Google Accused of Violating Copyright In China

angry tapir writes "The Chinese Authors Society has demanded that Google present a resolution plan by the end of the year and quickly handle compensation for Chinese authors whose books the US company has scanned without permission as part of its Book Search program. A local copyright protection group, co-founded by the authors group, has said it found at least 17,000 Chinese works included in Google's scanning plan."

Comments

Re:Is Love Me Do Worth a Dollar.

[tjstork]

part of our common culture

That argument is ridiculous. You just are looking to steal something you did nothing to earn.

Re:Copywrong. How convenient!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

OK, I get it. You're not going to tell me the advantages of piracy over boycotting, simply because you know, deep down, that they're all selfish. Whatever, you know now, you won't stop, probably because, like so many other pirates, you're addicted to the free entertainment. You still, however, have a point about the copyright system that I'm not averse to discussing, and ending the discussion on this note would be a cop-out.

I am hurting an artist right now by liberating content. This is to create pressure to imbalance the stranglehold current de-facto cartels have on the market. Once the parasitic conditions of the current copyright imbalance are corrected and a reasonable term is set before a work becomes public domain it will free up a well of creativity for a whole new generation. They will actually be able to draw from the rich mosaic to express themselves with glory. Once fair terms are recognized in copyright an actual deal that is not my take all that you can eat approach can be established.

You're conflating several concepts here. First we have publishers, next we have public domain, and lastly, we have respect from artists. You seem to be under this weird delusion that blindly changing one thing will result in an improvement in all categories.

In fact, you still haven't actually convinced me that publishers are inherent problems. I still can't fathom why you consider them thieves, bloodsuckers, or whatever else you decide to call them, when the arrangement is mutually arranged, and often, mutually beneficial. I mean, do you call your greengrocer a thief just because he accepts your money in exchange for food? Would I be allowed to "liberate" your food, admittedly hurting you, but drawing attention to the cause of evil greengrocers? It's completely ridiculous!

As for the public domain, while I agree that healthy public domain is conducive to a healthy culture, and right now, we definitely do not have a healthy public domain, we must be very careful about extending too much. I mean, right now, we can still access copyrighted works, for pay if necessary, from which to draw inspiration. It's not like artists aren't prepared to spend a little for inspiration and enjoyment. There isn't a group of artists twiddling their thumbs, waiting for inspiration to drop into public domain. There's still a huge well of inspiration out there.

Plus, every extension of the public domain has an inevitable sting in the tail. Every extension requires a weakening of copyright, and every weakening of copyright drops the artists in the bottom percentiles. Of course, this can be completely worthwhile, and I do think that we should shorten copyright term lengths. However, I make no illusion about the fact that there will be a price to pay in terms of variety.

As for the issue of respect, you have to remember that you can't force artists to be your friend using legal methods. If you want your artists to treat you as partners, then just buy from artists who treat you as partners.

Once fair terms are recognized in copyright an actual deal that is not my take all that you can eat approach can be established. You can look someone straight in the eye and say this old and nothing newer. And they will look you straight back and say yes I agree, thats fair.

I think you're missing some grammar. I'm having some trouble parsing this statement. However, I don't think it matters:

A few will infringe but it will be much easier to educate the majority when they can feel it intuitively in their gut that they are being treated as partners instead of consumers.

Ha! This is the entitlement generation! The generation that will pirate iPhone apps, the generation that will pirate a game simply because it doesn't come with a dedicated server service, the generation that will pirate simply because it makes a convenient soapbox to preach from. This is a generation raised on the morality of