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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."
This is like when airplanes were invented. Before that if you owned land, you owned it all the way up to the sky. Imagine if every airline and hobby pilot had to get permission from each individual owner of the land they would fly over. Well, it was decided that property rights would have to yield to progress. There are of course limitations, such as how low you can fly, noise and other things that actually affect the land owner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights
Google tried a fast one, the global publishing equivalent of tightly packaging a web browser with an OS, and got caught.
How is that exactly?
The only "negotiations" up to this point had been akin to the conversation the kid has with the candy jar. Now, perhaps, a genuine dialogue can begin.
There was a genuine dialogue between the Author's Guild and Google. What, you think this rejection is going to result in Microsoft and librarians testifying in the DoJ's analysis of this deal? I highly doubt it. The official word makes it sound like they want it to be 100 pages of clauses instead of 2 pages but we all know it's essentially going to come down to one hundred million dollars from Google to the Authors Guild with opt out abilities for any author or publisher. Some clauses on orphaned works, some clauses on allowing your competitors sales rights (already promised), subscriptions for libraries (already promised) some more clauses on this and that. And BOOM! it's done. Even Google seems to think they're just going to rework and resubmit. Is this what you mean by "genuine dialogue" and how does that make this deal less evil?
My work here is dung.
I guess you haven't heard, but it is possible to actually keep a book rather than throwing it away after it has been read. There are stores which specifically cater to the idea of buying old books, most of them being out of print. These books are not "popular" in the current sense and therefore have obviously failed, but some places still offer them for sale.
The concept of a book is an interesting one, but if Google gets their way a "book" will be a quaint collector's item that some funny old people have whereas everyone else gets their books from Google. Together with some ads. 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?
Rough translation of the current state of affairs:
Google has been eyeballing this huge mass of abandoned property, as have a few other companies. Google has finally moved toward putting this property to some use. Understand, the use is not an "exclusive" thing - they are just going to use it, since no one else is. Little kids can still romp and play on the property, people can do anything they like.
But, other corporations see Google preparing to use the property, and fear that Google might make money from it in some way. Of course, if there is any financial gain to be had, then "MY COMPANY" should be entitled to some of it.
In effect, the new negotiations are meant to ensure that other people and companies CAN make money. There really isn't much more to it than that.
Odd, that Project Gutenberg has been quietly doing the same thing for some years now, and no one has jumped on them. No one else has volunteered to step forward, and get their hands dirty. Much ado about nothing, IMHO
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br