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Internet Archive Seeks Same Online Book Rights As Google

Posted by timothy on from the from-a-to-z-and-back-again dept.

Miracle Jones writes "Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has jumped on Google's 'Authors Guild' settlement and asked to be included as a party defendant, claiming that they ought to get the same rights and protections from liability that Google will receive when the settlement is approved by federal court. From the Internet Archive's letter to Judge Denny Chin: 'The Archive's text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books.'"

2 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. The author's right. Not enough pot by gringofrijolero · · Score: 5, Funny

    But then the world's economy will collapse completely.

    I'm all for it. Everybody wins.

    --
    Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
  2. A more general issue... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ultimately, the issue of Orphan works will have to be attacked generically, rather than outfit by outfit.

    Given the length of copyright term and the ever decreasing costs of storage, there are works, and will continue to be works that are within the term of copyright, but which have no (knows) extant owner. This is an issue.

    Without an extant owner, it isn't even possible to ask for licensing permission, so the work will necessarily go unused (bootlegging excepted). Unless one considers absolutist copyright maximalism to be a virtue for its own sake, enforcing copyright on such works is insane.

    The trick is, you don't want to make it too easy for a work to be declared orphaned. "Oh, Mr. Fungus, our statutory-search-for-author-notice ran for an entire month in the East Arkansas Hog Breeder Gazette and intelligencer and the North Anglian Lady's Christian Temperance Quarterly! What more reasonable a search could you possibly expect?"