work for any other written work.

Most authors of fiction and non-fiction alike recognize that the copyright deal is a better one, particularly since present law tilts it heavily in their favor.

This agreement between Google and the author's guild strikes what I think is a very reasonable balance, that helps to preserve the original GOAL of copyright, which was to benefit society by encouraging publication, rather than secrecy. How?

• As long as a book is in copyright and in print, the book is not available through Google except in snippets. That means, as long as the author is making money from selling the book (or at least has that opportunity, with the book sitting on bookstore shelves), Google will not interfere with the author's income. Actually the ability of people to find the book through Google search may help the author's income. If the author CHOOSES to open up access to his book through Google Books, he can opt in. If he opts in, he may make money through the Google reader program.
• Once the book goes out of print, which means that the author is no longer making money from sales of the book, Google will open it up to full access through Google Books. If the author doesn't like that, he can choose to opt out, and reduce access, just as though his book were still in print.
• Once the book is out of copyright, the author has no control over it, by design. Of course, copyright is insanely long, so this will affect the author's grandchildren, not the author.

A very reasonable solution, and a great service that Google has done us all. Yeah, they did it to make money, but that doesn't change the fact that it's of great social benefit.

Re:I can has source material?

[vux984]

Nope. You're just making them work without pay for their creations.

I didn't 'make' them do anything.

How would you like to spend time creating a beautiful piece of programming & your employer just says "thanks" and takes it w/o paying you?

Your right that would suck. Fortunately I neatly avoid this by requiring that I be paid in regular chunks throughout development, and if the payments were to cease I would cease handing over code. It works quite nicely.

Re:I can has source material?

[Chyeld]

>>>Otherwise, all that was shown was a brief snippet of text surrounding the search term.

Not true. I've read whole books on google. If it had been fair-use such as a single page, then you're right, it would have been okay. But google presented searchers with virtually the entire book.

Which books? Because if they did I guarantee you it was because they had the right to. Either the book was in the public domain or the rights to present it that way were already obtained.

Name the books, otherwise, I call bullshit. I've used the service and I know it only provides snippets unless it has negotiated the rights to more.

From Google:

How are book previews limited?
Many of the books you can preview on Google Book Search are still in copyright, and are displayed with the permission of publishers and authors. You can browse these "limited preview" titles just as you would in a bookstore, but you won't be able to see more pages than the copyright holder has made available.

When you've accessed the maximum number of pages allowed for a book, any remaining pages will be omitted from your preview. You can order full copies of any book using the "Buy this book" links to the right of the preview page.

Re:I can has source material?

[plague3106]

The average TV writer only earns $15,000 a year.

Hmm, well the quick google search I did says that's not true. If the show is really popular, a writer can earn $30,000 / PER EPISODE. Not a bad chunk of change. Do writers on less popular shows earn less? Yup. But that only makes sense... bad shows don't make as much money. Interesting..

Book authors earn much much less.

Really? Steven King or Dean Koontz earn less than $15,000 / year? Again, interesting.

Hardly what I call rich.... in fact it's about the same rate as a Walmart employee. THIS is how you "thank" the people who provide your entertainment???

I think if what you were saying were true, they'd already be in another line of work. Unless you're talking about the authors that are truely unknown, still trying to get that first good book published. But somehow I doubt you know what you're talking about, given the variety of authors I find in any given bookstore.

Re:I can has source material?

[u38cg]

And that's Godwin in four posts! Fair play to you, sir, a swifter effort I have not seen for many a day.

Re:I can has source material?

[Anonymous Coward]

Making the same post over and over isn't working for proving my point! Maybe I should bold the whole thing instead! That'll show them!!

Re:I can has source material?

[ShieldW0lf]

I'm sorry- How is an author's desire to get paid for his sweat, labor, and time "obsolete"? On the contrary, I consider that progressive.

Certainly more progressive than the 10,000-year-old practice of "shackling a man" and forcing him to work for free (slavery). The Romans built a whole culture around "educated slaves" who produced written documents and other useful arts. Caesar himself had several enslaved writers. That doesn't mean the American and European Unions should follow down the same path.

When you steal a book, and keep it permanently without compensation, that makes you no better than the Plantation Masters. IMHO.

You mean, where a patron funds you and allows you to live an idle life dedicated to artistic and intellectual pursuits, and you don't need to be responsible for your own welfare, but can live your life in a gilded cage that you built by laboriously fashioning yourself into a creature that doesn't even know how to be self-reliant, let alone want to?

If you want to be paid for your sweat and labour, learn to use a hoe and a hammer. Then you won't need a patron anymore. Bitching about your entitlement to your gilded cage doesn't really evoke the sympathy you think it does.

Re:I can has source material?

[thtrgremlin]

Interesting perspective on history. But if many people think this is the way that it happened, no wonder we are in the mess we are in today, IMHO.

Survival has always been about advantage. Even in interspecies interaction, the winner most always the one that knows something the other does not. Where food is, where predators are not, deceptions in numbers, camouflage, and other things. Ultimately, nature and human history have shown that knowledge is power. Further, in competition, it is about having more power, even if by simply ensuring less knowledge by potential adversaries.

It may not have been called copyright in the century leading up to the Statute of Anne, but the control over the flow of information, and special armies to protect such information from falling into the "wrong hands" has been around as long as there has been written language. In some places, there were even were secret spoken languages meant only for the elite that were forbidden to be learned by commoners by threat of death. Even Caesar used encryption algorithms to pass secret messages to troops (Still known today as the Caesar shift). Scribes were required to take oaths not to reveal the secrets shared with them, and master texts were bound by shackle to the most trusted members, not in ways necessarily to keep the book from harm, but to keep the text away from unauthorized eyes.

All this is copy protection because every time we see an image or read a text, or see a sound, our brains make a copy... albeit some better than others.

So in many ways, copyright, the protection and control over knowledge came first, and with the birth of creativity and free thinking immediately came with it along side was methods of copy protection.

Wit the invention of the printing press in 1439, copyright was thrown into chaos. The distribution of knowledge was able to fight copyright in new ways never before conceived. Governments quickly responded with copyright police that hunted down book publishers, rounding them up for public hangings and beheading for their crimes to serve as an example of how they would deal with pirates; stealing work from scribes and writers. It was a problem the elite argued would destroy knowledge, creativity, and progress as there would be no longer any motivation for thinkers to think, scientists to study, or writers to write. Well, they were right in part. The scribes guild vanished over a period of time. Knowledge as it was known, held in secret by a powerful few, had been destroyed. But... someone and for some reason people did keep writing books, and all the tales of the end of the world of creativity never quite came about. Some argue it was actually the other way around, that a revolution took place and a generation of thinkers were born, but whose to say what really happened, right? But then came a new battle. The scribes were gone, and book publishing had taken over. People had been enlightened, and there was a new thirst for knowledge, this time in masses, and printed books had been legalized. This time, the control was in the hands of the book publishers. But as the elite scribes had known, power isn't just control, but exclusive power. Book publishers wanted exclusive rights to publish books. The printers guild aka Stationer's Company, were granted exclusive right to print the books, so long as royalties were paid to the Queen. Books were 'bought' by the queen, and she would give the texts to book publishers that would get exclusive printing rights indefinitely. No royalties were ever paid to writers, and writers were banned from self publishing or seeking an independent press. Queen Mary I of Great Britain was the first MPAA / RIAA of its kind. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

By 1709, Shakespeare had been dead nearly 100 years. The independent publishers fought even harder for a more free copyright law, as opposed to the indefinitely perpetual copyright law in place. Shakespeare is a part of our culture and can not be owned by anyone. Stories are

Re:I can has source material?

[jesterzog]

Nope. You're just making them work without pay for their creations.

They worked without pay from me, too, but they still created.

Re:I can has source material?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be true that sometimes ebooks promote the sale of paper books and also that for some authors there is an opportunity to make money from ancillary means (lectures, etc.) But this is far from true for all writers. In my case, large excerpts from a book I published are widely used in college courses -- occasionally with compensation to me but usually not. I spend years working on this book, supporting myself by taking jobs on the side. Please explain to me why I (and other authors in my position) should contribute the fruits of my labor for free.

Re:I can has source material?

[mcgrew]

If large excerpts of your work is used in college courses, then in fact you should get paid for it. You should find a good copyright lawyer.

You might consider republishing the parts that are being used in the courses, by themselves, at a reduced price; someone who can't afford a $150 textbook may in fact be able to afford a $5 excerpt.

But as Doctorow pointed out, if your book isn't selling, maybe the book as a whole just isn't very good. You might try a rewrite, keeping in mind the parts that are being used. Maybe finding someone to ghost-write it.

I am, however, skeptical thanks to your anonymous posting. Who are you? What is the name of your book? What is its ISBN and who published it? Without these salient facts one must call bullshit.

Re:I can has source material?

[cjewel]

Well, I AM a book author and I can tell you writers do average about $5,000 per year. Stephen King and Dean Koontz are hardly the average author, by the way. Half of all the money I earn goes right back to the government for taxes. Authors are also expected to do their own promotion. Only the really prominent authors get significant push from their publishers. The rest of us are strictly DIY. There goes the rest of the advance money. The vast majority of published novels do not earn out their advance. There are several publishers who now offer first time advances of $1000. Authors wait 9 months to year to see their book in a store and then wait 6 months to more than a year to see the first royalty statement (which famously makes little to no sense). And actually, most authors are in another line of work. I think it's something less than 5% of authors who are able to support themselves on their fiction. The rest of us have day jobs. I haven't decided what to think about book piracy. I know my books have been pirated, but I don't know if those represent sales lost to me. I do know that I was mighty P.O'd when Google decided it could scan and post books that were still in print and selling, without asking question one to the person who held the copyright. To my knowledge, they weren't offering to share the ad revenue with the authors.

Re:I can has source material?

[horatiocain]

Yeah! Why, last week, I came up with this great joke about Sarah Palin, but I told it to someone, and they told someone, and sooner or later everyone was telling it, and I didn't get any money.

Those people are stealing from me! I demand to be recompensed for my creative works. If I hadn't expected to be paid for my joke, I never would have made it up. Duh.

Re:I can has source material?

[richie2000]

So you would prefer they NOT use your book AND NOT buying it either?

That is the realistic alternative. Imagining all those copies being sales is not.

Re:I can has source material?

[KDR_11k]

In the expectation of payoff. Remove that and they'll probably get a better paying job instead.

Re:I can has source material?

[bws111]

New technology is in no way replacing authors and publishers the way it replaced horse and buggy people. New technology may replace the printer, the paper and ink makers, the truck driver, and the retail store. None of those businesses have anything to do with copyright. What you are 'buying' from the author is a story, not a physical book. The value of the story does not change depending on the distribution method.

Re:I can has source material?

[blahplusplus]

"New technology is in no way replacing authors and publishers the way it replaced horse and buggy people."

You misread my comment, it is replace peoples desire to get a profit from a work that is no longer profitable.

Re:I can has source material?

[LionMage]

If they wanted their writings available for free, then why would they bother to publish in the first place?

This same argument has been used against public libraries. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers of the United States saw the value in libraries (Ben Franklin founded the first lending library in America in 1731), and so the law was crafted so as to preserve this institution. That is why libraries today enjoy many privileges, including some (narrow) DMCA exemptions.

Book publishers still hate the public library system (at least many do, whether they say so publicly or not), and even some authors, but some things have to be viewed in light of the greater good. In this case, that's the good of society.

Some authors, usually authors of works of fiction, are more happy to see people read their stuff and enjoy it than they are to make huge amounts of bank. That's one difference between artistry and craftsmanship, IMHO.

Re:I can has source material?

[Anonymous Coward]

The value of the story does not change depending on the distribution method.

Man, you must be new here: Don't you know that nobody is allowed to charge more for something than it costs to make? And that, since it costs nothing to make a digital copy, it should be free? Why, those that are downloading it, having paid for their Internet access, are actually bearing the costs of publishing it digitally - you should be paying them!

That was sarcasm, BTW. However, you will find that many here actually believe it.

Re:I can has source material?

[Rennt]

Intellectual Property is not the same thing as real property, no matter how much the content industry would like you to believe otherwise. "Intellectual Property" is a term dreamed up by industry lobbyists to make people associate copying with theft, a transparent but remarkably effective tactic.

Sure, taking with out paying isn't a nice thing to do, but it isn't stealing. He/She still owns the IP, and can still sell it as many times as they can convince people to buy it. THAT is a challenge that needs to be addressed, how do you get people to pay for something they can get for free? While there is a need for some sort of reward for your work, the current system is broken and does not deserve protection just because that is the way we've done it before.

Bleating about "stealing" is only an attempt to maintain the status quo. The people with the most to loose are not the artists, but the middle men who have got very wealthy by controlling scarcity. With all this new technology, progress in the "science and useful arts" should be accelerating, not tanking.

Re:I can has source material?

[Matheus]

Honestly that's what I'm getting at..

What does something cost? In the old model you have this really large $X to print and distribute a written work. $X + $A (advert) + $W (writer) + $P (desired profit) / ?? (predicted quant. of sales) = price of book.

Now you can have a smaller equation: Small fixed cost of production $x / $p (price market will pay) = # (number of downloads you need to sell to break even) The publisher will try to wrap the author's pay into that $x (and keep x as small as possible) so that they can make as much profit as possible after kicking the artist to the curb. Then they continue to charge $p indefinitely because it doesn't help them to give anything away. Eventually they stop distributing because even the hosting is costing money and the work disappears because heaven forbid anyone get anything for free.

Your average writer (not a Stephen King) gets screwed by a publisher about as bad as musicians get screwed by their record companies:

"We need to sell 1M copies of your book to 'break-even' with $X.. then you get 15% of what we make over that.. oh and did I mention that $X includes advertising as well and our offices and our secretaries and my new yacht in the Carribean.."

The little guy maybe gets an advance from his publisher which turns into debt OR gets sponsored by some institution and works for cost of living.

The same way it is now moving in the music business, with the use of the internet a little guy should be able to reasonably produce and distribute his own work and reap a vast amount more profit over the reasonable expenses of living while writing, editing, advertising (easier w/ net) and hosting at the same time yielding a cheaper cost to the end-user as an author WAY more than a publisher is inclined to want his work to get out there at least as much as he want to get paid (if not more for the true artist) so he won't cost people out of accessibility.

Eventually (and this term should be relatively short) the "ownership" of the source material should expire. The author is not prohibited from continuing to make money off of the distribution of his work (read distribution not the work itself) but anyone else (read Google) who can more effectively distribute the work should not just be allowed but empowered to provide the global exposure.

Add some additional caveats like "sure you can copy it and give it to everyone but you can't charge them for it" (um can we say GPL?!?) at the point of public domain and maybe we have something going.

Personally I hate reading books online (at least not traditional ones) so I'm going to spend the (ever increasing) amount of money to buy the paperback so I can read like we used to before the web (and TV). Too bad the author is seeing so little of that money I choose to spend..

Re:I can has source material?

[mattack2]

The average TV writer only earns $15,000 a year.

Hmm, well the quick google search I did says that's not true. If the show is really popular, a writer can earn $30,000 / PER EPISODE.

Umm, you do realize that not every single writer sells multiple episodes per year to a TV show? Some don't sell any, plus, I do expect that writers on less popular shows make less (as you mentioned in a part I snipped out).

Re:I can has source material?

[eyendall]

If they wanted their writings available for free, then why would they bother to publish in the first place?

Content creators deserve some rights to their works.

We are long past this stunted point of view. Have you never heard of a library? Google is simply making it easier to "borrow" and read books. Any author worth his salt wants above all to be read.

Re:I can has source material?

[Anonymous Coward]

Write moar better?

Re:I can has source material?

[HungryHobo]

Or even worse!!!
If, after you finish writing a beautiful program, your employer said "thanks" and paid you only once for the hours worked and DIDN'T SEND YOU A CHECK EVERY YEAR FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, YOUR CHILDRENS LIVES AND THEIR CHILDRENS LIVES!
SHOCK HORROR!!!!!

Re:I can has source material?

[HungryHobo]

And the problem? A builder doesn't get paid every time someone walks into a building he's worked on, a cheff doesn't get a payment when someone copies their dish in another resteraunt, what makes you different? Why should muscicians be paid per copy, let them work by the hour on stage like normal people. They're not fucking royalty.

Oh wait, your mommy told you you were special and you still believe it's true.

Re:I can has source material?

[HungryHobo]

Walking into an art gallery, taking a painting off the wall and walking out without paying is stealing. The owner no longer has it and I have it.

Walking into an art gallery and taking a photo without paying for a painting is not stealing. The owner still has it, I merely made myself a copy.

I haven't forced anyone to do anything. If you don't want me to make a copy be it in my mind or on paper or on a memory card then don't put it where I can see it.

It is nothing like stealing.
It is nothing like slavery.

I don't care if your mommy told you you were special and ever since you think you have a right to decide what I put in my mind, on my paper or in my memory card.

Re:I can has source material?

[Hognoxious]

A person could theoretically write one book, in one month, and make it big, living off the royalties for the rest of their life.

If that book is really popular, and brings entertainment and enlightenment to a very large number of people, then why not?

Where is the logic and fairness in that ?

Would it be more logical and fair to equally reward someone whose book brings a little pleasure to a tiny number of readers?

Who cares whether they're good or not ?

Purely subjective, and largely irrelevant. Perhaps we should set up some sort of government committee to decide whose work is good, how much effort each writer put in, and set their levels of reward. Sounds like the solution's worse than the problem.

Re:I can has source material?

[plague3106]

Well, I AM a book author and I can tell you writers do average about $5,000 per year.

The figures I posted were writers for TV shows. Anyway, the US Dept. of Labor disagrees with you.

Stephen King and Dean Koontz are hardly the average author, by the way.

I never claimed they were; they are exceptionally good writers. Which is my point; good writers will command a larger salary, just with any other profession. My point was that a lot of people try to be writers, but they really aren't. Sorry..

Half of all the money I earn goes right back to the government for taxes.

You must have another job, and make more at it that I do in my job. The government steals 33% of my income. But your tax burden is not relevent here.

Authors are also expected to do their own promotion. Only the really prominent authors get significant push from their publishers. The rest of us are strictly DIY.

Well, I'm sure Steven King had to start there too, don't you think? Its not an easy thing to do, make a living off of art. Again, sorry, but that's how it is. It's like movies. Ever see those made by SciFi movies? They're fun to watch, but because they're bad. I'm amazed people can keep affording to make such movies, yet they do.

And actually, most authors are in another line of work. I think it's something less than 5% of authors who are able to support themselves on their fiction. The rest of us have day jobs.

Which tells me most authors aren't really that good... at least if they never "make it." But I doubt King was handed a publishing contract the day he was born.

I haven't decided what to think about book piracy. I know my books have been pirated, but I don't know if those represent sales lost to me.

Perhaps you should try publishing yourself. Give a book away for free in pdf, see what the feedback is.

I do know that I was mighty P.O'd when Google decided it could scan and post books that were still in print and selling

As well you should be.

without asking question one to the person who held the copyright.

Well, wouldn't that be your publisher?

To my knowledge, they weren't offering to share the ad revenue with the authors.

Sounds like a problem with your publishing contract. That's what the TV writers strike was about, if you'll recall. They wanted a share of revenue from their work going online, and they got it. And good for them, they should.

Re:I can has source material?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know that they won't make you finish the project, "Misery"-style?

Re:I can has source material?

[KDR_11k]

And writers.... um.... what? A writer can't exactly perform his book live. Sure, he could hold a reading but that's not very effective for making money. Writing isn't manual labor and can't be used like that.

Re:I can has source material?

[PopeRatzo]

You don't think that perhaps those that don't make it don't have the talent?

Talent is a very poor predictor of who is going to "make it" in the entertainment industry.

You mean where only the rich funded artists, and thus were the only ones that benefited from the artists' work?

Not at all. For example, I make a large portion of my income from direct commissions from patrons. The interesting part is that my patrons generally are in the $40k-$70K income bracket, which is hardly "the rich".

When I work on commission, I charge on a sliding scale based on income and political persuasion. So a rich Republican is going to pay a lot more than a middle-class Green Party voter or Democrat. In an added twist, I convey all rights except attribution to my patrons. If they want to press my work and sell it, God bless 'em. All they have to do us put my name on it. I promise to not display or distribute that work to anyone else. It's based on the model painters and sculptors have been using for years.

I'm planning on altering it a bit once digital watermarking of media files has come a bit further along (especially in cost).

It's worked so far, and I am able to support my family and am putting a kid through college. My wife is a mathematician, but we make about the same amount yearly.

When you say that "only a few of the creative people ever become "super wealthy"" that is exactly my point. The fact that any undertalented artist can become a billionaire distorts the entire economic structure of the arts by making young artists believe there are riches ahead and further, expecting them.

I would rather see a lot of artists able to make a middle-class living rather than a tiny percentage becoming rich and the rest starving and having to give up their art to work in computer support or in fast food. The worst part of the deal is that the only "steady" jobs in the arts are for people who are not doing any of the creative work, like record executives, management, agents, etc. The creative people get chewed up and spit out.

Right now, we have a "supply side" model for the arts, and it's working about as well as "supply side" economics have worked, period.

Re:I can has source material?

[HungryHobo]

They sell a physical product, a book. Otherwise, tough luck.

Re:I can has source material?

[KDR_11k]

Of course they sell that, the problem is that anyone can produce copies of it at the same price but without the "R&D" investment (i.e. writing it) which turns that market into a competition of who can manufacture printed paper the best instead of who can design the best data to print on that paper.

Re:I can has source material?

[MarionGropen]

Book publishing is very different from the music business. For one thing, it's very, very rare to make much money as a publisher. For another, there are already nearly 100,000 mom and pop publishing companies in the US alone.

For a third thing, on a typical "trade" book (that is, one that you would find in a general bookstore, in large format paperback, or as a hardback), the author makes about the same amount in royalties as the publishing company gets for overhead and profit combined. A complete spreadsheet would be too long to go into here, but the basics are:

Discounts given to retailers and wholesalers: 50% of total
Royalties: 12.5% of total
Preparation (same for ebooks as print, basically) about $5,000 to 15,000 per title
Printing: 5 to 15% of total
Distribution (customer service to retailers, order processing, credit and collections, warehousing, etc.): 10 to 15% of total
Marketing: 5% of the total.


Add those up, and you can quickly see where the money goes. Often the total is negative, although for blockbusters, it's very, very positive. Those books carry the freight that allow the rest of the list to be published. And of course, no one can really predict which books will break out and go 6 months or more on the lists.

Re:I can has source material?

[MarionGropen]

Google didn't offer to share anything with anyone associated with creating the content until it was sued. By publishers among others.

Google's interpretation of evil isn't the same as mine, in the case of intellectual property. They have no compunction about taking away the ability of authors, artists and publishers to benefit from the hard work of making books. And that can't end well for any of us.

Re:I can has source material?

[MarionGropen]

If you do something to me that reduces the amount of money I make from my work, that IS something like stealing.

Whether or not you count it as the same thing depends upon your definitions, but it sure is a close relative.

Most pirates claim that, although they want a copy enough to take it, they don't want it enough to pay for it if they couldn't take it. So, they continue, there's no harm to the artist or writer. I'm dubious, very dubious.

More importantly, though, I think we need some social norms that make taking copies of someone else's work unacceptable. It's possible to cheat on tests, but most of us don't. It's possible to take a great deal of unsecured physical property, but most of us don't. And not because we might get caught, but because it's wrong. We need to extend THAT kind of DRM over books, music, art, and video. Or so I think.

Re:I can has source material?

[MarionGropen]

Actually, most of the authors I know want to be able to write, and to feed their families, simultaneously. And that means getting paid for their work.

Even in our current model, that's no easy task, but if we weaken copyright any further, it will get harder. (Yes, that's my opinion, but I've been working on models for self-published authors and for small indepedent authors, trying to figure out how to make it work, for many years now, so it's not utterly unrelated to objective facts.)

at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[unity100]

books written 50 years ago and already made millions for their writer's grandsons should not be still being used as cow cashes, instead should join the public domain to the common heritage of human civilization.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[sgt scrub]

Like Lord of the Rings?

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Mesa MIke]

Cow cashes?

You mean, like these?

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[halfEvilTech]

good thing the music industry doesn't do that. I mean they wouldn't consider charging for stuff done generations ago.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[east coast]

In all fairness to Christopher Tolkien, at least he had an active role in his father's estate and actually worked to produce some of the wealth. It's not like he sat on his hands and just let the checks roll in and any Tolkien fan should have a bit of admiration and offer up a little thanks for Christopher and his desire to see his father's work get to the masses. Without Christopher these works would either have been lost or found their way into a private collectors collection for a high price. He certainly didn't need to be as responsible as he is.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[east coast]

books written 50 years ago and already made millions for their writer's grandsons should not be still being used as cow cashes, instead should join the public domain to the common heritage of human civilization.

Well, in a couple of weeks you can either go tell McCain or Obama your thoughts on this and see if they'll start to put it together. Heck, tell them both since they'll both still have an office. But take my advice, don't hold your breath...

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[larry bagina]

The good news: Barack Obama will redistribute copyrights.

The bad news: You were assigned copyright for "The Joy of Gay Sex Volume 3: Extreme Fisting"

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[afabbro]

Like Lord of the Rings?

Yes. Consider that there are some Sherlock Holmes stories that are still under copyright in the USA.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

The good news: Barack Obama will redistribute copyrights.

The bad news: You were assigned copyright for "The Joy of Gay Sex Volume 3: Extreme Fisting"

That's actually more good news. That book is guarenteed to sell very well in the public school system.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Lord of the Rings?

That would be a good start. :-)

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know my books haven't made millions... 'couse that doesn't mean they can't in another 25 years..

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, Frank Herbert's work has been reduced to generic sci-fi riff-raff by his own son.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[sgt scrub]

He was editor, artist, and consultant to the majority of his fathers work. I would argue he did more than his father.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[ChrisMaple]

The number of books that have netted the author and his heirs more than a million dollars is very small. Even current, productive authors are often cash-strapped: I have Jerry Pournelle in mind here.

A reasonable time limit is important, and 50 years surely qualifies.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

By the same token, books that were only read by a few thousand people and never made great popularity 50 years ago should not be lost simply because there is not enough financial incentive to republish them in print form and put them on a shelf.
 
This has already happened to film, and it breaks my heart that there is very little news of this great cultural tragedy. (one of the arguments made in Eldred v. Ashcroft)

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote GNAA on November 4th!

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[trjonescp]

Like Lord of the Rings?

Yes. Consider that there are some Sherlock Holmes stories that are still under copyright in the USA.

Hmm, I don't know about that. I think I need to investigate.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Some parents are shocked to find their children are learning to be homosexual allies and will participate in "Coming Out Day" at a public elementary school tomorrow - and they claim the school failed to notify parents.

"One mother of a kindergartner who attends Faith Ringgold School of Art and Science, a K-8 charter school in Hayward, Calif., said she asked her 5-year-old daughter what she was learning at school. The little girl replied, "We're learning to be allies."The mother also said a Gay Straight Alliance club regularly meets in the kindergarten classroom during lunch. According to a Pacific Justice Institute report, Faith Ringgold opted not to inform the parents of its pro-homosexual activities beforehand. The school is celebrating "Gay and Lesbian History Month" and is in the process of observing "Ally Week," a pro-"gay" occasion usually geared toward high school students."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=78829

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[sootman]

It's not so much individual authors as much as it is the corporations that push infinite copyright. And the hypocrisy is mind-blowing. Not only did Disney build their empire largely on public-domain works (Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, to name just a few) but they also used PD works to fuel their late-80s/early-90s return to relevance! (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Tarzan.) Yet they are one of the largest, if not THE largest, proponents of eternal copyrights.

The U.S. Constitution says the point of copyright is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times [emphasis added] to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" The Copyright Act of 1790 "...secured an author the exclusive right to publish and vend "maps, charts and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right of renewal for one additional 14 year term if the author was still alive" clearly showing what they meant by "limited" back then. It doesn't say anything along the lines of "write a hit song/movie/book once and you and your descendants will never have to work like everyone else on the planet does."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_feature_films
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[harlows_monkeys]

books written 50 years ago and already made millions for their writer's grandsons

OK, that covers what, maybe a dozen books? What about all the rest?

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Oligonicella]

Nice assertion. Which ones?

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[afabbro]

Nice assertion. Which ones?

The stories contained in Case Book of Sherlock Holmes are under copyright in the USA until 2016 to 2033, depending on the story.

Gee kid, I guess my assertion is true.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the point of view of a straight male, that still sounds like a damn interesting book.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

books written 50 years ago and already made millions for their writer's grandsons should not be still being used as cow cashes, instead should join the public domain to the common heritage of human civilization.

Cow cashes? . . . I see a Larson in that transposition somewhere.

Re:at last. its f*ckin 21st century ffs.

[Anonymous Coward]

The stories contained in Case Book of Sherlock Holmes are under copyright in the USA until 2016 to 2033, depending on the story.

The site you linked actually says 2016 to 2023 (not 2033), which is somewhere near the truth. The stories were published over the period 1921-1927; all copyrights on works published before 1923 have expired; the remaining Case Book copyrights expire 75 years after the end of the year of first publication, giving a period of 2018-2022. (The fact that life + 70 years has expired is irrelevant to works published before 1978.)

Information wants to be free

[Anonymous Coward]

One of those increasingly rare times, the internet gets better =).

I hope this will be allowed for others than just google.

oh, and SECOND POST"" 2 twentytwo

Re:Information wants to be free

[mcgrew]

Information does NOT want to be free; you might as well say your couch wants you to get your ass off of it.

However, when information isn't free, neither are you.

Re:Information wants to be free

[gilgongo]

Information does NOT want to be free; you might as well say your couch wants you to get your ass off of it.

However, when information isn't free, neither are you.

You don't seem to understand what that phrase is supposed to mean. The nature of a couch is to be sat on. The nature of information is to be shared. If a couch can't be sat on, it's not a couch, and if information isn't shared, it's not information.

It's easier to say "sorry" than ask permission...

[SupplyMission]

This may have been Google's strategy all along.

Step 1: start scanning and distributing copyrighted books without permission.

Step 2: writers and publishers get pissed off and sue.

Step 3: settle and obtain permission to go even further.

It worked. Now Google will have control over electronic access to a massive amount of printed material.

This may be just a silly conspiracy theory. But on the other hand would a company like Google, with massive financial and legal resources, naively embark on a blatant copyright infringement project? Not likely; it's obvious they had a strategy in mind from the beginning.

show me the money

[chromakey]

And where is the money for this settlement going? Is it actually going to go to some authors who had their books scanned or is the majority going to the lawyers and the guild itself?

Re:show me the money

[will_die]

What you would want some poor lawyer to not get thier 30-40% skim off the top?

In one of the FAQs there is information on how you can a portion of the money if you were an author who was scanned before the aggrement.

Re:show me the money

[gleick]

Money going to the Guild itself: $0.

Most of the money is going to authors whose books were scanned without permission, and to the setting up of the new Books Rights Registry.

The Authors Guild are PUSSIES

[Anonymous Coward]

From Google's press report: "We were dicks, but the Authors Guild were a bunch of pussies!" But... who was the asshole?

Re:The Authors Guild are PUSSIES

[tripdizzle]

who was the asshole? the lawyers on both sides

Re:The Authors Guild are PUSSIES

[mcgrew]

who was the asshole? the lawyers on both sides

Lawyers are like doctors or plumbers or auto mechanics: when you need one, you NEED one, and having one will either gain money for you or save you far more than his or her fee.

My three favorite lawyers, in order, are: The lady who handled my divorce, the gentleman who handled my bankrupcy, and our own Ray Beckerman (AKA "NewYorkCountyLawyer).

Re:The Authors Guild are PUSSIES

[tripdizzle]

In this instance, I wouldn't put lawyers in the same category as doctors and plumbers (maybe mechanics) because in most cases (such as class actions and civil cases where its state vs "some company", {MN vs. Tobacco Industry}) in that they are the ones creating the problem so that they can profit from it. Sorry to any mechanics out there, but I have dealt with car mechanics that I have gotten to admit to not replacing belts that are very visibly worn, because once they break, they will break a bunch of other stuff that will be much more costly to fix. Its not that they are creating the problem in this case, but they are ignoring one, so it gets worse, so they can make more money later.

Re:The Authors Guild are PUSSIES

[mcgrew]

And at the same time, there's another way mechanics are like lawyers: some are good, and some suck. A good mechanic will tell you about that worn belt, a good lawyer doesn't start class action suits.

A mechanic who won't replace a worn belt just so he can fix a bunch of other stuff is either stupid, or assumes you are. If I have my car in the shop and a belt breaks a week later, he's fixing whatever the belt breaks for fee and apologizing, or he knows I'm getting hold of the Attorney General and the BBB and making his worthless life a living hell. I've done it before (I'm a geezer with eyes like Clint eastwood right before he shoots somebody). Don't take any shit from those guys.

Google Books rocks

[jgtg32a]

I remember in College I had a philosophy class, it was great the teacher wrote a book that covered everything we went over in class. Using G-Books I was able to conform all of my ideas to his.

Re:Google Books rocks

[Kandenshi]

Truly, an inspiring tale of intellectual growth and of skeptical inquiry into the nature of reality.

As a longtime student, it always brings some warm fuzzies to my heart to hear of how others have done their bit to advance the knowledge of humanity by challenging the status quo.

Re:Google Books rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember in College Google didn't exist. The wonderful non-Wikipedia-copy papers were written ...

Re:It's easier to say "sorry" than ask permission.

[Chyeld]

Except that it wasn't infringment. This was just another mosquito attempting to suck blood from what it saw as a rich target.

What about youtube then?

[192939495969798999]

Doesn't this sorta set the precedent that Google should be paying some kinda royalty to youtube usrs that generate a lot of traffic, if it's no longer considered legitimate to just "take" content and post it on the internet?

Re:What about youtube then?

[erayd]

No. With youtube, you agree to their using your copyrighted content by uploading it. You gave them consent.

With the google books thing, they just took it.

Re:What about youtube then?

[whisper_jeff]

Google doesn't take video content for Youtube - users submit video content. Enormous difference.

Re:What about youtube then?

[JustinOpinion]

1. YouTube doesn't scan content and aggregate it. The users voluntarily upload the content to YouTube. This shows implicit consent for YouTube to redistribute. The terms of service make this consent explicit.

2. YouTube does actually share revenue with channels that get lots of views. It's called the YouTube Partner Program.

Re:What about youtube then?

[jdmetz]

How did this get modded +5 insightful? If the publishers Google settled with had given Google the books and asked Google to scan them and put them online, then sued and gotten this settlement it would set that precedent. Somehow I doubt google would have settled with them in that case, though.

Re:What about youtube then?

[Trojan35]

Pretty sure there's a difference between me uploading my video to youtube to use and google taking a copy of my video and scanning/posting it without my consent.

I'm still more mad about universities, which do not have any kind of employment contract with students, forcing students to give up their copyrights to their work.

At what point does someone's actions online permit distribution of their work? I think it's pretty unclear right now.

The Mummy

[chill]

When reading this the scene from The Mummy where Alex is trying to buy a couple camels from the Bedouin herdsman.

Jonathan: Four! Four! I only want four, not the whole bloody herd!
Rick: Jonathan, just give the man his money.

Google Lawyers: Snippets! Snippets! I only want to expose searchable snippets, not the whole bloody book!
Google Founder: Just give the men their money.

How is this supposed

[Meshugga]

to be a "groundbreaking new licensing system"?

They got sued, they have to pay, google cut the best deal in including the right for the material.

But with this kind of beaviour they (authors guild/IP mafia) have yet again failed to provide or support a viable business model. Well done.

Re:How is this supposed

[Meshugga]

And another thing: with this settlement, google actively further enabled the "sitting duck" practice of the content mafia, waiting for someone to be "in it" waist deep until they can sue - in opposition to create clear terms for everybody.

Re:How is this supposed

[bws111]

What is with these stupid 'not a viable business model' posts in every article about copyrights? Do authors write books? Yes. Do publishers publish them? Yes. Does the author get paid? Yes. Does the publisher make a profit? Yes. Hence, viable business model. The only non-viable business models are the ones where the costs exceed the revenues. Unfortunately, many /.ers seem to think that 'authors get paid, results get given away for free' is somehow a viable business model.

Re:How is this supposed

[Ginger Unicorn]

how about, authors get paid, results get sold AS WELL AS being given away for free. Enough copies are sold to make profit, and the free copies act as viral advertising for the physical copies.

the question is, does giving it away for free harm profit margins, or increase them? Human intuition ("common sense") is about as much use as a gauge in this equation as it is in just about everything else (almost none), so until there's been some kind of empirical comparison conducted over a meaningful time scale, your take on it is on a level footing with the people you are calling stupid.

Re:How is this supposed

[danzona]

What is with these stupid 'not a viable business model' posts in every article about copyrights? Do authors write books? Yes. Do publishers publish them? Yes. Does the author get paid? Yes. Does the publisher make a profit? Yes. Hence, viable business model. The only non-viable business models are the ones where the costs exceed the revenues.

I see from the context of your post that you don't understand what viable means. Viable means 'capable of growing and developing'. Many people seem to think that it means 'feasible', which is how you are using it, saying that any business model that makes a profit is viable.

However, I disagree that this business plan is not viable. For those who didn't RTFA: The plan allows for consumers to go to a member institution (and all US public libraries are going to be member institutions) and browse content for free. If the consumer is lucky enough to be able to go to a subscribing institution, the consumer can not only browse, but can also print out content for free.

It seems to me that this plan would allow somebody to market an e-ink reader that had read only access to content (member level) and give the consumer a device that has limitless access to books. Which shows a viable (capable of growing and developing) business model.

If I was Amazon...

[erayd]

...I would be pretty worried about now. That looks like the kind of deal that could see Google offering free, ad-supported ebooks. Admittedly this has a far larger scope than just the kindle et al, but it could certainly have some major consequences in that area.

Re:If I was Amazon...

[darkstar949]

You still need a convent way of reading them, right now Kindle is still much better than a laptop. However, if someone were to come out with a product like Kindle but with access to the Google Library then they might have a killer app.

Re:If I was Amazon...

[east coast]

I guess there's the reason you're not Amazon.

Amazon is far from being a book seller as a primary business any longer and do you know how many books probably get shipped by Amazon that are never read? While this could potentially hurt their e-book business I doubt that many of their better e-book sellers are going to be found on Google any time soon.

Amazon won't even feel a bump in the road when they ride over this one.

Re:If I was Amazon...

[YourExperiment]

You still need a convent way of reading them

Please, won't somebody think of the nuns?

this just makes sense

[CaptainNerdCave]

step 1 - illegally allow access to copyrighted material
step 2 - say "see how popular it is?"
step 3 - apologize and pay small fine
step 4 - profit!

Re:this just makes sense

[davidwr]

The slashdot incorrectly-implemented-meme filter must be broken. Your post should have been rejected. CmdrTaco, can you please look into this? Thanks.

step 1 - illegally allow access to copyrighted material
step 2 - say "see how popular it is?" and apologize and pay small fine
step 3 - ???
step 4 - profit!

There, fixed that for you.

Re:this just makes sense

[zappepcs]

That is as accurate a profit plan as I've seen on /. yet. I'm glad Google was able to show them how things 'can' and should be. The boys at Google are probably still wondering now and then why you have to kick some people in the face to get them to take a few dollars.

Re:this just makes sense

[Beezlebub33]

In what way was the access illegal? Honestly, I'm wondering because it seems to Fair Use to me and nobody says why it isn't.

Providing the entire work would be illegal. Quoting a small part would be legal. Providing some of the work could be either legal or illegal. Which was it, and why?

Re:this just makes sense

[Raenex]

Providing the entire work would be illegal. Quoting a small part would be legal. Providing some of the work could be either legal or illegal. Which was it, and why?

You forget about the entire copy Google made of the work and stored on their servers. They have no right to that copy. If they bought every book they made a fair use of then I would agree fair use would apply.

Opt Out

[squoozer]

I really like the idea of being able to access any book I want over the Internet. I could easily see something like that spark a new are of learning but I fear that it will cause publishing to adopt a model more like music publications. A small number of companies end up with a complete strangle hold over the market and churn out the same rubbish over and over again.

badsummary, most current books still preview only.

[Hozza]

Unfortunately the submitter's had a bit too much KoolAid.

Go read the FAQ on the linked site. Anyone except those using "designated computers" in public libraries is still only going to be able to perform limited searching and previewing of in-print works. The change is that Google will now give them the "opportunity" to buy the book too.

There is a licensing deal available for educational institutions, lets hope its affordable.

If it were up to me, yes

[davidwr]

I'm not the grandparent poster, but if it were up to me, copyrights would last less than the average human lifetime.

To paraphrase the early United States Congresses, "nobody will ever need more than 28 years of exclusive rights." On average we live longer now so 28 years is a bit short in today's terms.

If it were up to me, the maximum term of copyright protection would be somewhere between 50 years and the the average expected lifespan of a 4 year old at the time the work was created. Where in between? We should have a national discussion on this not controlled by special interests to determine it.

Why age 4? 1) works created by kids under that age generally more "play" than "creative," and generally have very little market value, and 2) it removes infant mortality from the equation.

I would require that after the first 10-20 years or so, the public gets a non-controlling financial interest in the copyright: You can renew copyrights in 10- to 20-year increments, but with each increment you have to promise to forward an increasingly-higher percentage of any royalties to the national treasury. Royalties previously paid that extend into the renewal period would require a pro-rated payment to the treasury as well. You would of course have the option to not renew and let your work fall into the public domain.

Going forward, works re-published 10-20 years after creation which are legally published but without a (c) mark are presumed to be in the public domain unless the publisher can show it was done in error. Today's automatic copyright-on-creation would still be in play, but they would expire after 10-20 years if not renewed. To protect existing works and contracts based on those works, the "new regime" would only apply to works created after a certain date. I don't like the current regime's long terms but messing with it with a blunt instrument like imposing a new regime on all existing works introduces a whole host of problems. It's far better to solve the orphan works and other problems with a more finely-tuned solution.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[TheSunborn]

One big problem with this is that copyright is not only about the money, but also about controlling what the work is used for.

Example: Imagine that I wrote some nice music 20(Or whatever the limit is) year ago. Anybody who would want to buy it have already done so, so I would lose money by registration for a new longer copyright. But if I let the work fall into public domain $EVIL_CORPORATION* could use it to advertise their new product. And I would have that.

And if I wrote a book, I would hate to have to have a film made out of it without me having a say in who/how it was made. (Just imagine what would happend if Uwe boll could have made a "Lord of the rings" while Tolkien was still alive. That might have given Tolkien a nightmare that no man should have.

So what we need is a new copyright category where work after 20 year, becomes "Free to use for private non-business use" only.

*(Microsoft,The church,Walmart/Political party/My evil enemy)

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[theaveng]

You're dead. What do you care where/how your music is used? Besides, it's a sad fact that if "evil corporations" did not use 200-300-400 year old music, a lot of that stuff would be forgotten by all by a few college professors and music historians.

Those 30 or 60 second ads have the benefit of keeping those ancient works "alive" in the minds of millions, rather than falling into disuse.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Jason Levine]

I definitely agree that we need a national discussion on this. Unfortunately, the idea of Public Domain seems to be dead in many people's minds. They just don't see why someone's "property" (a book they wrote) should be "taken away from them by the government" after X years. They just don't understand the importance of the Public Domain. So I think we need discussion, but also education as to why a strong Public Domain is good for everyone. (Also, education on why copyright terms are limited and the government isn't "taking away" a person's work by having that work move to the Public Domain.)

As for the specifics, I'm more in favor of a simpler method of copyright: Going back to a 14-20 year copyright term plus a one-time, optional 14-20 year extension. The initial term would be automatic. So if I post something on my blog, it is copyrighted. However, in 14-20 years (assuming I don't renew the copyright), you can take that blog post and publish it in a book titled "500 Different Blog Posts In The Public Domain."

Also, when it comes to existing works, Congress was more than happy to extend the copyright on existing works when they lengthened copyright (even going so far as removing stuff from the Public Domain). Therefore, I think that the new terms should apply to existing works also. I am willing to compromise a bit, though. First of all, all existing works over 5 years old could be assumed to be renewed. Second of all, the movement to the Public Domain would be phased in over time starting with the older works. So in Year 2 (assuming a 1 year grace period), works from 1922 - 1931 would enter Public Domain. In Year 3, works from 1932 - 1941 would go into Public Domain, etc. This way, companies would have time to adapt to the new system.

In addition, they would be encouraged to wring what money they could from their old works. You can bet studios would be raiding their vaults and releasing DVDs of many of their old films and TV Shows. Record labels would be releasing "Best Of" CDs from artists who hadn't been published in decades. It could actually turn out to be quite a boon for the RIAA/MPAA. Sure, they would fight tooth and nail like they did against the VCR, but in the end they would find a way to make money from it.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Idiomatick]

yep something like:

- 15yrs automatic copyright as normal

- 15yrs renewable copyright greater % taxed

- 15yrs renewable free for public use but you can charge profitable business

- ever after public domain

Disclaimer: I don't think patent laws should follow this setup, music/books/art aren't normally too hard to produce. Bits of science might cost many millions to work out which needs greater incentive.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[3263827]

I love how it's so fashionable to tell people what they should and shouldn't be allowed to do with things they've created. As a writer, I take a huge risk whenever I write. First I have to have an idea that's both interesting and marketable. Yet in your world, my property, my sweat and blood, my time, my thoughts, wrapped in words, become something to be milked by the government through what's essentially an estate tax on my heirs.

In addition to removing the economic value from my work, you'd give control of it to the public domain. Screw you. I thought up the ideas, I spent my time putting them down, I spent effort and money marketing myself, I spent time and money educating myself so that my writing has some economic and aesthetic value.

You and your allies are nothing but leeches wishing to take advantage of other people's works.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Mprx]

No, *you* give control of the work to the public domain when you publish. To encourage you and others to give more work to the public domain we give you a temporary monopoly over it. If you want complete control of your writing you should keep it to yourself.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[3263827]

Why should you have any say? It's my creation. The fact that I chose to write it is my decision as an author. I don't give a rats ass about the public domain. The profit incentive has done more for advancing humanity than this silly notion that everything should be "free." My intention is to create something, and sell it. Why government has a role in this in any fashion other than applying some tax on the sale/license of what I create, is just simply socialism.

It's pretty simple. It's my property, my creation, mine to do with as I see fit, including sell it. It's mine to bequeath to my heirs if I choose. The fact that I would want to retain as much control over this is perfectly natural. The idea that to "protect" my property I have to eventually give it to the public domain is kleptocratic.

This is a fundamental problem many people have with Stallman et.al. If you want to read my book, pay me. Otherwise GTFO.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Anpheus]

I really liked the idea of some other poster a long time ago, in a topic far away.

Copyright is free for the first year, a penny for the next, and doubles after that.

If your copyright is worth $2.56, you can get 10 years pretty well. If your copyright is worth $2,621.44, then you can likely afford to get a 20 year copyright. If for whatever reason your work needs 30 years and is that ridiculously profitable, then you can probably afford $2,684,354.56 for 30 years.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[the-matt-mobile]

Here's the simplest solution - require payment and active production of the work to maintain copyright after 30 years. If you're still making enough money on the work to maintain the rights, then pay up. If not - it's now public domain. If you're actively working to keep your work of art viable, then you deserve to keep your copyright, but you have to make an effort to prevent your works from fading into obscurity - show some ownership. Otherwise, the public who the work was produced for in the first place has the opportunity to take over the upkeep. And, I pay less personal taxes to boot because the Disney's and RIAA's and all the others are ponying up. Win, win!

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Mprx]

Nothing is being "taken" from you. Words can be reproduced with minimal effort. Unrestricted sharing of words is the natural state of affairs - the only reason you have any right to control and restrict how people share those words is that we the people chose to give you that right. It's an investment - we trade less access to words now in exchange for anticipated greater access to words in the future. If this turns out to be a bad investment there's no reason it should continue.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[3263827]

Unrestricted sharing of words is the natural state of affairs...

This hasn't always been the case, and besides, we're not talking about the "natural state of affairs." That is just sophistry. If you want to see creative endeavors dwindle, just keep pursuing this path. No matter how you phrase it, it's my work. And you want to be able to access it for free. Perhaps not now, but eventually. Yes words can be reproduced with minimal effort. And whether my work can be reproduced with minimal effort doesn't reduce its value. The original creation is where the toil is heaviest, and for that, the creator should be able to decide about how and when the work is used.

Imagine if we apply this to all property that is created. Should a farm be given to the community after the death of its owner? The owner who tilled the ground, removed fieldstones, nurtured an orchard or vineyard? After all, it's just "an investment" of the farmer's time.

And your last comment is apt. As writers and others involved in creative endeavors find that their works are being exploited by people, they'll stop creating them.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Mprx]

How can I copy farms?

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Elbows]

Copyright is a monopoly granted to authors *by the government*. So to argue that they should have no involvement is nonsensical. Without government involvement, there would be no such thing as copyright. Everyone would be free to copy your work without consequences (unless you forced everyone who received a copy to sign a contract first, and even then enforcement would be pretty difficult).

Society grants copyrights as an incentive to create. Their purpose is to serve the greater good by encouraging creativity. Making money for the authors is just a means to that end.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[HappySmileMan]

The problem is that you're assuming everyone registers their material.

Right now I doubt much people except large corporations actually go to the bother of registering their copyright, a band on a small record label releases a song, sticks a copyright logo on it and it belongs to them, assuming they have a small amount of proof when it was created, that will hold up in court.

But if everyone was required to register their stuff after just 1 year, most people would lose their copyright because they just don't have the time or can't be bothered going to paperwork.

Except of course large corporations who could just hire a couple of people to keep everything up to date, another problem is of course that the world consists of more than just America, you're assuming that paying the US copyright office should be enough worldwide, what happens to artists outside America?

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Anonymous Coward]

become something to be milked by the government through what's essentially an estate tax on my heirs.

You do realize that without the government there would be no copyright law at all, right?
Put in that context, your complaint is absurdly silly.

You keep implying that nothing is free, yet your also at the same time complaining that you aren't getting something (the copyright on your own work) for free.

"How dare the govt provide a way for me to make money off something that isn't tangible, and THEN have the nerve to expect me to follow the rest of that very same law about the public domain! I don't want people taking payment from me for that little monopoly on my works distribution rights, i want it all free free free!"

To me, it sounds like you might just be the larger leech here.

While 'pirates' do cost a certain number of artists a chance at profit they might not have had before, that number can't be as large as the number of people you are screwing over (the whole country) in a deal that you KNEW the cost of was releasing your work to the public domain after a short time to make profit after.

Granted, the only way to not get a copyright on your own work and enter into this deal is by not releasing your work to the public, but that is not a very good way to try and profit from said work I have a feeling.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[3263827]

It's a matter of property rights. I've created something out of my experience and imagination. I choose to sell you the rights to it (via book, ebook, magazine, etc), and you agree to pay for it. Yet some people think they should have free access to my ideas, my thoughts, my creations. They go to a library and Xerox the book. "Who does that hurt" they say. Well, it hurts me by depriving me of my rewards for my work. Or they strip the DRM out of an ebook version. Now they're depriving both me and my publisher of our just rewards.

The fact that copyright has a history doesn't mean that it's an inviolable principle. If I could protect my work effectively through DRM without relying on copyright, I would. The fact that violating my property rights, my ownership of my creations is easy doesn't make it right. Just because I choose to sell the access to my works shouldn't require me to give up control of my works at some arbitrary point in the future.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame I spent my points yesterday. I like that idea.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[davidwr]

If your copyright is worth $2.56, you can get 10 years pretty well. If your copyright is worth $2,621.44, then you can likely afford to get a 20 year copyright. If for whatever reason your work needs 30 years and is that ridiculously profitable, then you can probably afford $2,684,354.56 for 30 years.

I think you mean 10 years for 2^10-1 * $0.01 = 0+1+2+4+8+16+32+64+128+512 $10.23. 20 years would be $10,485.75, 30 would be $10,737,418.23, 40 years would be $10,995,116,277.75 and so on. Of course, in 40 years, $11 billion dollars will barely buy a loaf of bread but that's a different problem altogether.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Anpheus]

I meant what I typed, to purchase two years of copyright is $0.01, three years is $0.02:

4: $0.04
5: $0.08
6: $0.16
7: $0.32
8: $0.64
9: $1.28
10: $2.56

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[Kz]

the point is that intellectual creations, according to the US founders, does not belong to any individual. not even the author. it's inherently a legacy for the whole mankind.

but, of course, there has to be financial incentives and recognition to foster the creation of such works. that's what copyrights, patents and trademarks are: different ways to formalise and protect by law a time-limited monopoly on the use and profit of creations.

that's why it's so dangerous to talk about 'intellectual property'. it leads to these assumptions where you actually own them.

if you want to truly own an idea, don't share it.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[richie2000]

In most Berne-signatory countries, the author's "moral rights" cover that, in perpetuity. They encompass the author's right to be acknowledged as the creator of the work as well as limits the use to, for instance, non-defamatory uses.

The limits you propose are otherwise very close to the Pirate Party line on copyrights.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[PitaBred]

But if I let the work fall into public domain $EVIL_CORPORATION* could use it to advertise their new product.

Umm... so fucking what? You think the Brothers Grimm ever wanted to see their stories turned into this crap?. Or Michelangelo wanted his painting on the Sistine Chapel used as a base for all kinds of stupid stuff?

The point of creating art is to contribute to culture, not to control who sees what in your art, or uses it for whatever purpose. Copyright gives you an opportunity to profit immediately after the creation of it, and after that, it goes to the public domain, for the public to use however they see fit, because that's how culture is created. Your own works are based on many, many hundreds of other people's work... what gives you the right to control how others use your work if you already use so much culture without attribution or paying someone? If you don't get that, you have no business calling yourself an artist.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[ynohoo]

from your site:

why buy 3D Nature products?

beacause thats how you make your living. Would you rather I just cracked it and stuck it on a Torrent site?

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[LordLucless]

It's my creation. The fact that I chose to write it is my decision as an author.

And the fact that I choose to copy it is my decision. I have access to it, I can do it - you can't stop me, and I don't care about what you think your rights are. The only way you can stop me is by not letting me have access at all - by not publishing.

This is the impasse you reach when you have no external forces acting on the situation - the "natural" state of affairs. In order to rectify this, the artificial control of copyright was introduced. It's a compromise - it gives the authors something, and the public something. If content creators (or their owners) want to renege on that compromise, then we'll go back to the old system where you have no control over your work once published, and there is less publication overall. Demand the whole pie, and you'll be amazed at how fast it shrinks.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[PitaBred]

Don't be stupid. That's why copyright DOES exist. It's not a perpetual right... it's a limited one. IF you can't profit immediately after the creation of it (note I said that in the previous post), then you did something wrong. You should never get perpetual rights. It's bad for society.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[ynohoo]

By your attitude, I assume you are relatively young. Perhaps when you have another couple of decades under your belt, you may change your mind.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[PitaBred]

And people have said that as I have kids (got 'em) and get older, I'll start believing in God, too. Still hasn't happened.

Perpetual copyright is bad for society. People older than you (and much smarter) realize that unlimited copyright is detrimental to society because it limits the sharing of ideas. Limited copyright is necessary for some people to be encouraged to create. But creation happens even absent copyright, so it's clearly not something that's required for creation of art and literature.

If you can't copy, you can't create. Hell, just your COBOL editor is copying from dozens of other editors. If those ideas were locked up under copyright ("a white text box", "split screens"), you wouldn't have a product. Was your first program not "Hello World" in some form or another? Oh, wait... you copied that, too. And from there, you built up other things. Why would you deny that opportunity to other people?

Copyright exists to allow people to profit from novel works... locking them up perpetually stagnates creativity. If you don't get that, you're either stupid or just ignorant.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[ynohoo]

The use of copyright and patents for software is a relatively new field - and the extreme extentions of copyright claimed by corporate entities is also new.

What you say may be true for software, where the ever changing landscape renders software obsolete is less than decade.

When it comes to the world of the arts, writing, painting etc. it is a different issue. Many books from 50 years ago still sell well - are you saying authors should not continue to profit from their work into their retirement? That the profits of such sales should only go to the publishers?

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[PitaBred]

If I dig a ditch today, do I keep profiting from it every time water flows through it? If I build a house, do I get a cut of the sale every time it's sold after I sell it the first time?

The point of copyright is to encourage the creation of arts and the advancement of culture. Giving an artist a gravy train does not encourage that advancement. Nor does preventing other people from building on that work. No creative works are created in a vacuum... they're all built on other creative works. Elves are not unique to Tolkien. Wizards aren't unique to Rowling. They built upon lots of previous work to get to what they have. And now they (and their families) have the gall to try to prevent future artists from doing the same thing?

From that, I think it is perfectly OK for publishers to be the only ones to profit after copyright expires. After all, ANY publisher can print the book. And the author could have an official version... I'd buy that one if I were a consumer looking to buy the best quality version, or the "correct" one. The author already made the artistic contribution and profited from it under copyright... if he wants further profit from artistic endeavors, he needs to create more artistic works. Copyright is societal contract of protecting an idea while spreading it. If you don't want people to copy it, don't tell anyone your idea. There is no natural right to tell people to not think your idea. It's purely societal, so it should be for the benefit of society that it exists, not a select few "artists" who then drive all competition out and lessen the total amount of art created.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[ynohoo]

You are confusing the mis-use of software patents to restrict competition with an actual creative process using elements of other works to create something truly new. Tolkien never tried to stop anyone creating a new novel using elves and wizards - I suspect he welcomed them.

Now if you had copyright over a particilarly good garden design, and a competitor simply copied it, as opposed to borrowing elements of it, would you not be be incensed?

If copyright on a novel expired after a short time, publishers would simply retain any manuscripts they receive until the copyright expired, then publish and pay the author nothing. In the days before copyright, this kind of behaviour happened all the time.

Re:If it were up to me, yes

[PitaBred]

Tolkein never tried to stop anyone from using elves and wizards... but what you're arguing means that things like Disney's version of Snow White would never be made without copious investment from someone with very deep pockets. They'll only invest in a "sure thing" which is why you see the glut of insane rehashings any more of any successful property. He had his chance to profit from the work (and he did quite well with it). Why then should his stories be locked up from the rest of society? We tell the stories of Goldilocks, Snow White, even Romeo and Juliet or The Odyssey as part of our cultural heritage. Those are outright copies, yet still add something new, something different, they add to our culture. Yet your statements advocate doing away with that.

To take a more modern example, look at J.K. Rowling. Has she profited from Harry Potter in a short time? I should say so. The world has latched on to the stories she created, the characters have captured imaginations. Which is wonderful. But that is the point... she should not be allowed to control other people's imaginations. She should control her stories, make a profit from them if she can, and then they should be given to the rest of the world so that the world can profit from them. She built her stories on the backs of those who came before her, whether she admits it or not. Nothing is ever completely novel.

Assuming I did have copyright over a particularly good garden design, I would not like it if a competitor (especially a large company) outright copied it initially. But if I couldn't publicize and sell it after, say, 14 years, then they should have every right to do so. As well as any other person who wanted to. Them copying it does NOT make me any less the original creator of the design, and if it gets popular, people will want to come to me for new designs, assuming I do things right. It's free advertising. Just like I couldn't claim the Mona Lisa as my own work, even if I made an identical copy of it, everyone would know it was Leonardo daVinci who painted it, and if he were alive, it would be HIS work that would be in demand, not mine. Unless someone just wanted a cheap copy of an original, which means they wouldn't be part of the market for the original in the first place.

As for your publisher example, if that happens, then the author has no business being in the business of writing. That's what contracts and so on are for... you don't just throw your novel to a publisher and hope for the best. You need to protect your investment by specifying dates, advertising, shipping, etc. in return for providing the manuscript. Provide parts of the manuscript as an example of the work, rather than the whole of the work, and provide the whole of the work upon the signing of a contract that is agreed on by both parties. Hell, in this day and age, anyone can be a publisher, so there's no excuse for getting taken advantage of.

You have some very strong emotional arguments. But that is all they are. Emotional. They are not based on anything more than "But I don't WANT that!". They are not for the good of society, only for the good of a few specific creators who by luck or design happen to get famous.

Electronic searching, pring reading

[eagle52997]

I'm a graduate student and I love that Google has many books available online. I have searched and found many books of interest to my research because I was able to actually skim pertinent sections, rather than having to guess based on the title and who the author was. Then, once I found these books, I checked out the print copies to read. I still find the print easier to read than the electronic, but may be the last of a dying breed.

Re:Electronic searching, pring reading

[Anonymous Coward]

I still find the print easier to read than the electronic, but may be the last of a dying breed.

I wish I could find the study, but it found that people read 25% slower when reading from an electronic screen.

I prefer books myself because they're infinitely more portable than most electronics and the Amazonkindle and other devices of its ilk are just too expensive and they offer too much temptation for theft. And when you add in the fact of electronic junk and all the toxic metals, energy and pollution that goes into their manufacture, use, and disposal; paper actually looks to be more environmentally friendly.

Eventually, hemp paper will be environmentally and economically feasible one day and that will, hopefully, put less of a burden on our overtaxed forests (Sorry, I have a different idea of what is "sustainable" than what the forest products industry thinks - I include wildlife and the whole ecosystem.). Now, to defend the forest products industry, they do in fact investigate hemp every few years in the hopes of being less dependent on trees. But, unfortunately, making paper out of hemp takes much more fresh water and other resources than tree based paper. They would LOVE to do it: the PR factor alone is a huge incentive! At least this is what a Chemical Engineer that works in the Environmental department of a very large Georgia based paper products company told me. Believe it or not, this company is extremely conscious of the environment over and above Government regulations - thank you activists!

Re:Electronic searching, pring reading

[PieSquared]

You are certainly not the last of a dying breed in this respect - the vast majority of people prefer paper to an LCD screen. I know personally I read way too much stuff online, but I haven't yet been able to bring myself to get through more then a chapter of a book.

On the other hand, by all (most) accounts, e-paper is just as good as regular paper. If you find yourself going to a library rather then reading something off e-paper in 5-10 years, *then* you'll be the last of a dying breed. Personally I'm gunning for a second or third generation kindle or sony e-book reader.

Re:Electronic searching, pring reading

[TheSync]

I read paper when the airplane host forces me to turn off my iPhone during takeoffs and landings (I keep a few "Network Worlds" around for that)

Otherwise, it is LCD all the way!

Re:Electronic searching, pring reading

[macshit]

On the other hand, by all (most) accounts, e-paper is just as good as regular paper.

Eh? From what I've seen, that's far from true. The general reputation of e-paper seems to be that it's a step in the right direction compared to more traditional display technologies, but still lacking in various ways.

Ebooks obviously have additional advantages and disadvantages of course, but it seems pretty clear that real books still have the advantage with regard to the reading surface itself.

Re:Electronic searching, pring reading

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Google Books quite a lot too. Many times I'm looking for a readable translation, or perhaps parts of interest in books not readily available (usually due to price: relatively obscure philosophy books seem to be printed on cash). Google Books has directly led to several purchases on my part.

US Only.

[Esteanil]

"16. Why was this agreement limited to Google Book Search users within the U.S.?
Because this agreement is the result of a U.S. lawsuit, it directly affects the Google Book Search experience for those accessing the site in the U.S." From the Press FAQ(PDF)

Squeaky wheels...

[TastyCakes]

I guess it just goes to show, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Everyone was so pissed off about publishers suing Google, saying it was contrary to the publishers' own interests and so on. We should have realized then that they weren't looking to block this remarkably useful technology, they were looking to ding Google with a "gotcha" lawsuit, make a quick buck and take advantage of their work anyway.

Seems to me like we need cash cows...

[tjstork]

You know, i would be tempted to agree with you if only for the practical political point that ending copyrights would gut the finances of liberalism and I happen to be a Republican.

But...

Um, just having a quick look at the finances of the USA, and I have to ask, what exactly is someone allowed to make any money in this new world. Oil companies are not allowed to earn half the profits of apple, coal companies are not allowed to operate, car companies can't make money... seems to me we have plenty of companies not making money doing something and perhaps that, we might be better off if someone did make money.

Perhaps the best way to accomodate IP longevity is to have a copyright property tax. So... if you hold the copyright to a work, you either pay the tax or put the work into the PD. That way, if something is genuinely valuable, like Lord of the Rings, then, it can still produce income and benefit the economy and be accessible through normal markets, but, the rest of the stuff won't be locked up, away from people's view, like old movies or books out of print.

Re:Seems to me like we need cash cows...

[hedwards]

Just out of curiosity, why should the oil industry be allowed to engage in anti-competitive activity, sabotage efforts to bring in new fuel technologies while being subsidized by the US government?

If they're going to take the freebies that the US provides they should also have to put up with the measures required to put them back on a level playing field with other options.

The issue isn't the industries themselves but the fact that they haven't had to pay for the consequences of their products. Meaning that I have to pay for the consequences of oil companies even though I rarely consume any of their products. And somebody who drives everywhere pays the same amount to clean up those parts of the affects. Seems like a reasonable reason to curtail the profits to me.

Re:Seems to me like we need cash cows...

[eleuthero]

But this won't work if I build a fusion reactor in my garage with money from my great-grandfather's estate (or what-have-you) and then am without cash to get it into production for the masses. By your method, I either find someone to sell my copyright to, or... more likely, the big evil company just waits until it goes PD and gets it for free. Licensing is a possibility just like it is today, but would probably be less likely in your scenario.

Re:Seems to me like we need cash cows...

[bendodge]

New idea! Just stop giving them subsidies! Then you don't have to regulate them.

Re:Seems to me like we need cash cows...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, i would be tempted to agree with you if only for the practical political point that ending copyrights would gut the finances of liberalism and I happen to be a Republican.

But...

Um, just having a quick look at the finances of the USA, and I have to ask, what exactly is someone allowed to make any money in this new world. Oil companies are not allowed to earn half the profits of apple, coal companies are not allowed to operate, car companies can't make money... seems to me we have plenty of companies not making money doing something and perhaps that, we might be better off if someone did make money.

Perhaps the best way to accomodate IP longevity is to have a copyright property tax. So... if you hold the copyright to a work, you either pay the tax or put the work into the PD. That way, if something is genuinely valuable, like Lord of the Rings, then, it can still produce income and benefit the economy and be accessible through normal markets, but, the rest of the stuff won't be locked up, away from people's view, like old movies or books out of print.

> Oil companies are not allowed to earn half the profits of apple

Sorry, gotta call bullshit on that one.

"Profits of the five biggest international oil companies have tripled since 2002."(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020100714.html)

"Microsoft earns about a third as much money [as Exxon's record 2007 profits]...next to Exxon, the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, looks like a quaint boutique, with annual profits of about $11 billion."
(http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/economy/2008/02/01/exxons-profits-measuring-a-record-windfall.html)

I couldn't peg it any closer for Exxon than $20B+ for 2007, but I did see $100B profits between them, Chevron, Shell, and ConocoPhillips for 2007 in the same USN article quoted.

By contrast, Apple's 2007 *net income* was only $3.5B on $24B revenue (profit = net income - dividends).

Try again.

You obviously weren't a psychiatry student

[davidwr]

A psychiatry student would've read the professor's book, shared it with a few classmates, had some of the classmates turn in papers that appeared to be the opposite of the teacher's teaching and some write papers that conformed to the teacher's teachings, while at the same time writing "real" papers with their own ideas. At the end of the term, after grades were announced, all students would turn in their real papers and the psychiatry student would write a paper about the experiment and submit it for publication.

Of course, he would get permission from the campus human-studies ethics committee first.

Re:You obviously weren't a psychiatry student

[NotBornYesterday]

PETA* would have been all over them for running an experiment like that.

*People for the Ethical Treatment of Academics

Online super-library?

[wvmarle]

OK I didn't rtfa but did rtfs and there it seems that all books, even those in copyright, can be put online by Google for searching in full, and it is suggested maybe even for download.

The latter would be really cool: an unlimited worldwide library where the book you want to borrow is never out.

Add a decent and cheap ebook reader and I also see the market for real books disappear almost overnight.

Is this still "do no evil"? Authors should still get their dues!

Re:It's easier to say "sorry" than ask permission.

[scubamage]

I feel the same, and honestly I laud google for it. Information is meant to be free, and they're taking the hit so the rest of us don't have to. They pay out and provide it to the rest of us, we give them ad revenue which goes to them and the authors. Everyone is happy.

Re:It's easier to say "sorry" than ask permission.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it was fucking infringement.

*sigh*

Win...Win...Win

[iamwahoo2]

It is nice to see that they have come to an agreement on this. I think it is a win for authors, Google, and readers/consumers. I can say from my own personal experience that Google's Literature search has come in useful in finding books. Furthermore, since the application gave me just enough information to know if the book would be useful for the topic I was researching. This then caused me to either purchase the book or, in the case of very expensive technical literature, caused me to borrow it from a library, which indirectly increases demand for the book.

Precendent setting bad for google

[denis-The-menace]

Though Youtube stuff is safe, any of Google's future endeavors that may/will infringe on copyrights/patents/etc will be met the same way: an open hand saying "gimme".

The difference will be that these future "open hands" will want a king's ransom regardless of the worth of the "content"

Re:It's easier to say "sorry" than ask permission.

[Chyeld]

Nice way to prove a point... wait... no it wasn't. Everything Google was doing would have been covered under fair use, meaning it wasn't infringment. What arguments do you have to say it was?

Opting out?

[oblivionboy]

So if I don't agree with the deal, as an Author can I opt out? If I don't join the Authors Guild does this mean I'm automatically NOT part of the deal?

Re:Opting out?

[PRMan]

It means you can sue Google on your own for using your stuff.

Good luck.

Re:Opting out?

[ZFox]

The deal was brokered as a settlement to a class-action lawsuit, which individuals normally can opt out of. There's a list of publishers in the article that are part of the deal--I would make sure one of them is not yours.

Re:Opting out?

[gleick]

Yes, any rightsholder can opt out.

Whether you are a member of the Authors Guild has nothing to do with whether you are part of the deal. If you are the rightsholder for a book that Google scans, or wants to scan, you are automatically part of the class (for purposes of the class action). But you can opt out.

This is a complicated deal, and many answers to questions of this kind are at the Authors Guild site.

copying a book = plantation master?

[Rick Bentley]

When you steal a book, and keep it permanently without compensation, that makes you no better than the Plantation Masters.

Really? Stealing a $5 item is akin to kidnapping entire families, beating them into submission and keeping them as slaves? Are you smoking crack or just a lawyer for the RIAA or the MPAA?

How about if I just make an unauthorized copy of an item, in violation of a term to which I never agreed? Am I now just a person who kidnaps people, beats them for a few weeks and then lets them go?

Re:copying a book = plantation master?

[Anonymous Coward]

He wrote "IMHO" at the end, so that automatically absolves him of all scrutiny and responsibility for his post!

Re:copying a book = plantation master?

[Yeorwned]

To get your facts straight, the plantation masters never kidnapped anyone...slaves throughout the years have been sold by their own people. In North America, plantation owners didn't cruise over to Africa and enslave anyone. Sadly enough, look into the history of many criminals and you will find their family has roots in slavery, either practice of or practice in.

Re:copying a book = plantation master?

[AmberBlackCat]

Am I now just a person who kidnaps people, beats them for a few weeks and then lets them go?

Yes, massuh.

Re:copying a book = plantation master?

[lymond01]

Well, not all slaves were "beaten into submission". He was referring to the Roman slaves which, varying, could simply be people who did what they were told to do -- fed, boarded, but not allowed personal freedom to earn money, etc.

Even the American slave wasn't always toiling endlessly in the fields until the slavemasters came out to whip them in for their gruel. Some of them had great report with their masters and were included on the decisions of the day -- were they free? Certainly not. But neither were they treated like dogs (some were, just not all).

Anyway, I do think it's funny the GP doesn't recognize his comparison of authors with songwriters. Book money, as music money, deserves to go mostly to the creator of the books or musics -- the talent. But the marketing of that talent is what makes the large sums of money, and fair share should be given to the companies that allow the authors to profit. FAIR share, not the near-slavery the RIAA can inflict on middling stars (and so we've come full circle).

Re:copying a book = plantation master?

[nospam007]

"Are you smoking crack or just a lawyer for the RIAA or the MPAA?"

He's an unpublished writer, it's obvious.

Re:copying a book = plantation master?

[theaveng]

Books are a little different. It usually consists of four key people - an author, an editor, a publisher, and a salesman (to convince bookstores to put it on their shelves). So the author gets to keep a MUCH bigger chunk of the pie than a song-writer who might be just one of hundreds behind a song's creation.

Bottom Line: I think people like Stephen King deserve to earn money for their sweat, labor, and time invested in their books. None of ye has a right to take Mr. King's labor without just compensation. If you enjoy King's work, pay the man so he can at least buy himself some food.

Re:copying a book = plantation master?

[jesterzog]

Even the American slave wasn't always toiling endlessly in the fields until the slavemasters came out to whip them in for their gruel. Some of them had great report with their masters and were included on the decisions of the day -- were they free? Certainly not. But neither were they treated like dogs (some were, just not all).

I see what you're saying but I don't think this is a great analogy. Most dogs aren't whipped and beaten into submission either, but are treated quite well by their owners -- they just lack the ultimate freedom to make the biggest decisions about their lives, and as dogs they're generally expected to be blindly loyal.

I'd suggest that maybe most or all slaves are treated like dogs for exactly this reason, with the catch that it is/was probably legal to treat them much worse than dogs are typically treated if a slave's owner desired for some reason.

Re:copying a book = plantation master?

[Anonymous Coward]

This view that most of the money should go to the creator of the work is ignorant. There's no natural law requiring that particular distribution of revenue from the sale of the work. What percentage of a food item in a grocery store goes to the farmer? Even worse, what percentage of a restaurant item goes to the farmer? All those layers add value - distribution, enhancement, marketing. If you are at the bottom of the chain, either create a new chain or work your way up it.

Re:copying a book = plantation master?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of them had great report with their masters

I believe that the word you were looking for was "rapport", not "report".

HTH. HAND.

Re:It's easier to say "sorry" than ask permission.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the snippets and search were short passages that in all likelihood would have been found non-infringing on the grounds of fair use rights. But, we'll never know because they settled, and quite a decent settlement it is.

Like compulsory radio licensing?

[argent]

This sounds awfully like the compulsory music licensing for radio broadcast, if I'm understanding it correctly. Am I understanding it correctly?

Sometimes it's better to apologize...

[SharpFang]

Sometimes it's better to apologize than ask permission.

My bet is that if Google nicely asked the authors guild for permission for just what the settlement resulted in, before taking any steps, they would be outright denied. Only by first -doing- and only then settling the permission matters, not only they got the desired result, they got it months ahead of time.

14 Year Copyright Or Tyranny

[Doc Ruby]

Copyright monopoly privileges on books should pass into the public domain after 14 years, as the original US copyright rules specified. Anything built something more exclusive intolerably compromises our free speech/press rights, and un-Constitutionally interferes with "progress in science and the useful arts".

shameless journal plug

[dwandy]

I just wrote about this.

Re:shameless journal plug

[trip11]

Interesting. I like the idea, though I think it swings too far the other way to ever be adopted. A more moderate suggestion might be: All works are copyrighted for X years for free with no registration (X on the order of 5 years). After the X years are up you can file to extend it for another X years by paying a filing fee + tax rate as you suggested. As far as allowing people to buy the works away from the creator's, I would suggest that you allow someone to buy full rights to the work (to be able to reproduce it at will) for something like twice the value set by the creator. The original creator also retains full rights to the work as well. This still keeps people honest, but should mean that if the creator sets a legitimate price as to what they think they will make over the work's lifetime, they will be happy to have twice that and still be able to sell their work. You need the original creator to retain the right, because you can imagine a poor artist who performs for very little money and writes a good song that could be 'stolen' by the music labels etc etc. I like the idea that a copyright holder should only hold onto copyrights that they really intend to use, but in addition to the RIAA, MPAA, and Disney, there are lots of small time artists and writers who I think we should still be careful to offer some protection to. *shrug* Not that it will ever happen, but interesting ideas.

I'd recommend it, interesting.

[tjstork]

It's not a bad article but the problem that you and I both wrestle with is, is, how to assess the value of an intellectual property. I would suggest make to market rules should apply and carry it like it inventory. The property would be worth what it was the last time a good from it was licensed.

Re:badsummary, most current books still preview on

[russotto]

Go read the FAQ on the linked site. Anyone except those using "designated computers" in public libraries is still only going to be able to perform limited searching and previewing of in-print works.

So one compromised machine in one public library and it's all out of the bag...

Re:It's easier to say "sorry" than ask permission.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is someone like Groklaw going to write an insightful analysis of this case? I find this settlement (and the lawsuit it was based on) murky and confusing - and very worrisome.

For one thing, some company called the Author's Guild, Inc. (who must have been who brought the class action lawsuit) is apparently setting themselves up as a sort of licensing clearinghouse. What gives them the right to be a middleman and take a chunk of everything? If Google had to explicitly ask permission of every author, why don't they?

Second, I'm not entirely clear on what Google did that might have been "blatant copyright infringement". Is it that they scanned the books and kept a copy? (Would it have been ok if the library scanned and kept their own copy, as a form of media/timeshifting? What if the library outsourced the scanning/storage to Google?) Is it "not fair use" to provide users with short passages/searchable indexes on request? AFAIK, Google did not allow users to download significant chunks of material without permission.

And what does this mean for the rest of us / small startup companies / etc who may want to make use of media?

Distorted world picture 0, Reality 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Oil companies are not allowed to earn half the profits of apple

Oil companies make more money per dollar spent than any other kind of (legal) company on the planet. The least they could do is spend some of that money to look for cleaner source of energy.

coal companies are not allowed to operate

Sure they are. In fact, they're the biggest operators of fossil fuel burning devices on the planet. But, again, they should be held accountable for all of the damage to the environment they're doing, just as anyone else would be if they spilled toxic waste on your yard.

car companies can't make money

Really? Toyota's making a killing. It's the American, old-fashion car industry that's making nothing.

Times change. Either you adapt, or you build up a mole hill big enough to crush anyone else who attempts to adapt. But even the tallest mole hills eventually crumble. Now even the big car companies you're complaining about are begging the government for handouts. Tough cookies, you should have spent some of those massive profits you were making from SUV sales on something productive.

You could argue that...

[Organic Brain Damage]

... but you would be wrong. Christopher Tolkien did not have the original inspiration...mashing up Norse, Celtic and some unknown number of other mythos to create the foundation for D&D and about 50% of modern nerd culture as we know it today. Public Domain is important and it's been stultified, largely through the efforts of the Disney Corporation. They don't want Mickey entering public domain and they bribe the makers of laws to alter the copyright laws for their own greed.

Re:You could argue that...

[sgt scrub]

I'm not sure why/how my post was funny or troll or how I would be wrong. All one has to do is look at wikipedia to see Christopher's contributions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Tolkien

For those who are link challenged...

He had long been part of the critical audience for his father's fiction, first as a child listening to tales of Bilbo Baggins, and then as a teenager and young adult offering much feedback on The Lord of the Rings during its 15-year gestation. He had the task of interpreting his father's sometimes self-contradictory maps of Middle-earth in order to produce the versions used in the books, and he re-drew the main map in the late 1970s to clarify the lettering and correct some errors and omissions.

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a great deal of material connected to the Middle-earth mythos that was not published in his lifetime. Although he had originally intended to publish The Silmarillion along with The Lord of the Rings, and parts of it were in a finished state, he died in 1973 with the project unfinished.

After his father's death, Christopher Tolkien embarked on organizing the masses of his father's notes, some of them written on odd scraps of paper a half-century earlier. Much of the material was handwritten; frequently a fair draft was written over a half-erased first draft, and names of characters routinely changed between the beginning and end of the same draft. Deciphering this was an arduous task, and perhaps only someone with personal experience of J. R. R. Tolkien and the evolution of his stories could have made any sense of it. Christopher Tolkien has admitted to having to occasionally guess at what his father intended.

Working with Guy Gavriel Kay, he was able to complete The Silmarillion, which was published in 1977. The Silmarillion was edited by Christopher Tolkien, who had to make some difficult editorial decisions when deciding how to present the material, and both Christopher Tolkien himself, and others have criticised some of these decisions.[citation needed] The Silmarillion was followed by Unfinished Tales in 1980, and the twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth between 1983 and 1996.

In April 2007 Christopher published a "new" book by his father, The Children of HÃrin, which Tolkien had written between 1951-57 and brought to a relatively completed stage before he abandoned it. This was one of the elder Tolkien's earliest stories, its first version dating back to 1918; several versions of the story are published in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth. The Children of HÃrin is a synthesis of these and other sources.

It is one thing to be creative to the extreme like his father. It is another to be hard working and creative like your father. Christopher Tolkien breaks all of the rules when it comes to inheriting something.

Re:It's easier to say "sorry" than ask permission.

[databyss]

Your step 1 is wrong. They weren't distributing any books, just making it easier for people to buy them from the author.

Trade secrets

[davidwr]

If you want to have that much control, be like the Church of Scientology or some corporations and make it a trade secret and only allow people to see it after they sign non-disclosure agreements.

Oh, and you do care about the public domain, whether you realize it or not. Imagine how hard it would be to write anything new if every idea back to the dawn of civilization were controlled by a gatekeeper who could say "no, you can't use that sentence in your work unless I say so."

All rights are "created by the government"

[davidwr]

Or, more accurately, a "right" with no government-backed means of enforcement is no right at all.

Even rights to real estate and other tangible property only exists because there is something to enforce it with. In some societies, people enforce these rights with their own private armies. In modern Western societies we arrest trespassers. In societies where land is owned in common or not at all, the concept of "trespass on private land" has no meaning.

I'm not saying private property is a bad thing, I am saying that the concept is only as good as its enforcement, and when and whether it should exist or be enforced is something ultimately for the people to decide.

Re:All rights are "created by the government"

[Magada]

Or, more accurately, a "right" with no government-backed means of enforcement is no right at all.

Hobbes much?

The original intent of the copyright laws was in fact not to enforce the rights of creators, but to curtail them, in extent and duration, to such limits as "society deemed acceptable".

rant
What do governments have to do with your rights to life, liberty, safety in your person and private effects, free speech, privacy, property - other than curtailing them?

Governments do not even attempt to protect the governed people's lives or right to live (check out the charter of any police force). Governments place and enforce limits on what people can own, do, say or keep secret, on where they can go, who they can kill or fuck, how they live in general and how they are allowed to die.

Rights are not created by governments - rather, one of the main functions of government is to prevent citizens from exercising certain rights in certain ways. /rant

Some comments

[Adrian Lopez]

1. It bugs me that Google had to settle in the first place. Google shouldn't need permission to scan books for archival purposes, provided those copies aren't distributed to the public. Furthermore, allowing the public to search these archives should be treated as fair use.

2. Insofar as the plaintiffs raise legitimate points concerning the use of scanned material, this settlement should not grant Google an imploed license to the works of those who don't explicitly opt-in, but the class action settlement is such that you have to opt out. This is bad. No third party should ever have the power to license my works to another party without my explicit say so. That's an exclusive right granted to me as an author.

Re:Some comments

[freedom_india]

These MTF publishers would next want royalties from brick and mortar buildings where people browse thro' their books without permission.

In the US

[nicolaiplum]

Good for you in the US. Lovely, in fact. Wonderful, great, fantastic, brilliant.

The rest of the world can obviously just rot.

Reality plagiarizing fiction?

[praetorblue]

When I read the summary, I thought "Hmm, that sounds VERY SIMILAR to a passage I read in the sci-fi novel 'Rainbow's End' on the subway this morning." In that book (by Vernor Vinge), libraries of books are being scanned and destroyed so that the knowledge can be moved online. So I clicked on the link in the summary, and... wth... I see the name: "Roy Blount". A key character involved in protesting the bringing-online of books in Rainbow's End is named "William Blount". What's the chance that there are two Blounts -- one real one fake -- who are both working on the same problem? This is totally bizarro.

Well done Google, now let's see the stock price$

[hesaigo999ca]

Yes, this will make google even more powerful then before......
Go google, Go....

Balancing public rights with author's rights

[chrisuhlik]

If it were up to me, I'd balance the profit motive of the creator with the public domain value in the following way:

1. for every creative work that you'd like protected by a government-granted exclusive copyright, file a copyright registration form, sort of like a 1040 tax form. This registration gives you a one-year exclusive right, with no restrictions.

2. for years subsequent to the first year, you may apply to extend your copyright by filing another form. On this form, you show how much money you made from selling copies in the previous year. As long as this amount is more than 1% of the best year to date, you can maintain your exclusive copy right. If not, the work goes into the public domain.

So what would a rule like this accomplish?

For works like a book or movie or song, as long as the work was being actively marketed and bringing in a significant amount of money (more than 1% of the strongest year) you get to keep your monopoly right. But if you fail to get the work out into the market, free copying takes over as the distribution mechanism. Disney could no longer keep a movie in hiding for 10 years and then re-release it. They would be forced to continue marketing the work until they failed to rake in 1% of their best year. A newspaper or magazine article would go into the public domain unless the publisher sold enough reprints to keep it above 1% of the first year. Etc. The threshold value is defined by the best year. A hit movie might need to make $500k on DVD or rental royalties annually compared to its $50M initial release. A textbook might need to sell 10 copies per year compared to its first edition of 1000 copies. Etc.

This way, the public domain value is (I feel) appropriately balanced against the value to the author. This takes away the author's current ability to bury a work by neglecting the effort of distribution. Let the public take over when the benefit to the public exceeds the benefit to the author.

What do you think?

Chris

Huge? Huge is so... 2007

[kindbud]

After the US government response to the big bank's big bladder problems, "Huge" just doesn't have the same OMG ring to it. These days "Titanic" is practically a synonym for "tiny."

$125 Million is the lint between pocket change by comparison.

depends on the author

[Trepidity]

Many academics do want their writings available for free, if for no other reason than because the average academic-press book (textbooks excluded) makes the author no royalties anyway. The reason they bother to publish in the first place is that "I got a book published with MIT Press" is prestigious, whereas "I gave my book away free on my website as a PDF" is not.

Your sig contradicts your point...

[Xenographic]

> Ye would feel differently if, after you finish writing a beautiful program, your employer said "thanks" and took it without paying you.

No, I'd just make sure to get my payment up front.

Laws can't make unsustainable businesses sustainable. I would have thought that the recent meltdown would drive home that point, but alas, it seems like people believe otherwise ...

so in summary ...

[MenAtWork]

$60 per author unless u have a few books ... and $30 million for the lawyers !! One has to think were the authors even being represented here and who formed this author's guild. My opinion is that having the full content of books on google is absolutely best for the consumer as well as the author. I and most people go out and buy more books as a result. Knee jerk reaction akin to RIAA is only going to end up creating an inconvenienced (and annoyed) consumer and poorer author.