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DOJ Confirms Google Antitrust Investigation
An anonymous reader points to Digital Daily, writing "Looks like the fireworks have begun early in Mountain View. On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice officially notified Google that it is investigating its book deal for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act."
The move is the strongest sign yet that the DOJ may block the settlement, which critics claim would grant Google (GOOG) a monopoly on orphaned works-copyrighted texts without an identifiable copyright holder.
Heh, really? Maybe if there was some copyright reform no deal would be necessary. Maybe if copyright was an opt-in system, publishers could publish out of print books without having to worry about being sued by an absentee copyright holder.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm ok with this, as long as they investigate the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers as well.
Qxe4
Stupid companies.. Stop getting too big! Stop making so much money! Stop being so much better than your competition that everyone only uses your product. Being competitive means allowing the other guys to catch up! It also means you can't branch out too much..so keep your focus narrow.
Anyone else think this is a little over zealous?
Yet another case of punishing business for success. Alan Greenspan had it right back in 1966 when he wrote this memo on anti-trust legislation:
First let me say, don't ever trust the government...but when you have a very large company and a deal that is being called questionable by some. Isn't this what the DOJ is supposed to do, investigate and see if there is any merit to the complaints?
back at the time ? in the last 8 years, microsoft got major fines from regulators and antitrust institutions around the world for anticompetitive practices, including European Union. yet, doj doesnt do any serious shit about microsoft. what gives ?
Read radical news here
Maybe the DOJ is investigating because Google has a monopoly on not doing evil.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Over the years, Microsoft has proven to be particulary inept at getting any traction with their search business. In January 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo. Their efforts were frustrated when Google came to Yahoo's rescue. To get their revenge Microsoft mobilized their army of lobbyists in a Plot to Kill Google. Microsoft persuaded other companies and trade groups to lend support to their FUD campaign against their arch enemy. You will recall that the powerful American Corn Growers Association was among them - this same organization who's members get billions in subsidies to produce environmentally unfriendly ethanol from corn.
An article in the New York Times details Google's public-relations offensive to counteract the Microsoft generated FUD.
The Times articles states about Google: "regulators are intensely scrutinizing its every move, as they once did with ... Microsoft. (My bold)
Why is it - "as they once did with Microsoft"? Microsoft never changed the behaviour that lead to civil actions filed against Microsoft in May of 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 U.S. states.
They have made a big mistake. The DOJ is after the wrong company! With a new administartion in place, their first priority should be to get Microsoft under control. The EU has really shown the world the the US DOJ has been asleep on its watch. If the DOJ woke up and stepped up to its long neglected responsibilities, it would be the USA raking in the billions in fines it will take to get Microsoft to behave itself, instead of the EU. Why in the world are they going after Google at this time?
Google has been a shining example of how a good corporate citizen should behave, and Microsoft should be encouraged to emulate Google's example. Google doesn't lock people into its software or services. Any time you want you can use another search engine or pick up your Google docs and walk away. If there are some justifiable concerns about Google, I suggest that the DOJ first take care of elephant in the room - Microsoft - before turning to Google. It is just so disheartening to see the good guys getting DOJ's attention while the bad guy slips away. Microsoft, you hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from Google's eye.
PS: I couldn't have written this short essay without Google there by my side the whole time as a friend to help me with the research.
Ok, basically due to the USA having a screwed up copyright system, Google got the exclusive rights to a ton of books with questionable copyright status for them to search/digitize. Because of this a bunch of other companies cried foul and now the people who got us in this screwed up copyright mess and gave Google all these rights is investigating them and costing us even more money then if we would do the sane thing and reform copyright laws.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
They are doing this because:
If you want a book with questionable copyright status, YOU HAVE TO GO TO GOOGLE, no one but google has the power to deal with that type of book. How would this sound: You want a OS, you HAVE to go to Microsoft. You want a PC, you HAVE to go to Dell. You want to eat, You HAVE to get your food from the Government. You want to sleep, you HAVE to sleep on a bad from Acme.
they're monopolies also.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I can't believe that anyone in the DOJ is stupid enough to believe that Google taking the initiative to provide orphaned works to the public constitutes some sort of monopoly. The original work must still exist somewhere in print. It's not like they're engaging in Fahrenheit 451-style tactics to control all knowledge. Furthermore, making a settlement to get rid of a nuissance lawsuit doesn't represent an admission of wrongdoing. It's not like the idea of mass book scanning and indexing was an original idea of Google's that they have some exclusivity over. If anyone want's to engage in their own mission to do so they can. In fact there were academic projects to do just that before Google came along with their idea of how to do things. Google worked with them to help develop better technology to improve the throughput over existing scanner systems. The whole history of the books project is available for anyone to peruse if they are interested. I don't see how anyone can construe the actions described therein as monopolistic.
The only thing that's questionable is how far they're stretching the fair use principle in what they're doing. A strict interpretation of the law suggests that any complete duplication of a protected work constitutes infringement even if it is kept in private with only excerpts revealed to the public. Considering that the complaint centers around orphaned works still under copyright but with no one making a claim to them it isn't clear who the potentially damaged party is in this case. If someone wanted to acquire an orphaned work in its original form how would they do it? Resale of existing copies doesn't deprive the copyright holder of any income. If the publishing industry is wringing their hands over the inability to contact the copyright holder then they obviously can't be producing new copies of these works. So where is the damage?
What's wrong is that it is saddeningly easy for MS to use it's network of lobbyists to buy their own special government services when they need them. What you have is a publishing industry that is scared of being obsoleted like the buggy whip manufacturers. MS loves to take advantage of organizations like this and use them to do their bidding such as how they used SCO to spread FUD on the use of Linux. A previous poster had it right when they surmised that this is payback for Google's interference in the attempted Yahoo buyout.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
An interesting thing I find here so far, though, is that there's so many people decrying the antitrust investigation of Google for being "too successful" but going on about how Microsoft should go under an antitrust investigation for being...too successful.
If that's what you "find", then you're not doing an honest job of looking.
http://outcampaign.org/
How would that be stealing if it wasn't offered? Thats as stupid as me saying that you are stealing my profits when you buy a computer from Best Buy because I have a computer. Now, would I sell that computer to you? Probably not. How do you say that its stealing when you could never buy it anyways? With the cost of distribution approaching 0, there is no real reason to not make things available over the internet.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Like friggin' banks. When a company gets so big that it can manipulate markets or it's failure would hurt the economy as a whole, the Sherman act is supposed to protect the citizens by empowering the government to step in. Instead of Google, how about Goldman Sachs? Man, the priorities in D.C. are seriously out of whack..
/me sips his coffee and ponders a new sig...