Slashdot Mirror
"Authors Guild" Skims Half of Google Book-Rights Settlement
Miracle Jones writes "A recent memo from the 'Author's Guild' to the writers and publishers that it supposedly represents shows that only $45 million of the $125 million dollar settlement with Google will be paid to writers, and that the most a writer can receive for a book is $300. Many people speculate that Google's monopoly over all of out-of-copyright works will result in a brutal monopoly that will hurt both writers and readers, and that the 'Author's Guild' had no right to make the deal in the first place. How will it all shake down? Should writers be paid at all for their work? Will Google be any good at the publishing racket?"
This summary is laughably inaccurate, biased, and sensational. This agreement doesn't give Google anything even *like* a "monopoly over all out-of-copyright works." If a work is out-of-copyright Google (or anyone else for that matter) is free to do whatever the hell they want with it.
EXACTLY, if you don't want to use Google for those just go to Project Gutenberg or pay 8 bucks at your local book store for something that cost them 1 buck to make.
I don't even see how this is possible. If a work isn't copyright, then anyone can publish it without paying royalties. I'm not sure how a company can make a business off of that alone, or how that can be construed to be a "monopoly." This is simply put, an article solely put out there to rile readers.
It's all fun and games till someone divides by 0. Then it's hilarious.
I'm glad we had libraries before copyright lawyers. If someone suggested the concept of a library today as a new idea, it would be shot down instantly.
The writers should get whatever their contract with the guilds says, not a penny more.
Hey, you get into bed with a dying business model, the people running will eventually go after you,.
And yes, I think Google should have fought it tooth and nail, because they have the money to do so.
Plus the long term benefits of having this finally hashed out in courts would be a money and time saver later on.
Bu not fighting it that are costing themselves a lot of money.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That makes a lot more sense. I was wondering why Google or anyone else would pay a red cent to anyone for out of copyright works, especially electronic copies. By definition, a work that is out of copyright isn't owned by anyone, and anyone can do whatever they please with it.
For a site that posts as many stories about copyright as Slashdot does, you'd think the editors would have at least a basic understanding of it. Of course, since article selection around here seems to involve a monkey and a dart board, I guess we shouldn't be surprised by articles like this.
Should writers be paid at all for their work?
Not for out of copyright works. If you've been dead for seventy years you can do without the money.
Not for discussing Google as a monopoly provider of out of copyright works anybody is allowed to copy either, for that matter.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I am a writer and this settelment, far from being perfect, falls within the realm of consideratoin
With such mastery of the English language, $300 must seem like quite a nice chunk of change for your work...
Perhaps the compensation is not enough.
Not enough for what, exactly? Allowing your works to receive the single most effective form of free advertising ever devised by humanity?
In Google's position, I would have just blacklisted all guildmember's works from search results until they paid me for sending them sales. It amazes me that anyone still has the 'nads to complain about their work appearing on Google... Such petulance strikes me as similar to a man who complains about winning the lottery because of the increased taxes. Boo-frickin'-hoo.
Miracle Jones - what part of "out of copyright" do you not understand?
Idiot.
No wonder publishing is going down the crapper, stodgy companies unable to adapt and whiny prima donna authors thinking everything that flows from their pen is manna from heaven.
I'm not saying there isn't worthwhile stuff out there, it's just in the extreme minority these days.
The Google case *does* relate to full texts, *and* to whether an author should be paid the price of their choosing for their work.
Basically, Google was able to settle a class action lawsuit in such a way that it was given rights to works from all members of a class (including the right to sell access to full texts for out of print books). So basically, unless you've taken action to exclude yourself from the class's deal, Google can sell almost anything you've ever written that is not currently in print, without any permission from you or your agents.
Google has used brilliant legal tricks and some paltry millions to more or less turn the copyright system from opt-in to opt-out when it comes to selling on Google Books.
I personally suspect that this will be a net win for everyone involved, Google, readers, and writers. But it would be wrong to downplay the importance of this case, and the potential impact of it's settlement.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
The mantra is "All IP is bad except when you use copyright to enforce the GPL."
Irrespectively of my own personal position on the matter of copyright, you seem to fail to grasp a crucial concept: The whole point of the GPL is to game the system: either you say copyright doesn't matter, and the stuff is free to share, or you say it does matter, and the GPL says the stuff is free to share. Crying foul over GPL infringement isn't so much a turn-face as it is saying this: "We don't believe in your rules, but we went ahead played by them to achieve what we wanted. So, now you either you play by our rules, or you play by yours. But whichever you pick, you'd better freaking follow them."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you aren't a professional writer, or at least not a professional writer of fiction.
Here's the thing. Putting aside the ridiculous assumption that you have a right to the product of someone else's creative efforts by virtue of being born, people gotta eat, right? So let's say that music is free to whoever wants it, and anyone can play it or listen to it whenever with no consideration to the creator of the work. Now, the only people making money from music are the people who are playing it. That's fine, as far as it goes; songwriters would either learn an instrument or go in to a different line of work. You can project how this would affect music but the bottom line is that musicians could still make money.
An author only makes money when someone pays for their work. An author only makes money when someone pays for their work. Read that one more time, just to get it firmly in your head. Essayists and authors of short stories are usually freelance, and novelists have to commit a serious length of time and effort to put out one saleable work. Even if you get rid of freelancing somehow and just rely on staff writers (which would result in lower-quality, monolithic work) there's no such thing as a "staff novelist". And it's a little silly to suggest that authors should only be paid for reading their books to live audiences. So, the only time an author makes a profit, or a return on the investment of time and effort he/she has made, is when they sell the rights to a publisher or copies to readers (if they self-publish). Take that away, and no one will write works of any real length. Why? Because they can't afford to spend 3 months writing a book for which they will receive little or no money with which to support themselves, and it takes a damn long time to write a novel if you've got to work a full-time day job.
There's also the issue of justice. My work does not, I repeat, does not belong to all humanity. Humanity has never in its long and illustrious history written a damn thing. Saying that a particular work of art belongs to "humanity" as opposed to the artist who made it makes about as much sense as saying that your car belongs to humanity. And, as for the right to alter a work and claim it as your own, how would you feel if you built a house and then someone slapped a coat of paint on it, sold it, and kept the profits? Besides, authors are perfectly welcome to release works for free. How many good novels have you seen written by modern, living authors for free?
You talk about "we" and "society" and "humanity" giving up rights to the creative works of individuals as if "society" even has some sort of rights in that regard. By your logic, "society" has the right to anyone and everyone's labor, unless you believe that art, music and literature are somehow inferior to other kinds of work. You talk about authors making their works "less accessible and less useful to society" as if authors have some sort of occupational responsibility above and beyond that of any other career. For one thing, it's a little like accusing shop owners with burglar alarms of making their goods less accessible and useful to society. For another, our country isn't and has never been about people having a responsibility to make themselves useful to society. Assuming we're talking about the US, we're based around the idea that individuals have the right to do whatever they want to as a profession (assuming it's legal) and make whatever money they can doing it. Maybe you're thinking of a command economy, like a communist or socialist system, both of which aren't exactly renowned for their tendencies to develop great works of art, or even decent works of art for that matter.
This was a bit of a tirade, but I'm a writer (as yet unpublished), as are several of my friends, and if you were to suggest to any of us that you had some sort of right to the stories we've spent hours, days, weeks or months writing, rewriting and generally trying to cobble in to the best shape possible after racking our brains for inspiration that might or might not come, it's even money as to whether you'd get laughed out of the room or carried out on a stretcher. And we've all got day jobs.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Let's not put aside that notion.
As someone who was once born, I have a right to Shakespeare's "King Lear". I can't coerce someone into printing me a book with the play printed in it to take with no compensation. But if I buy that book, I can perform the play, recite it in public (for a fee, if anyone will pay me). I could even put my name on it and sell it to a magazine for publication, if that magazine would pay me. I have the right to quote as much as I want in my own different story. I can rewrite it in modern English, or slang. I can write my own story about a king driving themself mad that's exactly like "King Lear". My birthright as a person is to inherit my folk culture and use it as I please, without anyone retaining the right to stop me (short of some clear and present danger of violence or something like that).
Writers share that birthright, of course. Without it, they'd have no cultural context to write their own "original" works. I quote "original" because practically all works, especially the most popular, derive closely from previous works. Our culture assigns value to new work that refers to the old work embedded in the culture. Without the old work, and free use of it, practically none of the new work would be even recognizable as valuable at all.
Yes, people gotta eat. The protection of copyright for some "opportunity window" like the original Constitutional 14 years, within which your monopoly should protect the "promotion of science and the useful arts". Or, if you double your investment, or maybe tenfold (so artists living above the poverty line can live well on the profits while they produce another work), your monopoly expires earlier. But copyrights that preserve the monopoly for every work to protect the maximum profit forever, excluding the works from the culture, are not at all a good compromise with free expression of people for their own culture.
People gotta eat. But people also need our own folk culture. After "pop" becomes "folk" (fairly quickly, about a human generation later), most of the value in the work is being contributed by the people perpetuating it. Copyright has a long way (smaller) to go to properly reflect those essential values.
--
make install -not war
Books, Movies and Music, are 3 of the worst consumers rip-offs.
Who decides the book is worth this much, or that song is worth this much...or that movie...
Why is it that I go into Walmart and buy a movie for 5$ and everyone still makes money....
which means the blockbuster selling their same copy for 20$ is making a HUGE profit.
I know there is a point system for figuring out what you sell a piece of clothing or shoes etc...
But that is because, it uses materials,...takes alot of space and even weighs alot more to transport.
I could download an ebook off the publisher's website for pennies compared to 20$ book from chapter's, and guess what the writer would still make his 2 cents.
I agree when you say that this system is corrupt....but the fact is, we keep buying so they keep shoving. The day we turn to other means(torrents) they will catch on...like Radiohead...coming out with their pay us what you want for their last album, and guess who jumps on THAT band wagon...Metallica, the worst of the bands to go against pirating...why because they understand
things evolve...even the industry itself.
So when they say, we had a loss of 50 billion dollars because of piracy, I say BS...
you never would have gotten that much for your movie anyways.
Times are changing (thanks to walmart) and now we are seeing just how much things REALLY cost to make.
Why should you make 10$ profit when you can make 2$ profit...take care of your customers, they will
appreciate it!
Actually, the economics of bookstores is not what you suggest.
Bookstores actually have one of the lowest markups in the industry (they buy books at 60% of what they sell them at-- most other businesses are about 50%). Let me explain how this works when I run a micro-run (100 copies) of my book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/) by sales channels.
The micro-run of 100 copies costs me $3.84 per book including shipping to get it to me. I assume the printer makes a little bit there too. So suppose the actual cost is probably closer to $2 regarding base production (no royalties at all in these calculations).
The list price for the book is $15.99. As you will see, this does not allow for a normal distribution chain with many steps. Let's look at how it works depending on where I sell it. If I sell a copy retail, that gives me $12.15 profit per book.
If I sell it to a bookstore, I would sell it at 9.59 per copy. This means I make $5.85 per book in this case (close to my royalties when Booksurge sells a copy through Amazon, which are $5.60).
If I sell copies to a distributor, though, I have to sell it at 40% of list, or $6.39. This would mean I would get $2.55 per book. The distributor only gets about $3 per book too. It is still a lot more than Booksurge pays me when they sell through distributors (I get $1.60 per book there).
So what you generally see is 40% of the list price gets used in production, author royalties, and publisher profits. 20% goes to the distributor, and 40% goes to the bookstore.
In just about every other business, the retail store ends up making 50% of their sale price which can go to operational expenses, etc. For book sales, it is only 40%.
However, as an author, my sense is that the ways the bookstores look at mitigating their risk make sense only in limited cases. For example, most want to do consignment. I will ONLY do consignment if I get prime placement because I don't get any more from consignment than I do from wholesale sales.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Your clothing analogy is right on. They've got it, you want it, and what it cost to make has almost nothing to do with the price. When a pair of pants can go on a rack for $150, and eventually get marked down to $10, there's obviously something screwy going on.
I'm not saying I want to live in a Wal-Mart world, but it would be really cool if every object you purchased had a true value-stream accounting available for it, so you could see that the $3 Orange Juice in the grocery store is actually giving $0.03 to the pickers who harvest the oranges, $0.07 to the owner of the land/trees, $0.05 to the owner of the refinery, $0.15 to the packaging, $0.06 to the grocery store that sells it to you, and $2.64 to the fuel / energy consumed in transporting / processing the oranges.
With transparency in profit structures, consumers could actually make sensible choices if they wanted to.
In a no-copyright world, you wouldn't be able to make my product and make it proprietary -so, no, it doesn't sound more like the BSD.
In a no-copyright world I could take leaked or decompiled OSX code, modify it and redistribute it (just like I can do currently with any Linux distribution).
The distinction between closed and open source is really just an issue of trade secrets once you get rid of copyright.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
If I walk into a bookstore every day for a month and spend 30 minutes reading your books, is that stealing?
How is this fundamentally different from what Google is doing here?
As an author as well, my biggest frustration with Google Books is how long it takes them to get the books up. It might be copyright infringement in the letter of the law, but it is no more stealing than if I borrow your book from a friend to read it.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I think it is easy for people to forget here how different the software and book worlds are in terms of how copyright works.
For example, I pushed hard to get the LedgerSMB manual licensed under a BSD license rather than a share-alike one in the spirit of the GPL. The major reason is that an aggregate work which might include this in a book as a separate (and referenced) work would actually make it harder for us to distribute (and eventually make money off) such manuals in the future.
Repeat after me: Books are not software. Books are not software. Books are not software......
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
God Forbid that it should be a lesson learned and a compulsion to publish better quality books...
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...