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Google To Remove "Inappropriate" Books From Digital Library
Miracle Jones writes "In an interview with Professor (and former Microsoft employee) James Grimmelmann at the New York Law School, who is both setting up an online clearinghouse to discuss the Google book settlement and drafting an amicus brief to inform the court about the antitrust factors surrounding "orphan books," he revealed that Google will be able to moderate the content of its book scans in the same way that they moderate their YouTube videos, leaving out works that Google deems "inappropriate" from the 7 million library books it has scanned. The Fiction Circus has called for a two-year long rights auction that will ensure that these "inappropriate" titles do not get left behind in the digital era, and that other people who are willing to host and display these books will be able to do so. There is only one week left for authors and publishers to "opt out" of the settlement class and retain their rights or raise objections, and Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has been stopped from jumping on board Google's settlement as a party defendant and receiving the same legal protections that Google will get. A group of authors, including Philip K. Dick's estate, has tried to delay the settlement for four more months until they get their minds around the issue." In related news, Google is seeking a 60-day extension to the period in which it's attempting to contact authors to inform them of their right to opt-out of the terms of the settlement.
...that Google might have learned something from the massive backlash against Amazon for supposedly doing something similar?
I suppose we'll have to wait and see what gets flagged as "inappropriate." Whatever the case, I'm guessing that people won't care nearly as much as t hey did with Amazon.
Question: how do you burn a digital book?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Is inappropriate. Don't be evil Google.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
I'd have thought that anyone related to Philip K. Dick would be able to wrap their mind around -anything-.
was Farenheit 451 on the list of "inappropriate" books?
I am officially gone from
How to Prepare Children for Witches
Designing a Meth Lab
The Demise of America under Corporations
What I don't understand, as an author who holds copyright in at least one book that is out of print, is: how can a lawsuit to which I am not a party give *my* rights under copyright law to someone else?
That seems to be fundamentally wrong.
Tangentially, I find it somewhere between interesting and amusing (or perhaps scary) that Google appears to have made no attempt to contact me, despite the fact that I'm hardly the most difficult person to find.
Even more tangentially, there doesn't seem to be any place to go to see if google has actually digitized a book in which I have rights. Someone please correct me if there's a way to do that. (But in any case, why should I be the one who has to go and see if they've infringed rights? They are the ones who are supposed to seek permission from me.)
Frankly, this whole "settlement" seems utterly unconscionable.
No point in singeling out the Taliban. Almost all religions and almost all governments have done this at least once in their history.
So Google wishes to censor books that are deemed to be "inappropriate"? This begs the question... Who gets to determine what is inappropriate? There are many definitions in the world about what is inappropriate and Google is an international company. Who do we ask to sit on the board? I'm sure that anyone who is picked will be objectionable to someone.
A group of authors, including Philip K. Dick's estate
Huh. Which books did Philip K. Dick's estate write?
>A group of authors, including Philip K. Dick's estate...
In that single collection of words is everything that's wrong with our copyright system...
Waving the censorship flag is a bit overzealous. IMO google is choosing carefully which books to include in its project. They're neither a library, nor a government - why should they archive every book under the sun? Did any of us expect to be able to find and search every book ever published? It's more a question of merit. Why waste the space on children's origami books, or every edition of "Upgrading and Repairing PCs". However, I would still like to see that list. It would shed some light on the opinions and thought processes of those in charge at google.
All I really want to know is what Harlan Ellison thinks.
He's a beacon of light in our troubled forest of copyright.
Indeed. For instance:
http://www.ovo127.com/blog/2009/03/trevor-blake-unspeakable-horrors.html
(I don't mean to single out Lovecraft, but the popularity of his (other) work makes him a good sample)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
They'd have chipped the wang off the Statue of David. Let's see, who else do I know that had a policy of making "Inappropriate" works of art disappear? Oh yes... The Christians.
There fixed that for you.
You do know that the statue of David was commissioned to stand in a Cathedral? Right? You know, a place of CHRISTIAN worship.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Google isn't contacting you because you're too small fry.
Anyway, what I don't get is what this summary means. Is it talking about "censorship", about porn, or about digital rights management/copyright issues. The summary seems to vacillate between either of those interpretations, and most people here immediately seem to assume "censorship", but I don't really see how they can conclude that with any degree of certainty.
Reading the article (which is pretty badly written) it seems to be about "porn" mostly, but they fail to explain why we are supposed to care, or why the fact that google has a non-exclusive deal with the AG makes the current situation worse. Apparently they're blaming Google for not having competitors, which seems pretty stupid.
Right now those orphaned (and other) books aren't accessible, nor in the PD, and this won't change if Google partially publishes and partially censors them (as they still won't be PD), but apparently if google censors them there will be no other way for us whatever to access those books, which seems something of a stretch. (but hey, sensationalist journalism is great. It's almost as though they've confused GOOG for MSFT, the twits.)
Secondly, the auction house idea seems even more legally untenable than this deal with the AG is.
Lastly, what is the relevance of P.K. Dick's estate to the discussion, other than as a name?
So Google commits the most blatant act of copyright infringement in the history of mankind - basically stealing 7 million books and posting them on the Internet (with "limitations", which will be quickly circumvented with some clever Google "mash-up"). Someone steps forward, claims to represent the entire class of authors who has been wronged, accepts a pitiful "settlement" (well, it's pitiful if you are one of 7 million authors who are going to be paid $60 for your hard work, the $30 million cut for the lawyers is pretty impressive), and now the authors have two choices:
1. Accept a really crappy deal.
2. Sue one of the largests corporations on Earth, which can point to the 6.99 million plus other authors who took (or at least, didn't opt out of) the lousy deal and say, "This is what everyone else thought these rights were worth."
Meanwhile, a 12-year old downloads a crappy pop song onto her grandparent's blueberry iMac, and the RIAA gets to extort thousands of dollars out of dear old Grandma.
Why is "Hit Me Baby One More Time" worth so much more than something like "Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage"? And if it isn't, why can a bunch of lawyers step in for 7 million people and accept a crappy deal?
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
When a class action lawsuit is approved to go forward, then anyone and everyone defined in that class is bound by the terms of the eventual settlement unless they specifically opt-out in writing. The lawyers bringing the class action suit are supposed to contact the members of the class, but when the class is so large, this often only happens by means of a few postings in trade literature, or some commercials run on TV or the like.
A similar thing happened to my parents. They (foolishly) bought a car on a lease-to-own program, where a certain amount of what you pay in the lease is supposed to apply to the eventual purchase price. Well, in addition to being a bad deal to begin with, the dealership did even not live up to these terms and also played games like applying additional payments toward future interest incurred instead of the principle. They broke their contract and the law in several instances cheating my parents (and all their other customers) out of thousands of dollars each.
Anyway some lawyer decided to bring a class action lawsuit against them for this, and eventually "won". The result - the lawyer got a ton of money, each of the screwed customers got like $50 and the dealership got off for a fraction of what they had cheated their customers out of. The laywer claimed he mailed letters to all the customers affected by this notifying them of the class action (my parents were specifically listed as such a customer as found in discovery), but they don't ever remember getting such a thing. The first they heard about it was when they tried to bring legal action against the dealership and were told they couldn't because they had been part of a class settlement, but they could contact the lawyer and request their share of that settlement if they wished.
Class action lawsuits may have been created with good intention, but the actual outcome is enrich scummy lawyers and to indemnify corporations against lawsuits for cheap.
Not hosting those books is not "Censorship", it's simply not hosting books they deem inappropriate (which is their right to do). If you have a website or a business with a website, then you have the right to NOT link to sites or articles which you completely disagree with or find inappropriate. If Google went around banning those books from every library, bookstore, and online bookstore -- then it would be censorship. They're not a government institution, and they're not a monopoly. Let them do whatever the hell they want.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Yes, it's censorship. If Google, and only Google, has the right to scan and host a book, then for Google not to do it is censorship.
If it weren't for the absurd decision of the court then I would agree that it wasn't censorship. As, however, the government has granted this monopoly to Google, then for Google to refuse to publish a work is censorship.
I, personally, think that this decision is absurd, illegal, and unfair to everyone except Google and the lawyers. And I'm dubious that the court had the legal right to make the decision that it did. The authors' guild doesn't represent all authors, and it may well not even represent most authors. (I'll grant it probably represents all the authors in the English speaking world who make most of their income from writing. I won't admit that it considers their interests very seriously...except, possibly, in contract negotiations with publishers. [I'm neither an author of anything longer than a short technical manual, nor closely enough connected with any authors to have discussed how the authors' guild goes about representing them. But I know that they didn't represent me, and I *did* write that now obsolete and out of print technical manual.])
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I certainly hope they deem half naked (or worse!) anthropomorphic rabbits as inappropriate. Especially as this stuff tends to end up in the hands of children!
Squirrel!