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"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?"
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 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."