Google Book Search Settlement Receiving Criticism

waderoush writes "While James Gleick, Lawrence Lessig, and other pundits have reacted positively to this week's proposed settlement of the publishing industry's lawsuit against Google over the Google Book Search project, a deeper study of the agreement turns up some worrisome provisions that could make online access to books much more costly and difficult than it needs to be. Harvard University's libraries, for example, declined to endorse the settlement over concerns that it provides no mechanism for keeping the cost of access to books reasonable. And while the parties to the settlement have made much of the clause providing public libraries with free full-text access to Google's database of over 7 million out-of-print books, Xconomy has a post pointing out that this access is restricted to exactly one Google terminal per library. So, you can read books for free — as long as you're the first person to get to your public library's computer room in the morning."

Comments

Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[InfinityWpi]

"So, you can read books for free -- as long as you're the first person to get to your public library's computer room in the morning."

Or, y'know, if you... check out a copy of the book. 'cause that's what libraries are for.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[Sen.NullProcPntr]

Or, y'know, if you... check out a copy of the book. 'cause that's what libraries are for.

I think the point is that the books are out of print so probably the library doesn't have a hard copy.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[rezalas]

'out of print' by definition means they aren't making any more money on this book... which means they don't deserve money from a settlement. "We don't find value in printing this book anymore" should mean it defaults to public domain and becomes free access. Anything else sounds like just another abuse of copyright in my opinion.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[sexconker]

Out of print, by definition, means the book is no longer being printed.

Copyright infringement is still legally wrong, and they are still legally entitled to a part of the settlement.

Many books go out of print only to be reprinted later, printed in different countries (thus making money on it, so fuck your "definition") for a while while the local used market dries up, or added to a compilation or collection that is in progress and will be printed later.

The most typical case is another print run being done after an author releases a new book, wins an award, dies, or god forbid, writes a sequel.

You don't know what out of print means.
You have no idea what the legal ramifications are.
You are an idiot who likely hates all copyright and believes information wants to be free.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Posting as AC because I modded this thread)

I think you are the one who is guilty of being an idiot. By your logic anything in the public domain should still rightfully be protected by copyright, because someone somewhere may still make a profit from it.

Good luck telling your grandchildren why they can't read any of the Grimm fairy tales because every edition since before the first world war is still under copyright but out of print.

Everyone should pay more attention to where our copyright laws are going, because it has all been foretold by RMS.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[lgw]

"Information wants to be free" like water wants to run downhill. That's free as in speech, not beer. The statement is true: it takes a *lot* of dilligence to prevent information from spreading in unwanted ways.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[digitig]

'out of print' by definition means they aren't making any more money on this book at the moment, but may choose to reprint at some future date and so start making money again, provided the market hasn't been flooded with illegal copies.

Fixed that for ya.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[digitig]

Where did the gp support the existing copyright durations? The issue was the broken logic that suggested a temporary break in publication should lead to a loss of all rights.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[sexconker]

Wrong.
Information doesn't want anything.
Certain people want information to be free.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[sexconker]

No, they anthropomorphize information as wanting to be free, so that they can disassociate themselves from their desire for information to be free, and thus claim it as an accepted truth.

In this way, they seek to paint themselves in a positive light as defenders of information and champions for its freedom. In reality, they're almost always deriding copyright and censorship, and often supporting piracy.

I often hate copyright law. I hate all censorship. I may or may not yarr on occasion. But I'm up front about it. I don't hide behind useless catch phrases that make claims of playing "backups" of games or movies look plausible.

I believe you're the one missing the point.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[Maguscrowley]

Some people need it spelled out to them.

The 'wants' in the sentence "Information wants to be free" is a metaphor for natural tendency. Hence the following sentence water 'wants' to run down hill. Your misinterpretation of the anthropomorphizing of the nouns 'information' and 'water' are stemming from a misunderstanding of the literary devices here.

Sexconker and the like should feel free to argue over the natural tendency of information being free but they, supposing they passed the 5th grade, should know better then to ascribe a their own meaning to the phrase and then attack our ideals through a false proxy.

This mistake is known as a certain subfallacy of Ignoratio Elenchi (Red Herring) known as a strawman argument.

Re:Library, n. 1) A place to keep books.

[Dan541]

Copyright should expire after 5 years, and then people should be entitled to reproduce copies of the works.

Worse than that!

[Dan East]

"So, you can read books for free â" as long as you're the first person to get to your public library's computer room in the morning."

It's much worse than that. If you were to read those same books electronically from the comfort and convenience of your own home, then your eyeballs would explode and your body would spontaneously combust, possibly killing your entire family and burning down your house. At least that's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for why I would have to sit in front of a computer in the library to access an online resource instead of using my own computer.

Ah, well... RMS seems to have been right again.

[Forty Two Tenfold]

The right to read.

Re:Inter-Library Loan

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing says "great" like forcing cash-starved public institutions to ship wood pulp back and forth to get those words to me, to preserve the vanishingly small chance a publisher may decide to start printing those words again someday.

OUT OF PRINT

[sexconker]

Why do people keep thinking out of print means impossible to find, not being sold, etc?

OUT OF PRINT means it's NOT BEING PRINTED.

Current copies can be sold.
If those are gone (VERY rarely does a book actually sell out. Even rarer is a book selling out, and a publisher not immediately printing more.), the used market kicks in.
Libraries are just that - LIBRARIES. They collect books, and they just happen to let you check them out for a while.

Books go out of print and are reprinted later all the time. They are printed for different countries. They are collected into compilations or collections, which are printed when finished. They are updated by the author, and a new revision is printed. They are reprinted when the author writes a new book or a sequel, wins an award, dies, the book is turned into a movie, etc.

Out of print means just that.
There is currently not a printing press making new copies of the book. Copies are often hard to acquire from a store, and maybe even a library. But all you nerds have this thing called the internet where you can get together and buy and trade things.

I seem to recall a certain website named after a certain river/rain forest/tribe of warrior women getting it's fucking start by making is vastly easier to access books in general.

How is this googles fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

No really. I doubt it was their intention to launch this program just to be sued. Considering you can find almost any book through google, even in audio format, for free... I think they did a pretty good job. They are not evil. They are more like "ok, ok guys, just don't poke us with sticks" while usable code from book project is already in main search engine itself.

Re:criticize all you want...

[strength_of_10_men]

not to be a google-apologist, but to be fair, why is this google's fault? i would bet that the one-google-terminal-per-library is a stipulation that the publishers insisted on.

google could have gone to court with this and lost and we'd have ... nothing. at least now, there's SOME access to all these out of print books.

i'm just sayin'...