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Justice Dept. Opens Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Books Deal
Mad Hamster points out a NY Times report that the US Department of Justice has launched an antitrust inquiry (may require free registration) to take a look at the deal Google has made with book publishers and authors for its Book Search service. Quoting:
"Lawyers for the Justice Department have been in conversations in recent weeks with various groups opposed to the settlement, including the Internet Archive and Consumer Watchdog. More recently, Justice Department lawyers notified the parties to the settlement, including Google, and representatives for the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, that they were looking into various antitrust issues related to the far-reaching agreement. The inquiry does not necessarily mean that the department will oppose the settlement, which is subject to a court review. But it suggests that some of the concerns raised by critics, who say the settlement would unfairly give Google an exclusive license to profit from millions of books, have resonated with the Justice Department."
Update — 4/29 at 14:25 by SS: CNet has new information on the extension Google was seeking in order to contact rightsholders for a decision on whether to join the settlement or opt out. Google had originally asked for 60 days, but a judge has now granted them four more months.
Google licenses these works for a fee, and gains the right to redistribute.
Other parties don't license the works, and they complain they are shut out of the market.
Didn't Netscape cry foul in the same way? I'd hate for the Internet Archive to suffer the same fate as Netscape.
Can anyone actually correctly summarize what is going on with this Google book deal, I find it hard to believe that Google is trying to gain exclusive rights over all these unclaimed (copyright wise) books completely and forever for all copies of this book everywhere.
Isn't it really that they just want rights to put up the books that they scanned (and some people that had agreements with them to help scan)? Is there something that would stop people from rescanning those books and posting them up some place else?
Links to clear sources would be best... Where's my Google Security Blanket(TM)!
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
A trust is not inherently bad. So long as no individual rights are violated, there is no cause for concern, and certainly no reason for the government to get involved. Of course, service may degrade, but as it does, customers should be free to switch to alternatives, and other individuals/companies should be free to create and offer those alternatives.
Is just come up with a standard license agreement that can apply to anyone, with a per-page fee, for all orphaned or out-of-print works still in copyright. Something along the lines of "Yes, we don't sell that work anymore (it's out of print), but if you want to obtain it for a minimum of $0.0X per page, you can obtain it from vendor A, vendor B, or vendor C, etc., as long as we get our pre-arranged cut of the deal." It might cut into publisher's ability to do reprintings at the original price if the cost per page is set too low, but they could mitigate that by saying it only applies to works that have been officially (i.e. according to the publisher) out-of-print for 10 or 20 years or more, which aren't too likely to ever get another print run anyway.
If they did this, then publishers would get some money for works they can't be bothered to reprint themselves, and companies providing the service can compete on cost (over what they have to return to the original publishers). For works where you can't find the publisher, toss the money into some publisher-organized fund from which a company can claim their portion if they can properly show they are the copyright holder, or, alternatively, have a time limit for making such claims (10 years?) and then dole out a fraction of the money to all publishers that signed on to the original deal.
The basic problem is getting access to old and out-of-print works for which copyright has not yet expired, but where the publisher has no intention to ever print again. Used books helps enormously, but there are new options now that technology for duplicating works has advanced so much. There must be some way to come to a bargain that makes both copyright holders and users happy, but I agree with the premise that the solution shouldn't involve Google alone.
Why wouldn't they stand in the way? How is downloading a book and different from downloading an album or a movie?
And I'm asking these questions in sincerity. It seems that, for the most part, Slashdotters have a different way of handling the issues the arise from the medias differently. It's almost as if writers get treated with kids gloves in comparison to their musician and film producer peers. If you'd replace "writers guild" with "RIAA" and/or "MPAA" you'd go from people talking over the issue with a somewhat level head to one where we'd hear howls for blood and unflattering references to their sexual preference. But the truth is that these issues are the same, all of them have the same problems and all of them have the same legal protections.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
You're hilariously hypocritical.
On the one hand, you're mocking the notion of "the spirit of the social contract" and insisting that the cold hard limits of the law are the end-all and be-all with respect to copyright.
On the other hand, you're pleading that "omg it's so unfair that the laws around the class action process work the way they work", trying to appeal to some extra-legal notion of "fairness" that flies in the face of the law.
I hate to say it: since the "spirit of the social contract" thing is basically crap, all there is to tell is that there rules around class actions and if you want more, you need to put that in the law.
Of course, you'll probably just sit on your ass and further embarrass yourself with your whines.