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DoJ Recommends NY Court Reject Google Book Deal

Posted by timothy on from the march-of-unprogress dept.

eldavojohn writes "The BBC and others are reporting on the US Department of Justice's recommendation to a New York court that they reject the Google book deal. The deal has received considerable attention, but for the most part it has been negative."

6 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Only a good thing if by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is only a good thing if it leads to a better arrangement. The google book deal is not ideal, but at least it gets the books out there. If as a result of this deal being struck down we have copyright reform (not likely, since at the moment people dying of lack of health care is a significantly bigger issue), then it is good. If as a result of this deal being struck down, a better deal is negotiated with Google (which is possible), then it will still not be ideal. If as a result of this deal being struck down, nothing ends up happening, which is possible, it would be worse for the world.

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    1. Re:Only a good thing if by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A mechanism for individual authors to register and get paid directly, not for the money to go to a bunch of lawyers who have declared themselves to be working on behalf of those authors.

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  2. Exclusivity is the root of all evil in this... by nweaver · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the settlement was "any other company may also have the same rights under the same terms", it would be a VERY good deal.

    But with the exclusivity, it is very bad. Without the exclusivity, someone else could take the time to do the scanning, and the sales. EG, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, or even a new startup.

    But with the exclusivity, you give Google a monopoly over out-of-print books.

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    1. Re:Exclusivity is the root of all evil in this... by Eighty7 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's only "exclusive" in the sense that google is the defendant. Any other company is quite free to go through the whole process again ie scan, get sued & make their own settlement. Anyway as I recall google is making these books available to other companies.

  3. Re:Worst summary ever by zippthorne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, that depends. How long have you been dead and your work out of print?

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  4. Re:Worst summary ever by erroneus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because it's simple:

    Copyright law is an agreement between "the people" (aka the government) and you. The first part of the agreement is that you enjoy protection and exclusive rights to copy and distribute. The second part of the agreement, that copyright holders often forget about, ignore or otherwise disregard, is that in exchange for said protection, the works would be released into the public domain upon expiry of the term of protection.

    Here's the problem. The agreement is now lasting longer than the media it is distributed upon. This makes the works for which the people offered you copyright protection, unavailable to the people by the time the agreement expires thereby depriving the people of their public domain works and in fact the cultural and historical value of the works.

    By having it available in digital archives, there is an increased chance that the works will still be available whenever the term of the copyright protection agreement has ended.