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Once Again, US DoJ Opposes Google Book Search
angry tapir and several other readers passed along the news that the US Department of Justice has come out against the revised agreement to settle copyright lawsuits brought against Google by authors and publishers. This is a major blow to Google's efforts to build a massive digital-books marketplace and library. From the DoJ filing (PDF): "...the [Amended Settlement Agreement] suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the Court in this litigation. As a consequence, the ASA purports to grant legal rights that are difficult to square with the core principle of the Copyright Act that copyright owners generally control whether and how to exploit their works during the term of copyright. Those rights, in turn, confer significant and possibly anticompetitive advantages on a single entity — Google."
Huzzah for delaying the inevitable future, fuckwads!
Living With a Nerd
Opt out is evil.
No Copyright is Evil. You have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do with the ones and zeros on my computer in my house. I realize pundits will sound the alarm bells as to how the whole world would end if their way of monetizing their creative works suddenly became invalid. Sorry no dice. Their were creative works before copyright laws and there will be creative works after they are gone. Copyright laws are an artificial mechanism. Their are NO TRUTHS that are self evident that give you exclusive rights to your creative work. NONE!
If you aren't smart enough to monetize your creativity in this brand new digital world, then don't publish. There will be plenty of people who are just happy that someone would take the time to read their creative work. Whether your works are better than theirs is subjective and relative. If your works come with the included societal price of Copyright then they I would argue they actually have a negative value in terms of societal worth.