Opting Out of the Google Books Settlement, Pro & Con

Here are diametrically opposing view on what authors should do about the upcoming deadline to opt out of the Google Books settlement. Miracle Jones writes "The William Morris Agency has come out strongly against the Google Books settlement for its clients, citing the fact that the settlement creates a non-competitive marketplace for a whole new product (orphan books), in addition to containing provisions that will make it impossible for writers to remove books from the database after 27 months have passed: 'We believe that the license being given to Google to publish and display with impunity out-of-print "orphan" works (where the rights owner is unknown and estimated by the Financial Times to be between 2.8 and 5 million books out of 32 million books protected by copyright in the United States) will open the door to establishing Google as the most comprehensive database, potentially a monopoly, with unfair bargaining power.'" On the other side of the debate, James Gleick writes "With the deadline approaching for 'opting out' of the Google Books settlement, the Authors Guild has posted an aggressive explanation of who it thinks should do that: no one. Not a single author in the world, it argues, stands to benefit from removing himself or herself from the class. This comes as part of a new set of 'Answers' meant to push back against what the authors group thinks is widespread confusion about the settlement; they also address questions about just what kind of money we might be talking about, and what kind of control authors will have over Google's use of their work."

Comments

What about future authors?

[FictionPimp]

Maybe I'm not reading this right, if there is a deadline to opt out, and I write my first book after that deadline, can I still opt out?

Re:What about future authors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep your work in print during the copyright with a POD publisher after your last printing. Then your work will never be orphaned.

Re:What about future authors?

[NexusTw1n]

Imagine if instead of just indexing, Google stopped linking to the real website and just presented its cache. You'd never have access to the real site, just Google's copy of it. Imagine how happy webmasters would be then.

They aren't just indexing books, they are allowing them to be read online with Google adverts raking in the money. They have the exclusive right to do this, a monopoly gatekeeper. Books they don't approve of can simply vanish, books they do approve of, get an artificially high page rank, popular books get pay per view.

This sort of power over books should not be in the hands of any single company.

rights unknown?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone explain how the authors lost their rights? Were they sold to publishers that went under? Maybe I'm not understanding things correctly. If a book is out of print and they don't know who owns the rights, why doesn't the original author retain all rights?

Re:rights unknown?

[Anonymous Coward]

Update: I found some of the answers I was looking for off of a link from one of the articles.

Now you can see there's gonna be an issue with this, like you just raised, which is: what if nobody knows who the copyright owner is anymore? Maybe the publisher went out of business, and we're not sure what business now owns the assets. Maybe the author died and didn't leave a will and now grandkids in six states own the copyright and don't know about it. -- link

That kind of clears up what orphan books are, but still, if no one knows who owns the rights, who are the people complaining?

Re:rights unknown?

[NexusTw1n]

The writer retains the rights. Google came to an agreement with a guild that does not represent most writers to hand over EXCLUSIVE online rights to themselves even if the author didn't agree to it.

If the author doesn't like the deal, he needs to find out about it, and he may be living in isolation in a jungle somewhere, and then he needs to opt out by a deadline.

This completely screws other places offering free online books such as Gutenburg, because Google now owns the rights to pretty much all literature online. It's an EXCLUSIVE deal that means only google has the right to scan orphaned works. The only way anyone else can do it, is to scan the books anyway, and hope to win a billion dollar lawsuit from both Google and the Authors Guild.

To "help" authors make up their minds Google offered a bribe. Sign up before the deadline and get a share in the advertising revenue made from the orhpaned works, sign up aferwards and you don't get that benefit. Change your mind after a year or so, and it's too late. The data will be in the database permanently.

Google is trying to be a monopoly, and not a single piece of their behaviour appears to be concerned with authors, libraries and archivists. It's a disgrace and I look forward to them explaining the land grab of European author's rights to the EU.

Re:rights unknown?

[Greyfox]

Doesn't that only apply to books still under copyright? I was under the impression that Gutenburg only published books that had gone out of copyright and entered the public domain. I don't think Google can obtain exclusive rights to public domain works through this maneuver.

Re:rights unknown?

[CrimsonAvenger]

If the original author died without any children or a spouse it becomes even more difficult to determine who should have the rights. Personally I think if no-one can say for sure who owns the work, then the world should be in the public domain.

Too easy for a publisher to move your work into the Public Domain that way. Which is good for them, not so good for your heirs.

And while you may not approve of a man's heirs making money from his work years after his death, I somehow doubt you'd approve of a publisher doing it either.

Re:rights unknown?

[mcgrew]

That's a very good question. Constitutionally, in the US only authors can hold copyright and only inventors can hold patents. Unfortunately the legislators don't give a rat's ass about the Constitution, despite the fact that they are sworn to uphold it. You should not be able to sell copyrights, you should only be able to contract for their publication (i.e., "give me $n and I allow you to distribute").

Dead authors' works should ALL be in the public domain. Live authors' works should always be under their control until the copyright expires. That's another problem with copyright law, the copyrights effectively NEVER expire despite the "limited times" the constitution says.

Any author holding copyright should be able to simply ask Google to remove any book, and Google should remove it at once.

I wish every American would read this document. Here's a the section relevant to this discussion:

Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries

The constitution says that congress only has the powers granted under the constitution itself.

Re:rights unknown?

[Just Some Guy]

If the author doesn't like the deal, he needs to find out about it, and he may be living in isolation in a jungle somewhere, and then he needs to opt out by a deadline.

As copyright was explicitly established for the public good, what societal or constitutional interest is served in allowing an uninterested author to effectively lock up books they no longer care about? I'm about as conservative as you can get, but I can't see why anyone should be able to prevent Google (or any other group) from making abandoned works available. Society gets access to more information, and the authors and publishers don't lose a single penny that they hadn't already written off.

Re:The non-competitive product argument is total B

[NexusTw1n]

Once Google has an established monopoly there is nothing stopping them charging for access. They become the gate keepers to millions of books. Meanwhile their rivals a non profit making Project Gutenburg will be out of business because they used to scan orphaned works, and this deal prevents them from continuing.

This is not about laziness, Google just did this without bothering with permission, and then sent lawyers only billionares can afford in to steam roller an insane settlement, that no one else will ever be able to pull off.

Monopolies stop innovation and stop competition and in this case treat the talent like crap. It's a bad thing.

Lawsuits waiting to happen

[Aladrin]

Sounds to me like a bunch of lawsuits just waiting to happen. Last I checked, the law doesn't give any rights to anyone to take a work that isn't theirs. If Google takes a work, and the author misses the deadline, what's stopping that author from suing?

Absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell. Some crazy agreement with a guild that probably has nothing to do with the author in the first place? Yeah, right. That'll hold up in court the same way as if I sold my neighbor's car while he was on vacation. 'I've got a contract!' doesn't mean anything if what you're doing is illegal.

Re:The guild part is misleading

[drinkypoo]

Well now the Authors Guild's stance makes a lot more sense. This settlement is more self preservation then in the interest of the authors.

Okay, I'm as lazy as the next guy, lazier maybe. But I'm not too lazy to read the linked headlines (even clicked on one accidentally... I need palm detection) and one of them says that the Author's Guild gets half the money that's supposed to be going to the authors... you know, kind of like giving to UNICEF or the Red Cross. (Actually, the Red Cross has a pretty good conversion rate, much better than PETA or WWF for example.)

Of course they don't want you to opt-out... they want to get PAID. But giving you legal advice in this matter (which is what they are doing!) is a conflict of interest and, I think, probably legally actionable. IANAL of course! If I were, it would be a bad idea for me to give you free legal advice...

Re:The non-competitive product argument is total B

[Znork]

Having a uni-polar world where google is king is in staunch opposition to the spirit of the free market

Copyrighted works have nothing to do with a free market; any and all 'monopoly' power that Google obtains here is directly derived from copyright.

In a free market anyone would be free to scan and publish anything, any way they like. If there was social desire to fund authors beyond the free market, the easiest and probably most efficient way to be to slap a per-revenue levy off sales/copies/whatever going directly to the authors in question.