Amazon, MS, and Yahoo Against Google's Library

anonymousNR writes "From the BBC, 'Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library. Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works. "Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle said.'"

Comments

Open X Alliance

[ShaggyZet]

1. Competitor is kicking your ass at X
2. Form Open X Alliance
3. Profit!

Re:Open X Alliance

[FooAtWFU]

I'm fairly sure that the Internet Archive is a nonprofit.

Re:Open X Alliance

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm fairly sure that the Internet Archive is a nonprofit.

Yep. Ironically Kahle started it the same year Larry Page started the research project which became google.

But, even if it is a non-profit that doesn't mean MS/Yahoo/Amazon aren't supporting it for their own reasons. I just hope Kahle is shrewed enough to milk as much support out of these new-found 'friends' as he can without giving away the cow.

Google's initiative is remarkably one-sided. But a lot of the opposition seems to be from 'old-media' types who want to keep things locked up in dead trees and paywalls rather than a solution that opens up as much information to as many people as possible. Kahle's got the opportunity to do not just the right thing, but the best thing, I hope he can get away with it.

This is not about competing to provide books

[symbolset]

It's about depriving us of access to out of print books. That is all.

Re:This is not about competing to provide books

[Brian Gordon]

This. If Amazon had any intention of selling these books, they'd be selling these books! They just don't like that Google is getting a slice of their market.

Re:This is not about competing to provide books

[KliX]

We have no access to out of print books. That's kinda the point.

Re:This is not about competing to provide books

[rtb61]

It is not the exclusive right to make out of print books that is a problem, you can't claim ownership of publishing writes unless you created the content or those rights were assigned by the person who created that content.

The privacy is the big problem. Should a person not have the same right to privacy, when they access a digital library as has been accepted through out the democratic world when they access a hard copy public library.

Google is really going to shoot itself in the foot and then stick the bloody stump in it's mouth. It claiming to be a public virtual library or at least creating the marketing pretence of being one it should be bound by the exact same expectation that people have when they attend a normal library, privacy, free access, non exclusivity of content and of course a complete absence of off topic advertising.

For authors of course, it means a huge amount of exposure and a huge amount of competition. So while the book now is continuously made available to a global audience it is also buried and obscured by a huge number of competitive titles. The best of 'class' books that get 'honestly' reviewed will get the bulk of the market and all the rest thousands upon thousands of titles will get basically nothing. Big profits for the best of 'class', no absolutely not because nearly as good as but one tenth the price will wipe them out. So the commoditising of books, 99 cents a copy anyone. Now add to that non-exclusivity and you can see why authors, especially publisher and, even retail sales are bitching.

You can also bet google will make 'open' books freely available on that site as well, so even more competition. With a world full of people who are more concerned with the knowledge imparted and of course with establishing a publicly acknowledged level of expertise, you can expect open books will inevitably become best of class because they will continue to be worked on, refined and improved, whilst remaining free.

So stop google, 'NO' absolutely 'NOT', let's just ensure non-exclusivity and, mandated strictly enforced privacy ;D.

Re:This is not about competing to provide books

[symbolset]

No, they're not trying to prevent Google from having the sole right. They're trying to prevent Google from having any right. That's evil.

I have concerns about the risk of Google having too much power too. A motto only goes so far. But from where I sit they didn't get the market dynamic they have from buying up ideas and forcing people out of business with dirty tricks like some of these. They get their markets by competing and giving better service - doing what they do very well. That might be an advantage, but I have trouble coloring it an unfair advantage. Others have the chance after all to step up their game if they're able.

But of course

[Vinegar Joe]

Microsoft won't have any complaints about Corbis and its buying up of images and their publication rights. Especially since Corbis was founded by Bill Gates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbis

what's open?

[gEvil (beta)]

So what exactly is "open" about the Open Book Alliance? Or was the name chosen for being a bad play on words.

Some has to do it

[Skinkie]

Personally I don't care if BigCorpG or BigCorpM does it. I mean, all we really want is books to be available to anyone that wants to read, study and enjoy books. Imagine a world of an endless alway-open library system, free and available to anything that can connect to the web if it wants to borrow something new. The scanning effort Google is doing will never come in time for some books, but on the other hand they did hype it. Form an alliance be against Google, but at least show you can do it better.

Re:Some has to do it

[Rog7]

/Agreed.

None of the companies in this coalition had the balls to step up and do this themselves. I'm guessing they didn't think there was any money in it. Now that Google is doing it, all they see is an opportunity to take a shot at their competitor in other markets.

Note the wording of the writeup: "could make Google the main source". Not the only source.

Re:Some has to do it

[shutdown -p now]

None of the companies in this coalition had the balls to step up and do this themselves.

Do what themselves? Get sued and settle?

I don't think that anyone would object if terms of the settlement were universally applied to everyone - so that e.g. Amazon could also go pay some reasonable fee to provide out-of-print books, and compete with Google. But as it is, it's clearly not a level playing field anymore.

Re:Some has to do it

[martin-boundary]

Perhaps you're unaware of the money and energy invested by the Internet Archive, or the scanning projects by Google's competitors and single university libraries?

Not that investing money and energy implies quality. Google's scanned books are very low quality, as a matter of fact. If you'd like to see good quality scans, try pointing your browser at the Center for Retrospective Digitization of Goettingen University for example.

The problem though isn't money or energy for scanning, there's plenty of that around. The problem is legal, as in Google have an exclusive agreement with the American Author's Guild, so others are not allowed to play. That's the problem here.

Maybe you believe in capitalism? In that case, don't forget that every time some one company has an exclusive right to exploit a resource, it inevitably leads to low quality, expensive junk passed off as gold.

Re:Some has to do it

[TheRaven64]

Have you read the settlement? As someone with a published book whose copyright is registered in the USA, I received a letter informing me that I am eligible to be considered a member of the class. The settlement outlined in this letter gives Google a large number of rights to in-copyright works that no one else has any way of getting. The only way for someone else to get the same terms is to infringe the copyright on a number of works, get sued, have the lawsuit made a class action and then persuade the other party to settle on the same terms they offered Google. There is no sensible way of any other company buying the rights outlined in the settlement. If, rather than a class-action settlement, this had been Google pushing for legislation requiring compulsory licensing of out-of-print books for a fixed fee in the same way that the US has compulsory licensing for recording rights to music, then no one would be complaining.

Google's attitude to copyright is 'infringe and pay up if we're caught'. They are not pushing for copyright reform, they are just pushing for Google to get better terms than everyone else.

Day by day old works fade away

[symbolset]

Their wealth abandoned and forgotten until the last copy is lost. Each was once a treasure, each contains something unique that once lost is gone forever. Who knows what nuggets of wisdom once enshrined in print might enlighten, inform, inspire or entertain a new generation? Nobody knows. We do know from dangling references in works of historical importance that a great deal has always been lost. Amazon knows that if people continue to have access to old books, they won't buy as many new ones. Microsoft knows that they must fight the Google on every front from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Yahoo, well, we all know why they're following Microsoft in this. And so this vile crew set their goal not to do it better but to prevent this service to mankind.

Google's effort fights the loss. It struggles to retain as much as possible against the inevitable creep of time. It's great, in my mind, that this goal even occurred to them. If some others want to compete in this worthy cause they should do so. But to fight against it is evil: not potential evil, but actual and active evil.

Count me with the people who don't see the Internet Archive's angle in this. It's basically taking their "archive everything" web idea and applying it to dead tree based data. If preserving the drunken mumblings of every blogger is important, surely preventing the loss of the writings of Arnold J. Toynbee and the host of others like him must be more so. Not everything worth preserving has been published on the Internet. Yet.

Re:Google does have a bit too much power.

[Trepidity]

The complaint, though, is that Google alone will have access to in-copyright but unknown-author books, as part of the terms of the settlement. It's a weird sort of legal loophole in that nobody normally would have access, but if Google successfully settles a class-action lawsuit, then the class representatives can give Google permission on behalf of the class members. The only way for anyone else to get similar permission would be to either contact these unknown authors individually, or find a way to get a class-action lawsuit filed against them that would enable them to negotiate a similar settlement.

Re:A genuine question

[boarder8925]

Because when you have access so much information controlled by one organization, you are wholly at the mercy of that organization. If Google decides that they don't want you reading some book for whatever reason, then you're shit out of luck unless you've got a hard copy of it. When you have an organization comprised of and accountable to several organizations, then you [ostensibly] have a lesser chance of shit like that happening.

Re:Information/Knowledge is power...

[Artifakt]

You're the second person to post some variation on the 'knowledge is power, and some people want to control that power' theme, and I just wanted to add that there's some real, specific reasons this applies at the present time to out of print books, for those who may think the meme is a little paranoid.
        A few weeks ago, I read a book on higher dimensional geometry (Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension - by Rudolph v. B. Rucker). It was published in 1977 in a cheap Dover paperback edition. In the back, there's references to a large number of books and papers on Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and abstract math, by some of the most famous names of 20th century physics (Einstein, Wheeler, Hawking, Everett, Minkowski, etc.) A tremendous number of these turn out to be out of print and unavailable through Amazon or other common sources. In one case, I was offered a copy of one work for over 300 dollars.
      There are also a lot of books on the 'occult' side of higher dimensions in the references. Rucker isn't pushing an esoteric knowledge angle - He quotes from several of these, but he's often very critical of the misinterpretations of science found in them, and while he sees some interesting features in the works of people like P. D. Ouspensky or J. W. Dunne, he comes down rather harder on Carlos Castaneda. A little checking on these found a surprising number of them were in print or available online at low costs, and most of the rest were being offered free online from various occult groups websites.
      What all this implies is left as an exercise for the astute reader. One example does not, by itself, make much of a trend, but it would be interesting if other such cases exist.

  .

Re:I'm all for it.

[shutdown -p now]

I'm all for an Open Alliance as opposed to a closed one, but I want what Google is offering.

University all access passes for their libraries and students.

Access to orphan books.

Easy for authors to claim rights and be compensated.

Easy reading on computers, mobile devices, and e-readers.

If you guys can accomplish all this as quickly and completely as Google will, I'll support you.

What I want here is for everyone to have the ability to pay fees and provide access to all those things the same way Google can do it now. It really is a very good thing they're doing, but I don't see why they should be the only ones legally able to do it.

If after that happens, Google is still the only one actually doing it - or if they're the ones doing it best (which is quite likely - where Google starts first, it's usually hard to beat them) - I don't mind. The free market will settle it there. But let it be free first.

Re:A genuine question

[QuantumG]

If Google decides that they don't want you reading some book for whatever reason, then you're shit out of luck unless you've got a hard copy of it.

So.. kinda like if Google did nothing?

The Internet Archive has been fighting this

[Animats]

The Internet Archive has been fighting this, but not to prevent access to out of print books. They want get the same deal as Google - the right to redistribute out of print books unless the author/publisher opts out. What they object to is that the current deal is structured to give Google essentially exclusive rights to charge for access to out of print books. Libraries get one (1) terminal allowed to access the books for free; everything else goes behind a Google paywall.

This is really a legal scheme to make copyright opt-in again, instead of opt-out. Before various revisions to US copyright law, you had to register copyrights and renew them to keep them in force. So out of print stuff slipped easily into the public domain. Under current law, most material is locked up by copyright, even if nobody cares.

Re:Google does have a bit too much power.

[Trepidity]

Well, there's no real official way into the market. If they just started violating copyright, it's possible someone might file a class-action lawsuit against them, and possible they might be able to negotiate some sort of settlement similar to the one Google got. But it's not at all clear that that would be the outcome. Google's basically found a very clever way of using the class-action mechanism's preclusion to violate the copyright of people who haven't agreed, because class-action lawsuits are opt-out rather than opt-in.

That's the thing

[symbolset]

The thing is, any one of these groups has the ability to strike a deal with the author's guild. Google doesn't have an exclusive license. All they have to do is get up in a business Google's adopted and out-compete them in quality of service.

I can see why they'd rather fight it out in court, but that doesn't mean I favor their cause.

Article about the subject from Berkeley Law Prof

[paleshadows]

Pamela Samuelson, a Professor at Berkeley (with a joint appointment in the School of Information and the School of Law) has written an interesting short article about the subject in the July 2009 issue of the Communication of the ACM, titled "Legally Speaking: The Dead Souls of the Google Booksearch Settlement". She argues that

In the short run, the Google Book Search settlement will unquestionably bring about greater access to books collected by major research libraries over the years. But it is very worrisome that this agreement, which was negotiated in secret by Google and a few lawyers working for the Authors Guild and AAP (who will, by the way, get up to $45.5 million in fees for their work on the settlement--more than all of the authors combined!), will create two complementary monopolies with exclusive rights over a research corpus of this magnitude. Monopolies are prone to engage in many abuses.

The Book Search agreement is not really a settlement of a dispute over whether scanning books to index them is fair use. It is a major restructuring of the book industry's future without meaningful government oversight. The market for digitized orphan books could be competitive, but will not be if this settlement is approved as is.

Re:Google talks, BS walks...

[TheRaven64]

I think Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo should shut up until they've done as much for readers as Project Gutenberg and Google have.

Commit wholesale copyright infringement and hope that they can get favourable terms from a settlement? Yes, I too wish Microsoft had done this. Given the recent awards for sharing a couple of dozen music tracks, I think, as a member of the class involved in the Google lawsuit, I would have been happy to simply not settle with Microsoft, charge them the minimum statutory damages rate for wilful infringement, bankrupt the company and never have to work again.