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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."
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?
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.
Actually what they said specifically is:
Opting out of the settlement is for authors who want to preserve their right to sue Google themselves. We donâ(TM)t think there are any such authors.
Oh how they doubt the litigious desire of some people that believe their works turn the paper they're printed on to gold.
My work here is dung.
These fucks are too lazy to scan the books for themselves and are bitter that Google is investing the man-power to do so.
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?
From useless to possibly useful. This reminds me of adverse possession laws were if real property is not being used ownership can be transfered to someone who will actually make some positive use of the property.
Good ruling that is taking books sitting as orphans outside of a users/readers reach and making them freely accessible.
I think the objection is that this settlement only allows Google to do this. Anyone else has to not only scan the books in, but also get sued by the Authors Guild and then make the same class-action settlement.
Remind me why monopoly is bad, again?
I thought the whole point was that monopoly is bad for the consumer who gets stuck with shitty product because no one can compete fairly and bring better products in the game. So here we are, with a gazillion books sitting there with no one to bring them to the people the way Google is trying to, while everyone else bitches and moans about one thing or the other. Pardon my antipathy to the reasons like being lazy or not being resourceful enough, but at the end of the day I would really like it if those books were easily accessible to me and to everyone else.
Here's a thought: Let Google become a monopoly here. We get a nice new service. Once the service is there others would like to compete. *Then* we can bring the anti-monopoly whip out and beat Google senseless. In the meantime either get off your asses and get something similar done, or stop whining about why Google doing this or that is bad because no one else will be able to do it once Google has a monopoly. We will cross that bridge when we get there.
Reminds me of when people claimed gmail was a monopoly and I had to beat them with a stick while repeating "Being good enough that everyone prefers your free service to other competing free services is NOT A MONOPOLY".
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
the law doesn't give any rights to anyone to take a work that isn't theirs.
Legally, the issue may be the underpinnings of class action lawsuits. The thought is that it would be detrimental to the legal system to have thousands of different suits all on the exact same subject. So instead of tying hundred of judges for years on the single issue, the concept of "class action" was created, where by a single suit if brought on behalf of a class of people. There's no particular requirement needed to be the initiating claimant in a class action lawsuit - anyone can do it, as long as the judge agrees to make it a class action suit. To make this work efficiently, once a class action suit is announced (and there are legal requirements for adequate notification of involved parties), there is a short period of time when members of the class can opt-out. If they don't, they're legally bound by the result of the class action suit, and can't litigate separately.
I don't know for a fact, but I suspect that's what's happening here. The Author's Guild instigated a class action lawsuit on behalf of the authors. They don't need to be in a special position to get class action status, they just need to get the judge to agree that the judicial system will be better off with this being class action as opposed to thousands of independent lawsuits. That's the opt out we're seeing - the opt out to being counted as part of the "class". Opting out just means that you're not bound by the terms of the lawsuit - but Google isn't either. There free to continue as they have been, and if you want to make them stop, you'll have to bring your own, separate lawsuit, with all the costs and hassles that entails.
So I doubt they're will be many "the Author's Guild doesn't represent me" lawsuits, or if there is, the judges will toss them quickly, citing the valid legal status of class action lawsuits.
Oh, yeah: standard IANAL disclaimer.
A lot of people aren't understanding this bit. You have to opt out of class action lawsuits. It may not seem fair, but it's a compromise. Class-actions are one of the more pro-little-guy elements of civil law we have in the US, giving lawyers huge heaping incentives to punish abusive large entities that we wouldn't be able to attack on our own.
Here's the relevant section from the wikipedia article:
Due process requires in most cases that notice describing the class action be sent, published, or broadcast to class members. As part of this notice procedure, there may have to be several notices, first a notice giving class members the opportunity to opt out of the class, i.e. if individuals wish to proceed with their own litigation they are entitled to do so, only to the extent that they give timely notice to the class counsel or the court that they are opting out. Second, if there is a settlement proposal, the court will usually direct the class counsel to send a settlement notice to all the members of the certified class, informing them of the details of the proposed settlement.