Slashdot Mirror
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."
The right to read.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
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.
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' 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.
(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.