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$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."
Good now it will be easier to find source material for all the obscure topics on my Wikipedia to-do list.
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.
Read radical news here
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.
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?
Except that it wasn't infringment. This was just another mosquito attempting to suck blood from what it saw as a rich target.
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?
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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.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
who was the asshole? the lawyers on both sides
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
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.
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.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
This is my sig.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
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?
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
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.
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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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
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.