Delay, Renegotiation Sought For Google Books Settlement

Miracle Jones writes "The Google Books settlement has been removed from consideration by Google and the Authors Guild after the DoJ made it crystal clear that the settlement would not be ratified 'as is' due to foreign rights, privacy, and antitrust reasons. The October 7th 'fairness hearing' has been canceled, and the next step is a November 6th 'status hearing' where the plaintiffs will reveal changes to the new settlement, such as how they plan to make it more fair, legal, and inclusive, and whether or not they will need to notify all the members of the class action lawsuit (7 million writers or so) yet again as a result of the changes. Some people are very happy about this."

Comments

Good

[pavon]

Class action lawsuits shouldn't be allowed to absolve future infringement against an entire class just because a few people agreed to the terms. This settlement should have dealt solely with liability for past infringement, and terms of further distribution should be handled in an opt-in manner, or by changing the law (which does need to be changed to better handle abandoned works).

What did Google do wrong?

[Eponymous Coward]

I don't understand what Google is doing wrong. Can somebody please explain it what it is that so many people and corporations object to? I've read a bunch of articles but none have explained what the actual underlying problem is.

The closest thing I've heard that makes sense is that a book (unlike a web page) was never written with the understanding that it would be read and indexed by a machine. But really, I have a hard time seeing how this would hurt authors or publishers or anybody. The benefits seem great.

-ec

Re:What did Google do wrong?

[houghi]

Imagine I wrote a book. That book was made in 1.000 copies and is not on the market anymore. I am the copyright holder and want to keep it that way for whatever reason. That is what copyright is about.

Now Google comes and suddenly has the right to re-produce it.

Now obviously you can start disagreeing about the copyright (and especially the duration). The fact is that I now have a copyright and Google takes away those rights.

Re:What did Google do wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

One. Out of print means you are not getting a dime anyway for you book 'sales' they are used book sales. Two, if more people read your book they may want more which could lead to A) it being published again or B) an offer for another book. Yeah real bad for you the author. The thing I think is missing is what if a book is to be republished? How do remove those electronic copies? Probably you don't so do book on demand printing and have people pay for a printed copy with the usual royalty rates or maybe even a newly negotiated royalty rate.

I am not sure but I believe the original proposal was that the author also had to be dead first so, you, the author really don't care. Maybe your estate cares, but you are a bit beyond that.

The good thing I think is that this may be modified to be for all possible groups that want to come along and do what Google is doing differently, but with the same books or set of books at least. Like 1984 for example.

Re:What did Google do wrong?

[Atlantis-Rising]

Your insistence does not make it fact, however. Each of those options have different names because they are different things, with different rights, responsibilities, and qualities.

You say that "no-one is using them, no one is making any effort to protect their IP rights, no one is doing anything". Categorically, that only applies to public domain works.

Creators of ''abandoned works" and "out of print" material will often act to protect their IP rights, despite not republishing them. This is very common with computer software. There may be a good reason not to reprint the material. They may be attempting to create artificial scarcity. They may be holding out for a better publishing deal. They may decide that the cost of publishing will outweigh any returns, but wish to prevent the work from being republished by others in order to generate revenues on other works (for example, Microsoft does not sell Word 2000- but presumably they would act immediately and stringently to block infringement of their rights on that work because the limitation on accessibility to Word 2000 sells more copies of Word 2007).

Creative commons material is a different beast entirely. People who publish their work under the creative commons license will often act strongly to protect their works and those same works are probably still being published under said license.

The only work to which your argument applies is the works in the public domain, which have passed out of copyright, which never had copyright on them, or which copyright has been renounced. These, of course, anyone is free to do anything with and nobody is saying otherwise.

Your argument is remarkably short-sighted in that it presumes that work that is not being currently put to use has been abandoned to the public domain. This is simply wrong, and it is not an assumption you, nor Google, has a right to make. There are procedures in place to allow work to be placed in the public domain. If a creator wishes to do that, they have that option. Why should you have the right to act as if they intended to do something, when in fact, had they intended to do that, they could easily have done so but have not?

Re:Winners and losers from a half solution

[R2.0]

Yeah, because half a solution is worse than none at all. Especially when someone isn't getting their place at the trough.

Re:FTFA

[Runaway1956]

I see your point. Why don't we start a movement to bring back scrolls made of papyrus or parchment? I mean, those guys have been suffering for hundreds of years now. Paperback and hardback books were unfair competition to an ages old profession.

Seriously, I love books. I'm also fearful of moving into a world where physical books don't exist. If the electricity goes out, and the batteries go dead, you CAN'T READ ebooks. But, all the same, I see no rational reason for preventing electronic libraries. At this point in time, I see no objection to Google's plans, but whether it's Google or any other company, let's get the out of print books online.

Dead tree publishers will just have to adapt somehow. Think of it as a carbon credit. Every book that you download and read saves a few pounds of cellulose, somewhere.

Re:Win?

[eleuthero]

Part of the original settlement has unfortunately made much of the google book search feature worthless for people in my field--too many books are restricted to "snippet" view by the publisher. I have purchased two books as a result of successful searches on Google because I wanted to have a physical copy for when the search still worked but the viewing of pages went past the limit. I have purchased none of the books I couldn't search through because I couldn't find the content. The library has been helpful but having a physical copy and an unlimited search to go alongside it has been vital to my studies.

Re:Win?

[Idiomatick]

Google spent tons of money and work scanning several million books. And they are willing to share all of this with their competitors to open this market up they are so confident they'll blow away MS and whoever anyways. Seems more than fair.

Re:Win?

[Anonymous Coward]

They did not have permission to make [electronic] copies.

That is a blatant violation of existing copyright law.

Re:FTFA

[ajs]

if Google gets their way a "book" will be a quaint collector's item

I'm sorry, I'm just not seeing it. You'll have to explain it to me. Why will I no longer want my books?

everyone else gets their books from Google.

Or whoever else makes a deal with the publishers. Remember that the publishers don't have their hands tied. They can make licensing deals with anyone they want.

The idea of a "used book" will become about as popular as a "used kleenex" primarily because of the actions of a single corporation. Isn't this something that we, as a society, might want to think about a little bit before doing it?

Why would used books go away? I buy used books. I would continue to buy used books. What changes?

Re:FTFA

[ajs]

perhaps I'm wrong about this, but using dead trees isn't really a problem in terms of carbon consumption.

Planting, harvesting, grinding, processing, shipping and printing on that tree, however....