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

Historical analogy

[TorKlingberg]

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

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).

Re:A Small Victory for "Good" in Battle v. "Evil"

[eldavojohn]

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?

Re:FTFA

[zoward]

Wait, how is offering out-of-print books discouraging competition? I thought part of being an out-of-print book is that there is no competition because there is nobody printing the book anymore...

I think book publishers are afraid that you won't buy their latest offerings, preferring instead to download some out-of-print book you can get for free from Google. It seems unlikely, especially since you can currently download many of the classics (ie, the best-of-breed out of print books) for free from sites like Project Gutenberg.

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?

[Runaway1956]

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

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:FTFA

[cdrguru]

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?

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:A Small Victory for "Good" in Battle v. "Evil"

[Anonymous Coward]

Some clauses on orphaned works,

That's one of the big ones right there, since the way Google's deal was set up the first time around, "orphaned works" weren't always "orphaned works". They basically equated "orphaned works" to "not for sale in the USA, but quite likely still in print and under copyright in their countries of origin however we don't care."