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Google Files a Revised Books Settlement Proposal
At 14 minutes to midnight last night, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers filed a revised settlement agreement with a US district court in New York. Here is the blog post of Dan Clancy, Google Books engineering director. Google has provided an outline of the differences from the original settlement (PDF) and a FAQ (PDF); the full revised settlement (PDF) is also available. In brief, the changes include limiting the settlement to books published in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia; a court-appointed fiduciary to represent the rights of orphaned works' (undiscovered) rightsholders; and further opening up Google's library to competitors in ways that don't favor Google. The new plan was immediately criticized as a "sleight of hand" by the Open Book Alliance, a consortium of Google's opponents including Microsoft and Amazon. The Internet Archive said, "None of the proposed changes appear to address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest."
"and further opening up Google's library to competitors in ways that don't favor Google"
Why? Isn't Google doing all the work here?
Or are the competitors going to split the costs of scanning the books with Google?
Google does not care what Microsoft thinks. Google does not care what publishers think. Google does not care what you think.
Google's stated objective is to gather, index and make publicly searchable every piece of information on the planet. Books included. They don't care about minor setbacks like publishers or authors complaints, or even lawsuits. Google is going to keep on scanning and digitising books and will quite patiently wait until the day it feels it can get away with putting them online. I imagine that their are literally millions of works sitting on Google's backend servers, waiting for the day when Google can use its muscle to get an agreement. Perhaps you might regard this as a good thing.
Now ask yourself this: What else has Google put on its backend servers?
I remind everyone reading this that aside from the odd token law, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever restricting private companies from compiling and indexing whatever data they want internally. Who knows what kind of information on people and societies that Google is privy to, and what applications they have in store for it. Stop and think about projects like Streetview. A lot of people really do not like the idea of pictures their houses and gardens being put on a globally accessible site, linked to map information. Does Google care? No. They'll continue to gather Streetview data, even in places where it is illegal to put it online, patiently waiting for the day when they can do as they please.
Google is a steamroller. You may think you've stopped them today, but they'll go on gathering information, and indexing it, and making application for it until they can wow a judge, or legislature, or the public with some fantastic application which shows how easy and harmles it is to provide all this data. Meanwhile, we have a private corporation with a now gargantuan databases on the lives, habits and details of the majority of the online population; soon to the the majority of the world population. How far do they have to go, before this becomes wrong?
This company's stated ambition is to know everything. How much do they know already?
May the Maths Be with you!
While I'm totally on Google's side when it comes to scanning books -- with or without permission -- for the purposes of making them searchable online, I find it outrageous that a lawsuit designed to stop Google from doing that should end up granting them rights they wouldn't have enjoyed before the lawsuit. It feels like a betrayal of the class by a plaintiff with somewhat narrower interests than those of the parties actually represented by the class.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I am sorry, I thing this anti Google stuff is the veriest nonsense, while what Google is doing is very much in the Public Interest.
It goes like this, with GPS the jinn of mapping was out of the bottle, you no longer needed spot-highs, theodolites and thousands of hours work. digital cameras, GPS and drone-aircraft have made wide area mapping cheap, and obsoleted most uses of spy satalites. Streetview is little different, I know that if I dont want people looking into my garden or house I have to build a wall or close the curtains/shutters.
I am fed to the back teeth with Luddites railing against Google for doing, systematically, what is legal, and what anyone could do. As for the vested interests of the MPAA, RIAA, Book & Journal publishers. Librarians and the rest of the so called 'content-industry' the more Google steamroller them the better.
The problem here is not Google, it is silly, ineffective or knowingly corrupt laws: in the US, Congress, strictly following the Constitution, needs to enact sensible Personal Privacy laws (vide France, Switzerland) and to enact and define a short commercial Copyright period of say 12 years.
Then Google can re-open the Library of Alexandria,
Disney will need to make some new films,
and progress and education may trump commercial greed.
For example, Fairchild Camera & Instrument, TI and a nascent Intel stopped the semi-conductor industry by preventing Universities teaching the technology, that is the way to make the USA into a third world country quickly.