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Microsoft Blasts Google Book Deal
eldavojohn writes "With authors, scholars, the DoJ and publishers ripping apart the Google book deal, it's Microsoft's turn. They're claiming it's frankly an illegal 'joint venture' and not a settlement. According to ZDNet, Microsoft's four complaints against the deal are: 1) Future infringements are covered by the settlement, affecting the exclusive rights of absent class members for the life of their copyrights. 2) The deal gives away to Google vast rights that were not contested in the underlying litigation. The lawsuits dealt with Google's displaying brief excerpts. Instead of compromising on that infringement, the parties instead agreed to give away the rights to display entire books. 3) The publishers who negotiated this deal each have undisclosed side deals with Google, which will likely give them better terms than the class will get. 4) The publishers plan to exclude their own works from the deal. You might recall over a year ago Microsoft's own scanning effort died."
Microsoft sees Google as a major competitor. As such, it is only logical that they would attack something like this that will give Google a substantial competitive advantage. I hope the court will see it in that light...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
With authors, scholars, the DoJ and publishers ripping apart the Google book deal[...]
Add to that list privacy advocates.
If M$ were offered the same deal, they would snap it up immediately & not have such objections to it. I would prefer to see Google running this than M$.
Google must be Really Evil (TM) to incur the wrath of Microsoft and the FSF at the same time!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It's hard to get excited about this deal one way or the other without feeling like it's getting annoyed at the bloodsucking tick you found on the sofa -- without noticing that the tick is on the back of a snarling rottweiler. The underlying problem is our broken intellectual property system -- or even the very idea of intellectual property -- and not the specifics of how one company or another takes advantage of it.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Is anyone else a bit worried about the precident that using a class action lawsuit in this way might set for the future? I mean, Google is essentially getting a court to tacitly agree that its settlement with a second party over rights held by unrelated third parties is valid (lets face it, its looking like the court will agree), unless the unrelated third party deliberately withdraws at this stage.
I'm not entirely sure I like the sound of that. It sounds like an abuse of the class action system for commercial gain.
Don't let your hate of Microsoft blind you from seeing that they're right in this case.
So, in this one paragraph, Microsoft says:
1. Competition and open/free markets are good.
2. The diverse interests of the many outweighs the greed of the few (a corporation).
3. Closed-door negotiations are bad.
4. Copyright law serves the public.
5. Joint ventures are bad.
6. We should be worried about the millions of unenfranchised who were left out of a back-room deal.
*boggle*
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Do Microsoft like or not like monopolies? They also seem a tad confused on the subject. On one hand they see no problem with their own monopolies being good for the customer, yet complain when it's other companies monopolies, that they're bad for the consumer. Is there an answer to this question that does not make Microsoft hypocrites?
Google's plan to digitize and bring online all books is of immense value to society. All of the objections offer only to prevent this great service with no alternative. Therefore they are bad.
As noted in the summary, Microsoft had their own effort and abandoned it. Too bad for them. They don't now get to prevent somebody else from doing it. If they want to pick the effort back up they're welcome to provide a competing service - Google's deal is not exclusive.
Microsoft attempting to prevent Google from providing this great work is evil. In other words: if you won't lead get out of the way.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Those who'd like to all the objections, as well as a much smaller number of filings in support, can find them at The Public Index, which is run by the New York Law School:
http://thepublicindex.org/documents/responses
Filings in opposition tend to be substantial and weighty, citing both U.S. and international copyright law. Filings in favor tend to be of the "Gee, I like free books" sort. The most substantial of them is probably that from Sony, which is 20 pages long and filed by a NYC law firm, but, with one exception, it doesn't deal with the issues of copyright. Here's the closest Sony comes to admitting that authors have rights.
"The non-exclusivity provision of the Settlement--which makes plain that that the right given to Google do not permit copyright holders or the Registry itself from licensing e-book right to others--ensure that healthy, price-driven competition will remain after the Settlement is approved."
Yes, you read it right. The Google settlement gives Google and Google alone the right to display online for profit the contents of any book first published anywhere in the world since 1922 without the author's knowledge or consent unless they formally opted out by last Friday, September 4, 2009. Just heard about that? Tough luck. You've been screwed by Google with Sony's warm approval.
And to add insult to considerable injury, Google and Sony purr that Google's right is non-exclusive. What does that mean? Having brushed aside an author's copyright, they say, "Oh, well. We don't care if you sell someone else the right to publish your book. That is, if that someone else can compete with free." Under copyright law, of course, Google has no right to publish a book at all without the author's permission. They have no rights at all, much less exclusive rights. That's a good indication of ethically and legally clueless Google and Sony are.
Until I read this document, I felt sorry for Sony. They used to be so popular, now that aren't. But it helps to remember that much of their failure came from an obsession with protecting the copyrighted music they own. Now, in their zeal to sell their ebook readers, they're helping Google stomp on the copyright of several million authors. Color them hypocrites, very big hypocrites.
I no longer feel sorry for Sony. If they languish in obscurity, they're only getting what they deserve. Sony can't zealous defend their own copyrights by every nasty means available and run roughshod over the copyrights of others without deservedly getting sneered at.
The basic premise of the Google settlement is that any book not "commercially available" is effectively out of copyright. How would Sony feel if music fans regarded any music not available commercially at the moment as effectively out of copyright? That's what we are talking about here.
How is this any different than the large-scale book scanning that Ebsco does?
Anybody want my mod points?