Photographers Want Their Cut From Google's Ebooks

It's not just the writers anymore: carluva writes "The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) and several other visual artist groups are suing Google over its digitization of of millions of books, claiming copyright infringement related to images within the books. The photographers initially wanted to be included in the authors' and publishers' class action suit, but filed their own suit after that request was denied. Google and others assert that images are only included in the digital copies when permission has been obtained from the copyright holder."

Comments

Hmmmm

[Vinegar Joe]

I wonder how this will develop.

Re:Hmmmm

[WrongSizeGlass]

I wonder how this will develop.

Colorfully?

Re:Hmmmm

[yincrash]

I think this one is clearly black and white.

Re:Hmmmm

[Ron Bennett]

Especially on a Kindle.

Re:Hmmmm

[yincrash]

nah, that's a grey area.

Re:Hmmmm

[Vinegar Joe]

You guys are so negative.

Re:Hmmmm

[Sulphur]

A nice vignette is worth 1k words. How much that is in cash is unclear.

Re:Hmmmm

[Knara]

Where she used to use lesser cameras, pictures taken with her Canon are quite often very dramatic and interesting.

People who use better tools end up with better end results with the same skill set? Shocking.

Re:Hmmmm

[Ron Bennett]

Self-service print kiosk.

For larger prints, use one of the various mail order places - email / upload the images for them to process. Simple and likely cheaper than a b&m place.

Ron

Re:Hmmmm

[Knara]

You're saying that knowing how to properly use tools in a creative endeavor is not a creative skill. You're pretty wrong. The technical part of a creative process is just as important as the... "inspirational" part.

You're essentially saying that knowing the proper brush to use for a work is irrelevant when discussing the skill level of a novice vs expert painter. On the contrary, it's that sort of skill in selecting your tools that allows the resulting work to look more refined.

Yes, there are artists who can create masterpieces with very rudimentary tools. Most creative folks are not quite that masochistic, however.

Re:Hmmmm

[grcumb]

I wonder how this will develop.

Meh, they're just after the exposure.

Re:Hmmmm

[Runaway1956]

I've always believed that photographers outright sold their work to authors and/or the publishers. Quite likely that isn't the case with all photographers. Magazines come readily to mind as an exception. Authors who sold works to old pulp fiction magazines often retained the rights to their works, and had those works published again, in other forms, years later.

But, for the most part, I suspect that photos and images contained in old physical tree books were actually bought and paid for, and the photographer retains no rights to the images.

Whatever - I foresee another huge silly mess in the courts. Yet another group of "intellectual property" owners wants to assert rights that have never existed before.

Re:Hmmmm

[digitalunity]

I'll be the village idiot for a minute.

I'm not familiar really with this topic at all. As far as I understand it, Google is digitizing public domain books right? And the copyrighted ones it's digitizing previews of books(like table of contents, random pages, etc.)?

Correct? I'm just trying to get a handle on why everyone is pissed off. Sadly, googling this topic leads to information overload and I just don't have time to read 100 articles about it.

Can you explain it to me in 1 paragraph or less?

Re:Hmmmm

[icebraining]

Why do you talk about wedding photographers as the only type? That's like "the painters are those guys who paint houses".

The real art is not taking pictures for the driver's license. A picture from World Press Photo can sum up an half hour documentary in one frame. Robert Capa, for example, as a fucking genius.

Re:Hmmmm

[Qzukk]

Meh, they're just after the exposure.

Maybe this lawsuit will be just a flash in the pan.

Re:Hmmmm

[grcumb]

Most of us agree already that intellectual property goes too far. When it comes to things like movies and music and books, there is at least some real creativity. Photography? Not so much.

Baloney.

I've had formal training in writing and theatre (acting, design and directing) and have worked professionally in a number of creative disciplines. Just as with photography, the majority of writing work is workman-like documentary stuff that anyone with a decent grasp of the English language can manage. Writing clearly is mostly a matter of discipline. It's work, but it's not that difficult.

Telling stories as simply and elegantly as Graham Greene, however, is something to which most of us can't even aspire.

Likewise with photography. Taking a clear, composed and nicely lit photo is mostly a matter of discipline. It's work, but it's not that difficult. Taking a great photo on the level of Don McCullen or Robert Capa, for example, is something most of us will never approach.

If you're going to compare different artistic media (not really advisable at the best of times), at least try to compare similar things. Run-of-the-mill documentary writing, film-making and photography are similar in terms of time, discipline and effort required. (The biggest differentiator is the scope of the work itself. Photographers capture an instant; film-makers capture events.)

Great work in any discipline is likewise exacting, difficult, time-consuming and reserved to a rare, gifted few.

Re:Hmmmm

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

This will "develop" with Google gaining supremacy over the entire publishing industry. The intransigence, backwardness, and lack of innovation by publishers have left them essentially at the mercy of a company like Google, which has the mentality of a startup and the resources of a Fortune 500 company. The legions of middle men all looking for their cut--typified by these photographers--are one of the primary reasons media companies have failed to adapt to the internet. Frankly, as much as I dislike Google slowly gaining control over books like this, I have absolutely no sympathy for publishers or authors who are still living in the 1980s.

Get ready, because books are only the beginning. Sooner or later, Google is going to make a play for TV, movies and music; and great empires will fall.

Re:Hmmmm

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Need to focus, no.

If you don't take some control over the focus system of an SLR, the camera will very often focus on the completely wrong thing. On a handheld shot at medium distance in low light, that can quite easily ruin a shot.

Need to meter the scene and decide where to place the values, no, just trial and error it.

Sure. How many of your guests know how to do that? Are they going to be happy to spend the whole ceremony taking photos at your behest instead of, um, participating?

Photography is all composition today and your mastery of a graphics editor, whoop-dee-do.

So your forced one of your guests to spend the whole ceremony taking photos. How good are they with Lightroom?

Re:Hmmmm

[schon]

As someone who has done photography as well as drawing, painting, graphic design, and sculpture, I feel I must respond. You have some good points, but are also under some misconceptions.

Photography is NOT hard.

You are correct - photography is not hard. However good photography can be hard for those without natural talent.

I know people can go on and on about skill and knowledge and blah blah blah. It's taking pictures. There's just not as much work involved as there is with ANY other type of "creative work."

I disagree here. For some people, it's harder, for others, it's not. As a creative type person, I find photography more difficult than painting or graphic design. Taking a good photograph involves just as much creative effort as painting a good picture. (Believe me, I've done both, and for me, photography is harder.) With a painting, you have complete control over the finished product - if an object would look better if it was larger or smaller, or in a different location, or even removed altogether, it's trivial to change a painting. With a photograph, you have no such leeway. You must take everything in the frame as-is.

My wife is no professional photographer. She has a background in publishing and design, so perhaps that does better enable her "eye" as it were

The same person with a better tool will return better results, but a good photographer with a crappy camera will beat a poor photographer with a great camera every single time.

I hate photographers and their over-blown, baseless egos.

On this, I agree 100%. Maybe it's just me, but every professional photographer I know tends to be completely over the top when it comes to copyright. The level of vitriol is worse than Apple fanboys. I don't know why that is, but it's damned annoying, and gives all photographers a bad name.

Re:Hmmmm

[jesset77]

Can you explain it to me in 1 paragraph or less?

"Opportunistic copyright trolls are opportunistic." Now I don't know what to do with the rest of my paragraph. ;3

Re:Hmmmm

[jesset77]

I agree with most of your post, but..

... I dislike Google slowly gaining control over books like this ...

How are they gaining control over books? I have books in a bookshelf. Will Google come in and steal them from me?

If by "take control over" you mean "make commercial use of textual data without sacrificing Sergey's firstborn to Houghton Mifflin" then I don't see what there is to dislike. I argue that publishing houses and even Authors never should have had control over what other people do with their popular ideas to begin with. Propertizing publicly available knowledge is simply a publicly seductive form of censorship and it really ought to stop.

If you don't believe me, then show me where I can trade my hard earned money for DVD copies of Square One TV. $100 per season? $200? Show me to the auction.

Oh right... Childrens' Television Workshop has decided, in all of it's wisdom, that the information provided in that program must rot away on rare VHS tapes and be lost forever. I forgot. :P

Re:Hmmmm

[Strange Ranger]

Take a look at Yervant or David Beckstead or Jeff Ascough and you'll see that Wedding Photography can be high art.

And for all its challenges, it should be.

Re:Hmmmm

[Strange Ranger]

How about "Hungry Photographers stand together when Google co-opts their work without remuneration."

Re:Hmmmm

[jc42]

If you don't take some control over the focus system of an SLR, the camera will very often focus on the completely wrong thing.

How true. One of my frustrations with trying out digital cameras is the ongoing problems with focus. Thus, I have number of very well-focused pictures of nondescript bushes, with a fuzzy out-of-focus bird in the center of the picture. The camera I've mostly used does have a manual focus, but I've found in practice that it's impossibly slow for things like wildlife photos.

I've found it rather difficult to even learn about manual focusing with digital cameras. I was considering buying one recently when I read glowing descriptions of its manual focus, until I ran across a description of what the manufacturer called "manual focus": a menu that requires several "clicks" to find, and lets you choose among 7 different fixed focal lengths. I crossed that one off my list.

So is there a way of learning which digital cameras accept a lens with a focus ring? I don't seem to see that mentioned in any camera description. When I ask their support people, I just get a bunch of PR-style BS that quickly makes it clear that they're either obfuscating or don't even know what I'm talking about.

It's even more annoying when I ask in online forums and get the same BS non-answers.

Re:Hmmmm

[bws111]

Are you serious? What DSLRs don't have manual focus? Certainly all the ones from Canon, Nikon, etc do. And I never heard of a camera that has '7 fixed focal lengths' - either the lens zooms or it doesn't. And focal length is not the same as focus. The only thing I am aware of that even sort of matches that description are the focus points. These have nothing to do with focal length (or manual focusing) - they just tell the AF mechanism what area of the image you want to be in focus (it doesn't have to be the center). You can always just switch off the AF completely and turn the focus ring yourself.

Re:Hmmmm

[tenton]

I was considering buying one recently when I read glowing descriptions of its manual focus, until I ran across a description of what the manufacturer called "manual focus": a menu that requires several "clicks" to find, and lets you choose among 7 different fixed focal lengths.

What camera, pray tell, was this? Focus != focal length.

So is there a way of learning which digital cameras accept a lens with a focus ring?

Most Nikon and Canons, if they're not completely ancient, have a switch on the lens that lets you take the lens out of autofocus mode. Come away from the kit lenses and a great many lenses will let you auto-override the auto focus by turning the focus ring. I'm pretty sure the other majors (Pentax, Sony/Minolta, Olympus, Panasonic) in the SLR space have this type of feature, too.

You may need to take the camera out of continuous auto focus mode (duh, you've told the camera to continually auto focus!) or switch the focus button away from the shutter release (most, if not all the DSLRs have this option, even my lowly D40 can do this).

Re:Hmmmm

[Jesus IS the Devil]

Fuck Britain :D

Re:Hmmmm

[bronney]

I hate photographers and their over-blown, baseless egos.

On this, I agree 100%. Maybe it's just me, but every professional photographer I know tends to be completely over the top when it comes to copyright. The level of vitriol is worse than Apple fanboys. I don't know why that is, but it's damned annoying, and gives all photographers a bad name.

I can imagine the rage though as you already said:

it's trivial to change a painting. With a photograph, you have no such leeway. You must take everything in the frame as-is.

Sometimes that as-is happens out of PURE LUCK and there's no way anyone ever can make the same frame ever ever. Imagine the person in the picture is your wife and some dude in Thailand teef it for a brochure.

Re:Hmmmm

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

From your description, you're talking about compact cameras, which are simply not designed to give the photographer any control over the process. If you want to have manual focus, you have to go with one of the following alternatives:

1. Advanced compact cameras like the Canon G11, Canon S90, Panasonic LX3, the higher-end Ricoh models, or the Sigma DP1/DP2. Even with these, you have to double check before buying, because controlling focus manually may be very clumsy.
2. Any interchangeable lens camera. Lenses always have focus rings. The alternatives here are the traditional DSLRs and the new mirrorless cameras like Micro Four Thirds and Samsung NX.

Re:Hmmmm

[ottothecow]

Not a chance in hell.

Maybe parts of the new generation of "professional" photographers (the people like the poster a little ways up who thinks that buying a fancy camera makes you ready to go head to head with a pro) are in the habit of selling their photos outright, but most of the industry certainly is not.

Photos are licensed for a specific use. If you *really* want the full rights, you can probably buy them--but they will be expensive. It is in the interest of both parties to agree to licensing. The buyer gets all of their needs met for a price less than they would have to pay for full rights (and they can always pay more later if they want to say reprint the photos from the magazine in a "best-of" book) and the photographer maintains the rights to their work for future use.

If you are selling the copyright, you are selling yourself short. Why do we respect it when musicians have managed to hold onto their catalog instead of losing it all to a label but get confused that a photographer might not want to relinquish the rights to a photo they created.

Re:Hmmmm

[jesset77]

How about "Hungry Photographers stand together when Google co-opts their work without remuneration."

Your summary begs the original question posed, though. Please clarify.

Re:Hmmmm

[Strange Ranger]

I "friended" you for posting a perfect question. I wish more people would discuss like you do.

Maybe tomorrow after sobering up I'll have a reply. :D

Re:Hmmmm

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Do you pay local authorities, people in crowds you take photos of, or the owners of buildings whose images you resell? I think their rights are being infringed, and they deserve a cut of the profits, to be honest.

Re:Hmmmm

[thrawn_aj]

Good point but not quite the same thing. A music artist can (and does) still use recordings of random sounds from the environment in his songs (say traffic noise or any other ambiance). It doesn't become art until (well, not even then most of the time :p) it gets incorporated into the song.Violating a musician's rights in the sense of your comment would be using someone's music in your own song or mix and making money off it. And the analogy to that would be photographers taking a photo of someone else's art (a sculpture, painting or another photo) and making money off it. But yeah, it's a good comment because it should be used if this bs gets out of hand :)

Re:Hmmmm

[Hognoxious]

Maybe parts of the new generation of "professional" photographers (the people like the poster a little ways up who thinks that buying a fancy camera makes you ready to go head to head with a pro) are in the habit of selling their photos outright, but most of the industry certainly is not.

The concept of "work for hire" predates digital photography.

Re:Hmmmm

[Hognoxious]

It already is out of hand. There are certain buildings you aren't allowed to photograph because it infringes the architect's copyright. I could understand if someone built another building exactly the same, but a photograph?

Re:Hmmmm

[thrawn_aj]

Wow. That's just ... wow. Howard Roark must be spinning in his fictitious grave :)

_______
*(to see what constitutes 'standing up for your artistic rights' these days)

Re:Hmmmm

[theaveng]

I suspect this will end-up like DVDs. Musicians claimed they need to be paid for music used on TV shows released to DVD. Networks/studios claimed it was already paid for when the show was originally produced. The courts ruled that the original contract specified Broadcast and Videotape only, not DVDs, therefore the musicians need to be paid. Some studios paid; others reedited the TV shows with generic elevator music (example: Quantum Leap DVDs stripped all the familiar songs).

I would not be surprised if courts reach a similar conclusion with Google's e-books - that the original contract specified usage in physical paperbound books, not electronic media, therefore Google owes the photographers additional money.

Of course this whole argument would be moot if copyrights were only 14 years long (with possibility for renewal by the original creator), instead of perpetual.

Re:Hmmmm

[BlackBloq]

I just let these puns slide off me! Geta Holga yourself man!

Re:Hmmmm

[BlackBloq]

Yea like try making a fat ugly bride look good for 500 pictures! Its way harder than event/war shooting. You won't get shot but you may want a gun by the end of the wedding! Protests are easy, Sports is easy, fashion is easy (assuming your model/hair/makeup/clothes are good). Weddings are hella pain some times! It's hard getting a nature shot of a specific animal no doubt, but it's more in your control if you want to leave or not, the stupid wedding just has to be perfect! After all I've been paid in advance!

Re:Hmmmm

[BlackBloq]

Advise given by someone who cares not about their prints! Any pro worth spit re-prints and would NEVER pay without seeing the work first! Kiosk?!?! That's a $5000.00 dye sublimation printer that is the same as your crappy home printer but bigger. The ones in a good shop are about 20-100k and are digital dry printers like this http://www.noritsu.com/Products/Digital+Dry+Printers/default.aspx .
At the best shop in my town they give you a proof free to use as a sample. Never mind colour correcting and submission errors and file mess ups, what do you mean my adobe 1998 profile is messed up? Whats pro RGB? I thought CMYK was better?!? mwahahah good luck!

Re:Hmmmm

[Scroatzilla]

It depends on what is exposed.

Re:Hmmmm

[supssa]

Is this obvious trolling or hilariously ignorant. I just cannot tell!

And after that, the models will want their cut

[Palestrina]

The complexity is that a modern book can have a large number of owners, who may have come together and agreed to publish a given book, or even a given edition of the book. But republication, translation, adaption for the stage, movies, song lyrics, etc., all need to be negotiated separately. It gets even crazier with video, since then you have musician rights, composer rights, etc.

I think Lessig gave us one of the best reads on this problem a couple of months ago: http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2010/02/05_lessig.html

Re:And after that, the models will want their cut

[Anonymous Coward]

"The complexity is that a modern book can have a large number of owners, who may have come together and agreed to publish a given book, or even a given edition of the book..."

Such that books are even offered incompletely. I purchased an online version of a classical art textbook to save money. I'm about a third of the way through the book and I've already seen 4 or 5 "This image removed due to copyright restrictions" in a fucking 180-day subscription to a classical art textbook for which I paid seventy bucks(in before idiot/sucker, I needed the commentary). Omitted were photos of paintings and sculptures that any tourist could frame and snap. For those interested, the book is Gardner's Art Through the Ages as purchased through coursesmart

Fortunately, The Pirate Bay offers a wide variety of top-notch textbooks at low, low prices. The losers, of course, are the people who pay for the content.

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:And after that, the models will want their cut

[ClosedSource]

I don't see what the problem is unless you want to profit from slicing and dicing somebody else's work.

Re:And after that, the models will want their cut

[Dare nMc]

unless you want to profit from slicing and dicing somebody else's work.

sounds like most every job. Photographers/miners/carpenters takes a piece of something nature created, and cuts it up. Musicians take the same instruments and notes compilations of others, programmers build upon what others did... Google pays the artists for any artwork they claim, they just don't want to negotiate with every single photographer, so they set a rate higher than what 99% get currently, and give them the option to take it or leave it.
I would prefer google to sell e-books afford-ably and artists get their cut, than to have a greedy lawyer hold everything up because the middle men don't want to loose control, and convince a few artists to allow them.

Re:And after that, the models will want their cut

[cpt kangarooski]

Are you suggesting that I ought not to be allowed to, say, slice and dice Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet,' changing the script and setting as I see fit, adding new elements, and staging a performance for profit? I'm not Shakespeare, after all, and I guarantee you that Shakespeare never gave me permission to do so.

Re:And after that, the models will want their cut

[ClosedSource]

Well, I'll admit that it's difficult to get in touch with nature and the inventor of musical notes is difficult to contact too.

Re:And after that, the models will want their cut

[ClosedSource]

I guarantee you that Shakespeare never copyrighted his work, so I don't see how your example applies to this discussion.

Re:And after that, the models will want their cut

[cpt kangarooski]

I guarantee you that Shakespeare never copyrighted his work, so I don't see how your example applies to this discussion.

Previously you said: I don't see what the problem is unless you want to profit from slicing and dicing somebody else's work.

You didn't limit yourself to only copyrighted work. Shakespeare's work is not my own, therefore, you appear to think that were I to use it for profit, that ought to be problematical for me. Copyright never was your concern.

If you want to limit yourself to copyrighted works, then that is fine, but remember that copyright doesn't protect any and all uses of the works to which it applies; copyright permits numerous uses of protected works without authorization and for profit. Even if an author is hopping mad about such uses, and forbids them altogether, the uses can still continue, because the users have every legal right to engage in them.

So feel free to backtrack, but I don't think you'll gain anything by it.

Re:And after that, the models will want their cut

[linzeal]

They really thought we were fools they could make money off with them pricing leased digital editions the same price or more as physical textbooks. Well everyone I know who has ebook textbooks has stolen all of them.

Re:And after that, the models will want their cut

[Allan Kent Pedersen]

its just plain and simple work and they have to get paid also

and in a follow-on report ...

[nblender]

The American Pulp and Paper Manufacturers Association has announced they intend to claim royalties for scans of books printed on paper produced by members of APPMA!

Re:and in a follow-on report ...

[uberjack]

Let's not forget the typesetters that created the fonts. And the trees, that so graciously provided their pulp.

Me too

[Idiomatick]

I think this is just becomeing a suing opportunity. Anyone that has anything to do with Google sues them because they have so much money. Hell, Google has been sued for linking to sites not using robots.txt or having thumbnails or images or.... the list goes on.

People are greedy and Google has money. Of course everyone sues it whether or not it is doing no evil.

Re:Me too

[Anonymous Coward]

As a photographer, my clients have the option for a complete copyright buyout of the images they commission me to photograph. Often times they don't, but some do at a much higher rate, and they can do whatever they want for unlimited time. Those that don't purchase all the copyrights, license the images for a limited amount of time for a specific medium type and size (print and/or online ad, pamphlets, billboards).

Personally, Google doesn't affect me because I started my photography business relatively recent. The aforementioned a la carte fees were common in the film era as it explained to the client what they were getting. I recoup those costs in "creative" or "photography" fees, but that in itself doesn't sound too tangible to clients, and it's the same reason lawyers charge by the minute they talk on the phone, or words they type when writing a letter (or just by per completed letter, depending on lawyer). But it works somewhat if I can convince them to pay me by the quality of work instead of volume (1 image delivered).

I think Google just further erodes an outdated business model of charging by medium. In the digital age, especially when dSLR can make anyone a "pro" photographer instantly, photographers should focus on producing quality work and charging accordingly, instead of high volume stock-quality photography and trying to license it by the medium, size, and region.

Re:Me too

[bloodhawk]

Why I agree this is probably a huge case of opportunism, The fact remains google are evil bastards in how they are handling this and really they deserve what they get. An system that can take your property and requires you to "opt out" rather than opt in deserves to have as many law suits thrown at it as humanly possible.

Re:Me too

[beakerMeep]

I don't see how it is so cut and dried. If these artists have legitimate copyrights and Google is presenting the image in results, it certainly could be argued that is a form of republishing. Whether you agree or not, the issue is not exactly just 'me too.' While there may be an element of that TFA is pretty light on details as to what the plaintiffs are claiming represents unauthorized republishing of their work.

Re:Me too

[somersault]

There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energise the demolition beams.

Re:Me too

[ClosedSource]

The people who wrote the books or took the photographs had nothing to do with Google until Google tried to rip them off. It's annoying how people defend Google's version of "manifest destiny".

Re:Me too

[houghi]

More and more people will start to see that Google is not the savior of the world. It is just a company with shareholders. And whatever it goals are, it will do anything to achieve that goal, including changing the laws in their advantage if needed.

Re:Me too

[TheRaven64]

They aren't quibbling over paying anyone, they are just trying to find a blanket way to offer payment to those who deserve it

No they aren't. They are trying not to pay anyone. They committed large-scale commercial copyright infringement. Then, in response to a lawsuit, they tried to cut a deal. If Google had been held to the same standards as individuals, they would have had to pay $7,500 to $150,000 per book. Those are the statutory penalties in the USA. For the number of books they've made available, the statutory fines could have bankrupted the company.

If Google had really been acting in a non-evil way, they'd have pushed for the law to be changed to require compulsory licensing for out-of-print works and tried to reach an agreement with the publishers before hand for in-print works. Instead, they used a legal loophole to try to get a special exemption for them (but no one else) retroactively.

Re:Me too

[sammyF70]

As someone who is still trying his Android Market money from Google, I'd say people sue Google because it's just as evil as other megacorps, especially those two with the half rotten apples or broken chairs

slightly off topic I know. Just got that literally 2mn ago from Google. My question (asked a year ago) was how can I get my money if I'm not in the USA. Emphasis mine.

Hello Sammy, Thanks for writing in. Apologies for the delayed response. If you wish the change the locale of your Google Checkout account, you will need to create a new account. In order to do this, you would also need to pay to register a new Android Developer account. After doing so, our team may be able to move your applications over into that new account that you plan on linking with a France Checkout account. If we can assist you further, please let us know. Regards, The Android Market Team

Re:Me too

[Chyeld]

That comment is so full of bullshit, I'm not even certain where to start.

Wait, I know, lets start at the start:

• What did Google actually do originally
  • Google went to select libraries and asked their permission to scan in the works that the libraries had access to.
  • Google intended to make the works which were in the public domain available online for free
  • Google intended to make the works which were still covered under copyright search-able, just as a website is, and include them in Google's index.
      THIS SHOULD BE COVERED BY FAIR USE
• What has Google already made available online
  • The only items you can currently view in full on Google's site are the books they have PERMISSION to display, either from the copyrights holder or by virtue of the book being in the public domain
  • Books Google does not have permission to display in full are in some cases search-able (depending on whether the copyright holder has told Google block the book or not

What is evil about what they were originally working on? Where is the blatant disregard for copyright that you are stumping on about? The fact that the GBS greatly expands their plans and what they are doing is not because that is what they were originally planning, it's because that's what the lawyers were able to AGREE upon when they sat down at the table!

Re:Me too

[Tanktalus]

No they aren't. They are trying not to pay anyone. They committed large-scale commercial copyright infringement. Then, in response to a lawsuit, they tried to cut a deal.

As a previous manager once had in his .sig: it's often easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

A lot of civil rights have been advanced by "doing" instead of "asking" and then demanding that society respond. Now, this isn't on the same civil-rights level as a black woman sitting at the front of a bus, but it's still civil rights nonetheless. Google may be less altruistic than Ms Parks, but it's still a discussion that needed opening.

Re:Me too

[Fallingcow]

As much as I initially hated their methods, I can't say I'm completely against it now, having used it a bit.

It's a small glimpse of what a sane copyright policy might allow. Yes, it's a fucked up walled garden, but even the equivalent of a Disney park ride take on what reasonable copyright policy might look like is exciting. It's possible it's the only time I'll see something like that in my lifetime, if it gets shut down and the idea doesn't spread.

Re:Me too

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, the number one change I'd like to make to copyright is to make it opt in, rather than opt out.

That is, I'd like to undo the recent change to our copyright system that grants copyrights automatically. Instead, we'd return to the old system of only granting copyrights to published works upon request (with some of the new system of limiting the time and protection for unpublished works, to encourage the author to either publish or let it enter the public domain). All that would be necessary for any author, anywhere in the world, to get a US copyright, would be to fill out a very simple form, provide a few copies (possibly in specified formats) to the Library of Congress, to put a copyright notice on copies of the work, and to pay a nominal fee (I'd be happy with as low as $1). For published works, where publication is treated very broadly (e.g. including public performance) authors would have one year to register, or else the work is deemed to be retroactively in the public domain.

Since copyright is meant solely to promote the public interest by encouraging authors to create and publish works which otherwise would not have been created and published, which are minimally protected in scope and length, this would serve to get works where the author created them without needing the encouragement of copyright into the public domain faster (since such authors probably won't bother to seek a copyright), while allowing authors that do need that encouragement (who presumably will take such modest steps listed above to get a copyright) to get it.

Everyone ends up happy.

This is far better than granting copyrights to everyone willy-nilly, as we currently do. Under the current system there is a lot of waste, with works getting protection when authors don't need it, care about it, or even want it (but don't care about the issue so much as to take affirmative measures to place their works in the public domain), and thus being kept out of the hands of the public to use freely, while only helping a small number of artists who, history shows, would gladly jump through at least nominal hoops in order to get such rights. It's entirely backwards, what we've got now.

Lawsuits won't help to change this, but lobbying the President and Congress to make the necessary changes to our law and have the US withdraw from any treaties that would (stupidly) interfere with this reasonable and important reform. Of course, I'd be happy to see various copyright treaties implement something similar, but I'd prefer that the US take action on this quickly, rather than wait around for the rest of the world. After all, we didn't join the Berne Convention until the 1980's, so clearly both we, and the rest of the world, can get along fine without us participating, until they get their own house in order too.

Re:Me too

[bloodhawk]

What a load of BULLSHIT. b) it is not just a pointer to data, they are taking books and publications that are covered under copyright and breaching the copyright by illegally making and distributing electronic copies. c) revenue is irrelevant d) it is completely different from a library, A library buys there books through means that the publisher/author has explicited provided, If a library was then making its own copies to loan out THEN it would be like a library and THEN the library would also be in breach of the law and would rightfully be sued. e) the internet shares data that is posted on it. The internet does not share anything that is not posted on it, google are breaching the copyright owners rights to choose what they post on the internet. It is not like putting a sign on a bulletin board at all, Are you a complete moron? A bulletin board is publicly posted information, a book is NOT. A book is a piece of copyright work that the author/publisher has certain rights over, including the right to decide in what forms it is published. It is FUCKING google, it has nothing to do with the way the internet works.

Re:Me too

[shentino]

I think that something needs to be done about orphan works.

That said, Google's method of mopping up exclusive rights is completely out of line.

If someone does their due diligence and tries well to steer clear of infringing intellectual property, they should be rewarded for their efforts by not getting slammed with a submarine.

I think that "bona vacantia" should apply and that any orphan works should be the property of the federal government, held in trust for the public unless AND until the true owner wishes to assert ownership. Google, at most, should get compensated for their labor and time.

I think Google would make a wonderful contractor working for the LoC doing digitization, and paid a handsome fee. But getting copyright ownership and then relying on "opt in for benefits but opt out for res judicata" nature of class action suits is just plain sleazy.

Re:Me too

[st0rmshad0w]

What is evil about what they were originally working on?

The fact that they are re-copyrighting public domain works as their own?

What gives a library the right to allow Google to create a search-able index of copyright works?

This info comes from librarians and researchers at the Library of Congress, the DOJ and several university libraries.

Also, they are an ADVERTISING company, which makes them evil by their very existence.

Re:Me too

[KahabutDieDrake]

You may or may not be aware but you are probably an island among your peers with sentiments like that. ALL of the photographers I know are borderline nuts about their copy writes, when and how their work is reproduced and making sure it's properly attributed. Going on vacation with one and trying to get pics afterward is a nightmare. My private pictures from camping weekend X don't need to have attribution stamps you self important..... well, you probably know.

Re:Me too

[HiThere]

If it's true, as I've heard reported, one thing that makes their actions evil was that the contract with the libraries generally forbid the libraries to allow any other company to do as Google had done.

That's evil.

Then there's the deal on works that ARE within copyright, where Google, and Google alone, has the right to scan them and make them available without actual agreement by the copyright holders. This involved breaking the law, and settling a "class action" suit brought by a group that represented a small minority of the people whose works were covered by the suit. And it involved nominal attempts to find the authors whose rights are being trampled upon. But most of those authors didn't know about the deal until after it had been settled, and it's quite probable that most still don't know.

Mind you, I think the copyright laws are absurdly long, and in clear violation of the constitutional mandate. The Supreme Court, however, disagrees with me. So Google has broken the law and thereby gained an exclusive monopoly on a very large number of works for essentially a pittance.

Mind you, if it weren't an exclusive monopoly I'd think much more favorably about it. As it is, I consider it evil. But there's the curious "fact" that the settlement was proposed by the judge, and then agreed to by both sides. So unless there was some underhanded dealing that was hidden from public view, it's hard to say that Google was evil. But it they take advantage of it without sub-licensing it to all others requesting it at a nominal rate, then I've got to say "Yes, it's evil, and Google is responsible." And I've got to suspect underhanded dealings in the court that just never became public. (Anyone who trusts the court system hasn't been following the SCOx case[s] the last seven years.)

Re:Me too

[Idiomatick]

"The fact that they are re-copyrighting public domain works as their own?"
They didn't, that is total BS.

"What gives a library the right to allow Google to create a search-able index of copyright works?"
Most of them? Seriously, most University libraries have signed up, UMichigan was first. Harvard, Stanford, the New York Public Library and the University of Oxford were the first couple to sign up. Soon over 100 universities had signed up and that number exploded.

As for the LoC they joined in on December 13, 2004. Five and a half years ago... Along with various governments around the world. Pretty much everyone wants this except for a minority of authors. And TBH, they can suck it up.

Re:Me too

[Idiomatick]

"If it's true, as I've heard reported, one thing that makes their actions evil was that the contract with the libraries generally forbid the libraries to allow any other company to do as Google had done."
Completely not true. Enjoy.

The other books you refer to are under the orphan works category. In many of these cases a copyright holder may or may not exist, it may have died and not been passed on no-one knows. Many of these books have been out of print for DECADES. The authors were not in any way going to see money from the books if they do happen to exist. These books would dissapear unless they got scanned. You might as well burn them. I'm serious. You are just throwing away knowledge by being against this.

Also, Google does not have sole access. I mean, they are the only ones who have a deal atm BUT the group that managed the class action has welcomed other companies to make a similar deal. And the proccess would be much cleaner. So it isn't a monopoly really, Google just is the only one that paid for access so far.

"But it they take advantage of it without sub-licensing it to all others requesting it at a nominal rate, then I've got to say "Yes, it's evil, and Google is responsible.""
Google is even offering to sell (for lower than cost of doing so themselves) their scanned DB of books to competitors that may come up.

Hope that helps, I've got work or I'd cite things, I'm sure you can Google it.

Re:Me too

[Idiomatick]

If a photographer got paid $2000 to have it in a book. And that book gets digitized the photographer can fuck himself. It is still a book. It is the same as the book selling a few more copies. It wasn't taken and stuck into a movie or anything that'd require a new license. I'm sorry, it is a plain money grab.

If the photographers were getting paid per book sold (really friggen weird, maybe for some photo-books). Then that'd be different and they'd have some rights. But that is a very tiny minority.

Re:Me too

[HiThere]

What it takes to qualify as an "orphan work" in this context doesn't, I believe, match your characterization, though it does need to be out of print. I understand why they don't want to make extensive attempts to contact authors they don't immediately know where are, but this doesn't altogether excuse them. Were I to do it I'd be risking hefty fines. (Still, one can make a plausible argument that it's the legal system that evil rather than Google.)

There is no legal way for anyone to acquire such a deal. Nobody. Google had to clearly break the law to get the deal. So would anyone else. And the group that Google made the deal with didn't, and don't, have the rights to the works they bargained away. The court just gave them that authority for the duration of the trial. I would argue that the court acted illegally, but IANAL. Nobody powerful enough to interfere chose to. But this doesn't mean that the group has to right to make deals with anyone else outside the context of that trial. Those aren't their copyrights.

I'd heard that Google was offering their database to selected other companies in non-competitive businesses at good prices. I hadn't heard that it was a blanket offer. How certain are you that it was?

Re:Me too

[Chyeld]

The GBS has no exclusivity clauses in it. It does not prevent other companies from doing anything Google has done.

Re:Me too

[Chyeld]

Google hasn't and didn't break the law. Orphaned works, prior to the GBS were treated by Google the same way they treated non-orphaned works, they were indexed to be search-able.

The majority of what is being done in the Google Book Settlement is NOT what Google was originally planning on doing. However it is what they were able to get the people heading the class action to agree to once they set down at the table.

And you are right, I think, in that there was no other way for this to come about than other then Google being involved in a class action. But you are wrong, I sincerely believe, in assuming that just because Google got sued for the little that they were doing, that what they were doing was wrong or illegal.

People have squabbles over what constitutes fair use all the time and gotten it taken to court all the time and invariably one group walks out disappointed and the other walks out happy. And it's not always the guy that owns the copyrights that is the one that's happy. Fair use has no concrete definition and while there are guidelines that are supposed to be used in deciding if a use is fair or not, the reality is these things are almost always 100% subjective decisions that depend more on who the judge is, and how well the lawyers make their case rather than if it's really 'fair'.

Re:Me too

[Idiomatick]

AFAIK The Books Rights Registry once it is up and running will be able to make deals with groups other than Google that are the same or similar. Basically the BRR got the rights to do so during the trial.

“For the out-of-print books being made available through the Google Books settlement, we will let any book retailer sell access to those books,” -Grummond (Google)

"And what this means is that any book seller—anybody, whether it is Amazon, whether it is Barnes and Noble, whether it is Microsoft, should they ever decide to get into this market—would be able to sell access to the books that are covered by the settlement." -Grummond (Google)

Of course this is just talk, I didn't find what price Google was offering books at which could of course defeat the purpose. But it isn't selective at any rate.

http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/printers/111th/111-31_51994.PDF

Re:Me too

[HiThere]

Also, if "book retailer" means they sell printed books, then they are in non-competitive businesses.

Re:And so it goes....

[blair1q]

And whoever digitized it without the right to do so, or forwarded copies without the right to do so, will pay. That is the law.

Photographs

[Andy Smith]

I'm a newspaper photographer. I'll offer this perspective on Google's respect for copyright:

Google recently used some of my photographs on Google News, as the 'headline' photos to represent collected coverage of major stories. This fell outside any reasonable definition of fair use. This was for-profit publication of photographs that other publishers were paying for the right to use. Google used them for free.

Now, it's common in the news business that publishers use breaking news photos without permission, because they need to publish them quickly. But they ALWAYS pay afterwards, market rate, without question. This side of the business works on trust.

When I sent Google a bill, their first reaction was exactly what it should be: They would pay the market rate. They rang up to get my banking details for fund transfer, and that should have been the end of the matter.

Then they wrote to me saying that they wouldn't pay. They even denied publishing the images, which was clearly untrue. They told me that to take the matter further I would need to file a DMCA complaint -- and in doing so I must give Google permission to publish the DMCA complaint online. I believe this is outrageous! I only sell my pictures to UK publishers, yet here was a US company publishing my work without permission, and telling me that I would need to pursue them through the US legal system!

This gives me a fairly clear view of Google's attitude to other people's copyright. It seems that Google will take what they want, publish it however they want, profit, and then to hell with the people who originally produced the material in question.

Re:Photographs

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's the reason Google left China. There were piles of lawsuits in Chinese legal systems filed against Google by Chinese authors, Google decided it was easier to quit by claiming Chinese censorship

Re:Photographs

[Ron Bennett]

Google likely believes use of your images falls under "fair use" in the same manner as those shown on Google Images, and hence feels no obligation to pay.

I assume the images in question were shown as smallish (ie. 80x80) thumbnails?

You might be able to strongly encourage Google to pay, if you can document them using the images out of context ... but I presume the images all linked to the related news items that contained the full size images. And thus, to reiterate, likely why Google feels no obligation to pay.

Ron

Re:Photographs

[nblender]

So if I understand you correctly, you want google to pay 'market rate' for an 80x80 portion of a picture that you took with your EOS 5D-II? How small a part of your image does google have to use in order to qualify for "fair use"?

Re:Photographs

[kharchenko]

It could be that your case was exceptional, but from what I've seen Google News only shows tiny thumbnails of images that are published on the newspaper's website. If you click on the thumbnail to view the image, it takes you to the source - a site of the publisher has decided to use this particular photo.

I don't see a difference between that and showing the excerpt of the article's text under each heading, or analogously the excerpt of the webpage cache in the normal search results.

Re:Photographs

[stephanruby]

Google recently used some of my photographs on Google News, as the 'headline' photos to represent collected coverage of major stories.

You mean. Google recently used some photographs of yours on Google News, as the 'thumbnail' image to represent the collected coverage of major stories, linking back to the original online newspaper which originally published your photograph.

This fell outside any reasonable definition of fair use.

Who says? You do, but you're a little biased. Aren't you.

This was for-profit publication of photographs that other publishers were paying for the right to use. Google used them for free.

Yes, Google links thumbnails and summary information to online sources. It does the same thing on its search engine, which is also a for-profit operation. And it does this with the robots.txt (or sitemap.xml) permission of the original newspaper that published your photographs. If the original newspaper had just listed the folder in which your photograph was in, and told the googlebot not to index your photograph, then google wouldn't have used your photograph (to make a thumbnail out of it).

It seems your original beef is with the newspapers that published your photographs, not google. I think many would argue that indexing, linking to, publishing the summary information, and automatically making thumbnails, all because the original web site permits you through the robots.txt file, falls well within the purpose of 'fair use'.

Re:Photographs

[ClosedSource]

"Google likely believes use of your images falls under "fair use" in the same manner as those shown on Google Images, and hence feels no obligation to pay."

Which is like having your neighbor say it was OK to use your pool without your permission because they did the same thing to the guy down the street.

Re:Photographs

[Knara]

The difference is that they have to obtain permission to present that picture in a different format due to transformation.

It's the reason Deviant Art's EULA has you give them non-exclusive permission to transform/use your works, so they can generate thumbnails.

Now, I'm sure that Google won't agree with this thought process, but there's definitely a legal argument to be made.

Re:Photographs

[ClosedSource]

I never realized that fair use was based on pixel count. I can't believe how silly these pro-Google comments are becoming.

Re:Photographs

[Chyeld]

Actually no, they do it because they either have a marketing agreement with opposing vendors who didn't want free advertising to be given to the competition or because the image was TRADEMARKED and they were worried the use of it in their show might bring legal trouble on that front.

Unless they have an incompetent legal department, they are never doing it because they fear they are infringing copyrights, as it'd be a 100% slam dunk when they showed up for court and said "Your honor, fair use."

Re:Photographs

[DNS-and-BIND]

You do know that Google News is a totally automated service, right? "Google" didn't use the photo, they're not trying to steal from you. Fair use is not publishing. Moreover, tiny images are fair use, Wikipedia does it all the time. Why does it fail to surprise me that a person in the media is ignorant and doesn't check his facts?

Re:Photographs

[Chyeld]

Almost as silly as your Google-bashing has become.

No, not really.

You are still miles ahead of them. Keep it up, everyone loves a clown.

Re:Photographs

[cpt kangarooski]

Which is like having your neighbor say it was OK to use your pool without your permission because they did the same thing to the guy down the street.

No, it's more like if your house is plainly visible from the sidewalk, with no tall hedges, or anything else obstructing the view, and your neighbor stands on the sidewalk and looks at it. The house may be your property, but he is perfectly within his rights to look at it, if you haven't concealed it in some fashion.

Remember: Copyright is defined by statute, and is limited; it does not cover absolutely anything regarding a work. An author's rights in his work stop at the border of fair use (among other things). Fairly using a work simply does not, and cannot infringe, by definition.

Of course, I'm not surprised to see the sort of rent-seeking behavior that you seem to condone. We just have to stand firm against those who would disparage fair use (which, because fair use is meant to promote public policy with regard to copyright, is really a disparagement of copyright as a whole).

Re:Photographs

[geekoid]

"and in doing so I must give Google permission to publish the DMCA complaint online"
of course. You sent someone a notice, they have every write to put it online. IF you sent one to me, I would put it online as well.

OTOH, you post makes for a nice made up story. All nice and tidy.

I wonder why an alleged photographer from the UK would pretend to know what fair use is in the US, or why they think everyone viewing the photo would owe them money.

Maybe the industry will finally become a rational industry instead of a bunch of people who think they should get paid repeatedly for the same piece of work.

Fucking leeches. YOU disagree? then tell me how much did you pay for permission to take the photos?

Re:Photographs

[Chyeld]

No, they don't. It's been established fairly solidly in case law that thumbnails are fair use when used as results for search criteria.

Deviant Art's EULA is more likely to cover the fact that they actually sell prints of works you upload to them if you allow them to.

Re:Photographs

[cpt kangarooski]

And indeed, that argument was made in Kelly v. Arriba Soft, back in 2002. The court in that case decided that image thumbnails produced as search results were a fair use.

The use was commercial, which counted against defendants, but transformative (instead of being pictures qua pictures, they were merely search result) which counted for. The pictures were creative works, but published, which counted against, but not so much against as it might. They copied the entire work, but this was no more than necessary for users to be able to identify the results, so it counted neither for nor against. And the use as thumbnails in search engine results didn't harm the market for the images themselves, so that counted for.

Re:Photographs

[Urza9814]

I agree with pretty much everything you've said...except this one point:

here was a US company publishing my work without permission, and telling me that I would need to pursue them through the US legal system!

Of _course_ you would need to pursue it in the US legal system! I mean, you could perhaps get it removed from google.co.uk results with a UK court order, but that's it. They're a US company, publishing from the US. UK courts do not have jurisdiction over things that occur on US soil. You might as well complain that the UK isn't enforcing their labor laws in Chinese factories...

Re:Photographs

[Knara]

I suppose my question would be, is going to news.google.com performing a search that returns results? Does it count as a "search" if it only happens on the back end?

Re:Photographs

[Knara]

Now that you mention it, I think I've had this conversation before. It turned out the reason was because DA used to (still?) would do "artwork of the week" or whatever from people's galleries and so would use them in intra-site events.

Re:Photographs

[grcumb]

"Google likely believes use of your images falls under "fair use" in the same manner as those shown on Google Images, and hence feels no obligation to pay."

Which is like having your neighbor say it was OK to use your pool without your permission because they did the same thing to the guy down the street.

No, it's nothing at all like that. It has nothing to do with physical objects at all.

Let's dispense with silly analogies (sorry, BadAnalogyGuy, I realise that saying such a thing is just like killing a kitten) and state exactly what it is:

In this particular example, Google used a thumbnail copy of a photo and used it to give Google News visitors an indication of what was on the site they were linking to.

You can argue Fair Use if you like. You can argue that this is reproduction of an image without permission. It all comes down to how you feel about droits d'auteur - that is, authors' rights. If you feel that creators always maintain the moral right of refusal where copying is concerned, then Google should pay. If you feel that this right is limited, then you could argue that Google did nothing more than sketch what was available at the linked site, thus increasing its attraction to the reader.

In either case, the author is rewarded. The difference is in the nature and source of the reward.

Re:Photographs

[grcumb]

I never realized that fair use was based on pixel count.

You should have done. It's obvious.

A sufficiently reduced-quality image (or a detail from a larger image) is perfectly analogous to a quotation from a written work. It serves to convey the essence (or a detail) of a particular work without reproducing it in toto. Past a certain point, however, the exercise becomes a case of wholesale copying i.e. no longer Fair Use.

If that weren't the case, then I could sue you for using the same white and black pixels that I used in a graphic this morning, or the same alphabet (or phrases, if you like) that I used to create my last newspaper column.

Re:Photographs

[cpt kangarooski]

I doubt that Google's staff deliberately chooses items to put on their page. Probably they have several search queries for the most recent, most important news, and people automatically get that when they go to the front page. Compare with a newspaper, which will often only change their page once a day, unless something astonishingly important happens.

It's probably like if Google's main page automatically displayed the most recent, most commonly searched for results to save people the time of having to think of what they wanted to search for themselves. It would be weird, but I don't see a big problem.

Also, and probably more importantly, you should know that courts look to precedents when there are similarities between that case and this in any relevant respect, and look away from cited precedents when they can be distinguished as dissimilar. An excellent and famous example is US v. Carolene Products, which forms the backbone of modern due process jurisprudence, and was instrumental in breaking down racial segregation laws, and which deals merely with the regulation of milk products. The Google News homepage doesn't have to be a search engine results page to enjoy the benefit of Kelly.

Re:Photographs

[ClosedSource]

"In either case, the author is rewarded."

If that were true they would be no dispute.

The mechanism by which an author is rewarded by money is well understood and doesn't require any speculative assumptions.

The mechanism by which an author is rewarded by "increasing its attraction to the reader" is not at all clear and requires a significant scaffold of assumptions to keep it from collapsing.

Re:Photographs

[grcumb]

The mechanism by which an author is rewarded by money is well understood and doesn't require any speculative assumptions.

The mechanism by which an author is rewarded by "increasing its attraction to the reader" is not at all clear and requires a significant scaffold of assumptions to keep it from collapsing.

I put a huge poster featuring your photo in the window of the gallery where your photos are showing. I do not charge people to view this image and I don't pay you for it. I do charge for the prints displayed inside and I pay you a percentage of the take.

The poster for which you are not paid advertises your work and increases its desirability. It drives traffic into the gallery where your work is showing.

Not much of a scaffold, if you ask me.

Re:Photographs

[ClosedSource]

What you describe is not what Google is doing, so I have no comment on it.

Re:Photographs

[PhxBlue]

I'm a newspaper photographer. I'll offer this perspective on Google's respect for copyright: Google recently used some of my photographs on Google News, as the 'headline' photos to represent collected coverage of major stories. This fell outside any reasonable definition of fair use. This was for-profit publication of photographs that other publishers were paying for the right to use. Google used them for free.

This sounds like something that should be hashed out between your newspaper and Google. As a newspaper photographer, are you not work-for-hire?

Re:Photographs

[farnsworth]

When I sent Google a bill, their first reaction was exactly what it should be: They would pay the market rate. They rang up to get my banking details for fund transfer, and that should have been the end of the matter.

Then they wrote to me saying that they wouldn't pay. They even denied publishing the images, which was clearly untrue. [snip]

I'm not an expert in the matters you address, but it seems like you are disingenuously presenting Google's side of the story. You imply that Google was ready to pay you for services rendered but then abruptly changed their mind to screw you out of some money. It seems far more likely that your bill landed on some underling's desk, they put it into their payment system which asked for details they didn't have, so they asked you. Then, during an audit or the approval process of the payment, someone with more context rejected the payment because they don't pay a licence for fair use. Whether or not it's fair use is obviously not for me to say, but I find it hard to believe that Google is just capriciously screwing people out of money owed.

Re:Photographs

[cpt kangarooski]

First off, a distinction is to be made (after I say IANAL) -- Fair use is not legally a "right" -- it is an "affirmative defense" to a charge of infringement. As such, it does not come into play until after a verdict if infringement has been rendered. i.e., you have already been judged guilty.

Well, it's clear that you've looked into this a little bit, but perhaps not enough.

Fair use isn't a right. Nor is it actually an affirmative defense, although that's procedurally how it is treated. This isn't surprising; copyright doesn't really grant rights to affirmatively do anything. That's not how it works for anyone.

Fair use is an exception to copyright. Think of a Venn diagram, in which you have a set, a subset, a sub-subset, a sub-sub-subset and so forth.

At the top is free speech, a guaranteed right. Copyright applies to a subset of this speech. Copyright itself is riddled with exceptions, which remove copyright from certain aspects or uses of certain works. And sometimes those exceptions have exceptions that bring copyright back into play, and then sometimes those exceptions have yet more exceptions that eliminate the copyright yet again.

An example: You have a right of free speech, which permits you to distribute copies of works that someone else made. If that work is not copyrighted, then that's the end of the analysis: you have a right to distribute copies of it, barring something else that might limit your free speech (e.g. libel laws, if the work is libelous). If the work is copyrighted, then someone else has a right to prohibit you from distributing copies, essentially shutting down your right of free speech with regard to distributing that work. But, if that copy was lawfully made under US copyright law, and if you own that copy, then copyright does not apply to its distribution. This means that as far as distribution goes, for those things that qualify, you're back to merely exercising your free speech rights. Copyright doesn't grant you a right to distribute it, e.g. to sell a used book to a bookstore, it just grants or doesn't grant someone else a right to stop you. But suppose the means by which you want to distribute the copy is by renting it, and the copy is a computer program. Then the exception has an exception to it, and copyright law once again applies, and you can be prohibited from renting that. But suppose further than the computer program is a video game cartridge for a console. Then there's an exception to the exception to the exception, and you can rent that without permission or payment, so long as you own the lawfully made copy.

This is all taken from 17 USC 109, which deals with the First Sale doctrine.

So no, Fair Use isn't a right, but it merely prohibits copyright from interfering with the underlying right of free speech which is a right.

Procedurally, it is treated as a defense, because it is felt to be fairer all around if, instead of plaintiffs having to prove that the complained-of use is not a fair use in order to make their prima facie case, defendants should have to prove that the use is a fair use (if they want to; they're not obliged) in order to defend themselves against a plaintiff who has made out a prima facie case of infringement. After all, if no one claims it's fair, why should the plaintiff have to waste time with it? And if it is claimed to be fair, wouldn't the defendant be in a better position to gather evidence to prove this?

Also, note that you're wrong about in what order things come. In a court case, the plaintiff (or prosecutor) has to first make their prima facie case. For example, suppose you were accused of murder. The murder victim is known to be alive and well. In that case, the prosecutor cannot prove that you murdered the living victim. You, the defendant, win the case, without having to defend yourself or even lift a finger, because the prosecutor didn't get far enough with his side of things. Likewise in copyright infringement suits, fair use simply isn't necessary until it can be shown that the

Re:Photographs

[cpt kangarooski]

We're not talking about "looking" here -- we're talking about making commercial use of images of things you look at -- images made not by you, but by a third party.

Just because it is an unauthorized commercial use, that doesn't mean it cannot be a fair use. This was settled with the Pretty Woman case, where there was a commercial parody that was found to be fair. And it should've been patently obvious, given that movie reviewers act commercially (and can wreck the financial value of a work with a bad review, supported by clips, quotes, and stills used as fair use without permission or compensation), to name but one example.

I was merely pointing out that having some rights in something doesn't confer you with all rights in something. Just because you have a copyright in a photograph, that doesn't mean that Google can't lawfully use it as well, sans permission and payment.

I agree with some degree of copyright protection

Me too. I fully support all copyright laws which serve the public interest to the fullest possible extent. But I oppose (bitterly, if necessary) all copyright laws which fail to maximally serve the public interest. Fairness, control by authors over their works, compensation for authors -- these are all totally unimportant to me. I'm only about maximizing the public interest. If this involves helping authors, then great, and if not as much as I could, then great, and if not at all, then that's great too.

Re:Photographs

[delt0r]

Does the artist get paid for each visitor of the web site too? This is why people like us get fed up with copyright crap. I write code, copyright is part of my paycheck. But dam i don't expect to get paid each time someone runs a part of my program. Why the hell do you guys expect such special treatment. If you are really so badly ripped off. Get a different job.

Re:Photographs

[delt0r]

Do you get paid each time someone visits the news site?

I got a better idea. Stop selling photos, that way you can relax in the comfort of knowing that nobody looks at photos you have taken without paying.

Re:Photographs

[stephanruby]

I never realized that fair use was based on pixel count.

You should. The "standard market rate" of a photograph is often affected by the pixel count it's published in. And it only stands to reason that the pixel count would also affect the 'fair use' argument.

I can't believe how silly these pro-Google comments are becoming.

I can't believe I'm being called pro-Google. It wasn't just a few days ago, I was called a pirate and a thief. Now, I'm being called pro-Google. I must really be moving up in this World.

Photographers' LAWYERS want their cut from Google

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

There, fixed that.

what's so wrong with scanning

[bugi]

I don't understand this or the earlier related dustup.

What's wrong with scanning the books? Sure, if they later publish without permission the scans or OCRs of the scans or whatever, that's worth getting worked up about. But suing over simple scanning? I don't understand.

What's so wrong with just scanning them? Doesn't the internet archive do basically the same thing? I highly doubt they pay anyone for the privilege -- instead relying on fair use.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[Lunix Nutcase]

The process of scanning the books isn't the problem. The issue is that Google did so without getting permission from many authors of the books. Digitizing someone else's copyrighted work without their permission has never been allowed under any exemption to copyright infringement.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[HungryHobo]

Walk into a library, scan all the books, store it on your hard drive.
Walk into a video rental store, feed all the disks into your DVD drive and store it on your hard drive.

They're making copies and don't want to pay the copyright holder.

Now if they were to publish them without getting permission then that would be an even bigger deal.

They're not an educational institution or government agency so they don't get the same protections certain academic organizations get for copying material in some countries.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[ArsonSmith]

I'm pretty sure that ripping MP3s for personal use from any source, even analog sources has been legal. If I take a book and scan/OCR it for personal use I'm pretty sure that's OK too. They'd be hard pressed to sue me for showing someone a clip of that scan or someone else hearing my MP3. Now if I start giving out copies of that book or music then I am in violation of copy-write.

but, IANAL, This is my understanding and how I live. I have mp3 rips of all my CDs and I have many OCR scans of books I have bought.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[ArsonSmith]

spellcheckers are fun.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[Ron Bennett]

Intent. Google isn't scanning books for archival purposes, but rather with the intent to distribute / sell many of them.

Copyright doesn't necessarily preclude copying, but it does significantly limit the conditions under which one can do so.

Ron

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[Andy Smith]

If you're referring to his use of "copy-write", a spell-checker wouldn't catch that.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[Knara]

You'd be hard pressed to find a case where someone was sued for copying/ripping with no distribution.

But, Google isn't doing it for personal use, and that's the difference here.

If the work was actually in public domain, we wouldn't be having this conversation because we'd be over at Project Gutenberg,et al, reading it.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[Knara]

Addendum: "copying/ripping something they themselves already owned a legal copy of"

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[TheRaven64]

I'm pretty sure that ripping MP3s for personal use from any source, even analog sources has been legal

That's actually very variable. In the UK, for example, it's technically illegal (but, to my knowledge, has never been tested in court), while in the USA it's probably legal but state copyright law may not permit it (copyright law in the USA is really fun - take a look at how moral rights vary between New York and California some time, then contrast either to any other state selected at random).

There is, however, a massive difference between ripping your CD collection to MP3s for private use and ripping your CD collection and putting it on the Internet (especially on a commercial site, generating income from adverts). The former is probably legal, and won't get you in trouble even if you live somewhere where it technically isn't. The latter has, in the USA, a statutory fine of at least $750 per work, up to $150,000 for wilful infringement (i.e. cases where you know the work is copyrighted and you don't have permission to copy it).

Remember Napster and MP3.com? Remember what happened to them just for facilitating individuals doing on a small scale what Google is doing on a large scale?

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[icebraining]

Walk into a library, scan all the books, store it on your hard drive.
Walk into a video rental store, feed all the disks into your DVD drive and store it on your hard drive.

They're making copies and don't want to pay the copyright holder.

Wrong analogy is wrong, unless there's any evidence they haven't bought the books. If you buy a CD, for example, you can make private copies. Why should it be different with books? According to a Professor of Law, it probably isn't, although deciding it is obviously a court prerogative.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[Chyeld]

Psssst, he is him. Himself.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[Andy Smith]

lol well spotted, thought it was some smug git trying to be clever :-)

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, Universal Studios sued Sony regarding the Betamax on the basis that they were facilitating the copying without distribution by users at home. And the RIAA sued Diamond regarding the RIO mp3 player on the basis that they had made a device that users at home could use to make copies without distribution, and that Diamond had failed to pay fees, or have certain types of DRM involved.

But, Google isn't doing it for personal use, and that's the difference here.

Interestingly, personal use isn't a magic word for copyright issues. I could copy a book for personal use, and have it be fair use if I owned a copy of the book, and not fair use if I didn't; the difference wouldn't be the purpose of my use, but the effect that my making a copy has on the market for the book. (Compare with AHRA, where personal use -- or rather, non-commercial use by a consumer -- does matter)

The question here isn't really whether the search results would be fair or not -- they probably would be. Rather, the issue is that Google has to scan the entire book in order to build the database to search the text of the book. The complete book remains internal to Google, with only fragments (at most) ever revealed to any particular user, and then only as the result of a search. Frankly, this seems like a fair use to me. Having the book's text be searchable doesn't harm the market for the book in any material way. It might harm the market for the book if a searcher finds that it contains the wrong thing, or doesn't contain the right thing, but reviews of books can use quotes to show how a book is bad, thereby harming the market for it, and that's usually a fair use.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[shentino]

Just curious how the states can get involved in copyrights at all.

Last time I checked it was reserved as a federal matter.

Re:what's so wrong with scanning

[ArsonSmith]

it was copyright with a typo and the quick suggestion from the spell checker came up with the copy-write that I just picked a little too quickly without thinking about it.

I'm confused

[Locke2005]

"Google does not make available any of the visual material that might be in the books, unless the copyright holder has agreed to it", claims Google. Photographers do deserve to be compensated if their copyrighted material has been published online, but Google claims they have never done that without permission. If Google is omitting the pictures (which makes sense because they are not searchable), then they are doing the photographers a favor by publicizing their work online. If they are publishing the artwork without permission, then they certainly should pay for it.

Re:I'm confused

[ClosedSource]

This reminds me of my youth when I had long hair and my mother said I didn't have to have it cut, just shaped.

If Google scans photographs, those photographs are available to a lot of people within Google even if they aren't formally published online.

If they aren't going to publish them, they have no need to scan them. If they want to publish them, they're free to scan them after they get permission.

Re:I'm confused

[Locke2005]

Google presumably owns a copy of each book it scans. Scanning it is fair use. Publishing it is unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material. Also, what you are proposing would greatly the cost of scanning books... what if there is text and a picture on the same page? Better to create a digital image of the entire book and keep it secure, so that better OCR techniques can be used on it in the future.

Re:I'm confused

[icebraining]

What about fair use? If I buy a music CD, I can make private copies of it. Why should it be different with books? According to a professor of law at DePaul University, it probably isn't: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1437812

Re:I'm confused

[ClosedSource]

I assume that you are an individual and not a corporation of thousands of employees. It's meaningless for a corporation like Google to claim it made a "private" copy. At best it merely limited distribution to the employees of the company.

Re:I'm confused

[cpt kangarooski]

Photographers do deserve to be compensated if their copyrighted material has been published online

Why?

I just published some of your (presumably) copyrighted material online. But I didn't ask you, I didn't compensate you, and I'm not planning to in the future. Is there something different about photography as compared to text, for this purpose? I don't think so.

I'm not against photographers having rights in their work, but you haven't even so much as given a reason why, much less a good reason. And even should you do that, you then need to think about whether it would apply to any publication online, or whether there might be exceptions that would better promote the reasons you came up with than granting compensation would.

Re:I'm confused

[Locke2005]

Fair use says you can quote excerpts from textual work, not the entire work. Extending this to pictures, it should be ok to publish a small portion of the picture, but not the entire picture. There is a huge difference between publishing an excerpt, and publishing the entire work. Whereas a small portion of text might give you meaningful information about the entire work, a small portion of a picture usually looks like random pixels.

Re:I'm confused

[cpt kangarooski]

Fair use says you can quote excerpts from textual work, not the entire work.

No, it doesn't. Fair use says that if a use is fair, it is not infringing. In order to help determine whether a use is fair, several different factors are considered. One of them is the amount and substantiality of the portion of the work used. Thus, the more you use, or the more important parts you use, the less likely that the use is fair. However, it is entirely possible to use all of a work (necessarily including all of the important parts of the work), and still have the use be fair, just as it is entirely possible to use only small excerpts from a textual work, and have that use be unfair. The amount and substantiality factor is only one factor, and not the most important factor, in determining fair use.

See for example, Sony v. Universal, in which entire works may have been copied, but the use was considered fair, or Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, in which 300-400 words were taken from a book of over 450 pages was found unfair.

There are no bright line rules in fair use. Each case has to be considered on its own merits.

Extending this to pictures, it should be ok to publish a small portion of the picture, but not the entire picture.

Well, that's not really a reasonable way to look at the issue. Here's what the court said in Kelly:

3. Amount and substantiality of portion used.

"While wholesale copying does not preclude fair use per se, copying an entire work militates against a finding of fair use." Worldwide Church of God, 227 F.3d at 1118 (internal quotation marks omitted). However, the extent of permissible copying varies with the purpose and character of the use. Campbell, 510 U.S. at 586-87, 114 S.Ct. 1164. If the secondary user only copies as much as is necessary for his or her intended use, then this factor will not weigh against him or her.

This factor neither weighs for nor against either party because, although Arriba did copy each of Kelly's images as a whole, it was reasonable to do so in light of Arriba's use of the images. It was necessary for Arriba to copy the entire image to allow users to recognize the image and decide whether to pursue more information about the image or the originating web site. If Arriba only copied part of the image, it would be more difficult to identify it, thereby reducing the usefulness of the visual search engine.

The Kelly court found in favor of the search engine that made thumbnails.

Re:I'm confused

[Locke2005]

I would argue that a thumbnail throws out information that was in the original picture, therefore it is more like an excerpt than a copy of the original work, but fair enough... the amount of original data copied is not the most important factor in determining fair use. Scanning a text to allow searches of the text and display of search results in context still sounds like fair use to me, while allowing for reading the entire text does not. Likewise, creating a much lower resolution copy of a picture for indexing sounds like fair use to me, while reproducing the picture in it's entirety does not.

I'm a member of one of the organizations named

[Anonymous Coward]

Most photographic work is licensed in a rights managed fashion. The payment calculated for the image is based on usage and distribution. What Google is attempting to do, is no different than a publisher initiating a second print run, sometime generating income for them, without compensating the photographer a second run. In most walks of life, we call that stealing.

Re:Stupid laws

[Lunix Nutcase]

No, the problem is that Google thinks it can just violate the copyrights of people who have contributed to the books they scanned. And even more ridiculous is they think they can set up an opt-out system in order to negate these copyrights.

Imagine the uproar if a GPLed program had its codebase relicensed and did so without the consent of all the copyright holders. Then after getting in trouble, they still continued with the relicensing effort and the only way you could assert your rights was through their opt-out system that any number of copyright holders may not even know about. Do you not see the problem with that?

I'm afraid of generalization

[nunojsilva]

If I understand it right, Google is being sued for scanning copyrighted works - I don't completely understand the legality of this (I'm not from USA, nor do I know its legal system). Of course, it seems logical that if Google is giving away verbatim copies of the books they should have permission to do so. Maybe showing just - e.g. - 5 pages per user is allowed under some exception (fair use, etc.)?

But what I'm really afraid is if somebody just decides Google should pay a tax on every book they scan, no matter if they actually need that permission or not (sometimes, people give their works away for free, or copyright expires). Just like those taxes that are paid to play musics publicly, which are also sometimes incorrectly applied to public performances of CC music.

Re:I'm afraid of generalization

[phatcabbage]

... (sometimes, people give their works away for free, or copyright expires).

Yeah, I used to believe in fairy tails too.

Re:I'm afraid of generalization

[kandela]

If google owns a copy of each book they want to scan, then I think it's fair for them to maintain a scanned copy under fair use. Same as if I own a CD, I should be able to make an mp3 to keep as a back up. However, if they don't own a copy or haven't been given permission, then that's the same as me going to the video store, hiring a video and making a copy to show my friends after I've returned the original (not allowed).

Re:I'm afraid of generalization

[nunojsilva]

You're right. As I believe Santa doesn't exist, I should give up on that idea that there's anything such as end of copyright.

See, "50 years after Mickey Mouse is public domain" is the new "50 years after everyone stops laughing".

Re:And so it goes....

[somersault]

"Will" is such a strong word.. the law means diddly squat unless you can enforce it effectively.

Re:And so it goes....

[ClosedSource]

That's OK. We don't need movies like Star Wars or Avatar in the future, Youtube production values should be enough for anyone.

bullshit of the first order

[unity100]

you give rights to a writer to use your photos in his/her book and get paid.

google makes previews of books. the previews contain your images.

you go sue google, DESPITE you have already been paid.

basically, you want to be paid double. in lieu of all the honest people who work, and get salaries only once a month for what they do, not twice.

the court should charge those photographers for wasting public money for time courts lose for dealing with that case, and some additional punitives.

Re:bullshit of the first order

[unity100]

in a book that has been published you cant put time restrictions or usage restrictions per book. a book once published exists forever. you cant limit the photos to 1 year or etc.

in addition, with that kind of logic, i would be infringing upon photo rights if i, god forbid, loan the book to my grandmother or show the pics to my daughter.

Re:bullshit of the first order

[unity100]

if the photographer is not paid for the use of the photo in that book, its a problem in between the photographer and the book publisher. not google or any other third party.

Return to Values that Work

[flyneye]

Time to return to old values that worked till they got changed. Let the originator hold rights to the invention or work for a short time (4 years) and if they can't make a profit from it in that time, tough shit! The world marches on. If they are talented they will make more. If not it was a fluke and who cares! This copy and patent crap is taking up too much time and waaaay too much progress.
        Senator Bono blowing Mickey f**kin' rat is a perfect example of the crooked kind of crap that got the U.S. in the mess it's in now. Thank God for trees and skis. Now if we could get the rest of the crooked bastards on a tough slope drunk and blindfolded.

Re:Stupid laws

[geekoid]

I suspect /. is being Astroturfed today.

Do you even know how the internet works?
Here is what a I wrote to another twit.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1610916&cid=31768624

"Imagine the uproar if a GPLed program had its codebase relicensed and did so without the consent of all the copyright holders
If that was remotely what was happening, you would nearly have a point.

What property?

[Anonymous Coward]

> An system that can take your property and requires you to "opt out" rather than opt in deserves to have as many law suits thrown at it as humanly possible.

Well, I don't believe that IP is property, so I'll have to disagree with you there. There's no way to drag books online (which is where they need to be to be useful) except to do this wholesale, and I'm sorry, but I don't care about the estates of long-dead artists who are out to get another buck or two. Hell, they'd make money if only they signed on to this, but the lawyers wouldn't make as much by not suing, so go figure.

Anyhow, any book that doesn't get digitized will fall into much-deserved obscurity soon enough. I wish they'd make sane copyright laws so that anyone (not just Google) could do this, but that's not going to happen any time soon, so I guess I'll disagree with you and say that I'm glad we're finally getting a digital library.

If authors want to stand in the way of progress, they shouldn't complain about getting run over by it. Nobody cries for the buggy whip makers.

You mean a Pool isn't the same as copyright?

[ClosedSource]

Whoosh. The point is that Google (if it used the quoted argument) would be trying to establish a legal precedent for their behavior based on their own similar questionable behavior in the past. Such an argument is both circular and inefficacious.

Re:You mean a Pool isn't the same as copyright?

[cpt kangarooski]

The problem for your argument is that Google has a strong precedent in their favor that their previous behavior was not only not questionable, but was perfectly legitimate. (In fact, IIRC, Google didn't have Image Search running until after the matter had already been litigated by another search engine) It would not be difficult to build upon this, if indeed, the two cases can be distinguished at all.

Plus, fair uses are never even so much as questionable. The question is merely whether or not the use is fair to begin with. If it is, it is completely protected by copyright law and guarantees of free speech, in exactly the same way that the original artists are protected when they create the work to begin with.

Re:You mean a Pool isn't the same as copyright?

[ClosedSource]

".. until after the matter had already been litigated by another search engine"

reference?

"Plus, fair uses are never even so much as questionable. The question is merely whether or not the use is fair to begin with. "

You say tomato and I say tomahto.

Re:You mean a Pool isn't the same as copyright?

[ClosedSource]

Sorry if my point was too subtle for you.

Re:You mean a Pool isn't the same as copyright?

[cpt kangarooski]

Your reference, sir.

Does fair use really scale?

[ClosedSource]

"Google presumably owns a copy of each book it scans. Scanning it is fair use."

I don't know if Google does own a copy of each book - did they claim that?

When I was in high school a teacher bought a humorous book for her humor in literature class. She made copies for all the students to study from. Later she had to stop it because of copyright issues.

Google's employees are several orders of magnitude greater in number than our class was. How can making a work available to thousands of people be considered fair use simply on the basis of purchasing a single book?

You may disagree with copyright law, but the courts aren't going to render it meaningless by stretching the idea of fair use past the breaking point. Nor should they.

Re:Does fair use really scale?

[Locke2005]

Copying several pages of the book for educational use is considered fair use. Copying the entire book is not. I intentionally used the word "secure" to imply they keep a copy, but not make it generally available, except to the few Google employees actively involved in OCR. I believe that still qualifies as fair use, but it is admittedly a gray area.

Alternative headline

[geekoid]

People who make money taking picture without paying for what they are taking picture of complain about not being paid.

I don't want to work, but I want lots of money...

[AlgorithMan]

I don't want to work, but I want lots of money... I'll get a lawyer!

Re:And so it goes....

[icebraining]

That's a logical argument, except that it doesn't cope well with reality, since file sharing is rising and so are the movie profits, year after year.

You're not just paying for equipment.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

How can someone justify a desire to get paid ridiculously when all they did was buy a new camera? Sure "it's an investment" but it's not what I would consider to be a creative effort as their skill hasn't been the influence so much as the equipment.

You say it's only the equipment. Well, how many family members do you have who own a pair of Canon 5D bodies, a 24-70mm f/2.8 and a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, external flashes and flip flash brackets?

Suppose you do know somebody in your family that has this gear. Do they know how to use them effectively? How often do they shoot ceremonies like yours? How good are they going through the results on Lightroom?

And don't forget: are they willing to spend all of the ceremony taking photos when you supposedly invited them as guests? Will they want to socialize at all? Will they be reluctant to be pulled away from socializing because you want them to take some posed shots of the people after the ceremony?

When you pay for a photographer to cover your ceremony, you're not just paying for equipment. You're paying for their time more than anything, followed by skill (but mostly technical skill in operating their camera), and only then for gear. You might want to argue that they should be charging per hour and not per copies of photos; well, that's not unreasonable. But again, you're arguing that you're paying primarily for their equipment, and I'm telling you that you can rent the same gear, and good luck getting Uncle Bob to get it right for you.

Re:And so it goes....

[jedidiah]

If you don't allow for sanity to come back to copyright, THIS IS EXACTLY what will happen.

New artists need to be free to build on what came before. Zombie copyrights are a DIRECT THREAT to this.

Fortunately, Kurosawa was not the kind of ass that many of these copyright maximalists are.

Re:And so it goes....

[ClosedSource]

Look at what the AC was saying before you read my response. I was drawing a conclusion from his scenario which apparently you disagree with.

Re:And so it goes....

[ClosedSource]

Copyrights aren't patents. Kurosawa would have little basis to sue anyone for copyright infringement unless they directly copied his dialog or images.

Re:How about we just expire those rights

[kandela]

Right, because a struggling part time writer like me deserves to have all his short stories republished by a global mega corporation before he can produce enough of them to put out his own compilation. How about 10-15 years for creative works?

My Sweet Lord

[tepples]

Copyrights aren't patents.

In the United States, it is possible to get sued and lose for accidentally copying someone else's work. Match eight or so notes of a major-label song and you're in trouble. Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music; Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton.

Re:My Sweet Lord

[ClosedSource]

Well, Harrison admitted that he had heard "He's so fine" and the court concluded that the plagiarism wasn't intentional, and he still sold a lot of albums because of the song so he didn't fare that badly overall. But if you listen to both songs it's obvious they are essentially the same.

Re:My Sweet Lord

[tepples]

So if I'm writing a song, how do I prevent the same thing from happening to me?

hmm, maybe i should sue as a modern reader

[Nyder]

Time to start a class action lawsuit against everyone for not thinking of the modern readers.

We don't need books, we got our digital copies. yes, we want all pictures intact (mainly in sex books), and damn it, we don't want to pay more then it cost for the paperback version of the same book!!!!

Actually, we don't want to pay at all, but thats not really fair to the authors, but damn if they should be given more money then they do for a print book of their works.

So, if you don't think of us, the modern readers, then your going to regret it. Because most of us modern readers, can well, read. And using google to find a copy of that ebook for free, is well, a few clicks away.

So remember, while your trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip, we can just find a digital copy of that turnip.

Re:And so it goes....

[cpt kangarooski]

That's OK. We don't need movies like Star Wars or Avatar in the future, Youtube production values should be enough for anyone.

Copyright is meant to promote quantity, not quality. The government isn't even competent to judge quality, and even if they were, who would want them to? That's why copyright leaves things up to the market. Works of the same type might get the same amount of protection, but the amount of money that they are worth is up to the audience. The copyright protection for Avatar is the same as for Gigli, but one of these works is worth more than the other.

Copyright policy has no qualms with Youtube production values. Hell, YouTube supports color, supports sounds, and supports a 30fps framerate (AFAIK) -- that's better than the first several decades of the professional movie industry right there!

I don't have a problem with a cheap looking movie, so long as it is entertaining or meaningful. Star Wars, which you cite, had a budget of $11 million in 1977, which is $38.5 million in 2009. Phantom Menace had a budget of $115 million in 1999, which is $146.6 million in 2009. Money didn't buy him good writing, directing, or acting, and that's what's important. Not computer-generated catastrophes. I could go for cheaper films than the stupidly expensive blockbusters we've got these days. If they're better.

Re:Stupid laws

[BitZtream]

No, the problem is that Google thinks it can just violate the copyrights

Citation needed. The lawsuit is over what can happen because of the Google book settlement, not what they have online.

What they have online is public domain or they have permission for already.

Imagine the uproar if a GPLed program had its codebase relic

I imagine it would be much like yours, an irrational overblown reaction to a problem that doesn't actually exist.

You're not supposed to sue people based on 'imagine what could happen'. Its supposed to be based on 'look what happened!'.

As each group 'negotiates' its place in the deal they effectively give up rights they weren't giving up before. This is in fact nothing more than greed getting in the way of greed. These groups are negotiating away their leveraging power before Google even comes to the table because their in a big hurry to get money from Google before someone points out they are well within the realm of fair use as long as they don't give you the whole book.

The opt out part is very intelligent. It requires you actively put effort into protecting your work, which helps stop trolling for money after something gets popular. It helps prevent copyright trolling, you can't wait for them to make a whole bunch of money and then suddenly jump up and say 'thats our money!'. Copyright shouldn't even been effective anymore if the work is no longer published or available or in use.

Please point out where Google actually broke the law before being sued.

permission from the copyright holder

[viridari]

Google and others assert that images are only included in the digital copies when permission has been obtained from the copyright holder.

When a photographer sells a license for an image to be used for publication, they don't typically transfer copyright of the image. The photographer is the copyright holder of the images being used, by and large. If Google is obtaining permission from the book publisher, the book publisher often will not have the right to grant second use license of the photographs to third parties like Google.

A person who doesn't own something in the first place can't give you permission to use it.

Re:permission from the copyright holder

[JasterBobaMereel]

...and you think Google does not know this, and is incapable of asking the publisher who the copyright holders are, and asking them ?

Google seems to be being accused of violating copyright when they have not done so ... and have made a strong effort not to ....and have announced they are not going to .... .."but you are publishing photographs without permission...." Well actually they aren't

Nobody is following the entire discussion

[ClosedSource]

I was replying to this:

"I understand old contracts wouldn't compensate for what the internet is capable of, but from this point forward, it is not economically sound to think any creative work you produce, can be kept away from the information machine."

Sure, today Avatar has made a lot of money, but if the poster is correct, it wouldn't be the case in the future.

Surely your not suggesting that if theaters could have downloaded Avatar without paying for it and movie fans could watch it without paying it as well they'd still be making big bucks off it.

Re:And so it goes....

[ClosedSource]

"Star Wars, which you cite, had a budget of $11 million..."

That's $11 million more than Lucas would have got to make it if the studio knew they couldn't make any money off of it.

Re:And so it goes....

[cpt kangarooski]

The point though, is that money isn't everything.

Have you ever seen Dogville? Good movie, and beyond the cast and crew, it required little other than a room.

And Shakespeare did most of his best stuff in an open-air theater, with no sets, no stage lighting, nothing much for sound (maybe some music), little in the way of props, decent (but not period) costumes, and so few actors that they had to double up (i.e. some actors had to play more than one part during the same play). And so, at the first performance of Hamlet, on a sunny afternoon, the audience would see a man carrying a lantern, squinting, and saying, to someone plainly visible on the other side of the stage "Who's there? It's midnight," and understand that even though it is a sunny day, it is a dark, dark night. The ghost appears shortly thereafter, and is creepy, even in the sunshine at 2pm. (Dramatic conventions are also where stereotypical ninja outfits come from: they're really Japanese stagehand outfits, because it's a hell of a surprise when a stagehand that you're supposed to ignore suddenly attacks one of the actors because they were actually a ninja)

Good writing, directing, and acting are what's important. The rest is a crutch for people who don't have good imaginations. It can be a fun crutch, but it isn't the absolutely vital part. Star Wars can be done as a stage play. In fact, it has been. One version apparently had 10 actors (re: doubling up, Chewbacca and Darth Vader were played by the same actor) and a special effects budget of $100.

Flying everyone to Tunisia might add verisimilitude, but it isn't necessary.

Legally, they may be as correct as the authors

[Protoslo]

TFA says:

"Google does not make available any of the visual material that might be in the books, unless the copyright holder has agreed to it," said Pamela Samuelson, a digital copyright expert at University of California at Berkeley. "I don't really think this lawsuit has as good a chance as the authors' lawsuit."

The original publisher of the book most likely obtained permission to use the visual material only in the actual printed book, so this all makes sense. If Google is, however, (as Samuelson claims) not displaying that material, then why are these people even bothering to sue? Is it really true that they are not displaying the visual material?

I searched my bookshelf for a book full of pictures that I could use to test this theory, and I found the likely candidate in "A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars" by Brig. Gen. Vincent J. Esposito and Col. John R. Elting. This is a book that is has massive ~11.5" x 9.5" images on half of its pages. Unfortunately it has no preview available (it is, after all, long out of print and had a tiny run to begin with). Too bad.

A preview was available, however, for "The Napoleonic Wars: the Peninsular War 1807-1814" by Gregory Fremont-Barnes, which is also chock full of pictures of various types. According to the copyright page: cartography, by The Map Studio; picture research by Image Select International; origination by Grasmere Digital Imaging, Leeds, UK. In addition to that, every individual image has an attribution such as (for a fantastical looking artillery painting on page 39) the "Ann Ronan Picture Library." Now, do you really believe that Google actually went out and got a new permission from a different copyright holder for nearly every page of this book, or that they at most got it from the publisher, which may or may not be able to grant general permission to Google. Since Prof. Samuelson does not work for Google, I don't see how she can assert quite that confidently that Google indeed has permission in every instance. Even if the publishers all gave general permission, they might have been wrong to do so themselves, which still leaves Google on the hook (on some hook, anyway).

These photograph owners may well have a case; the result could be that we will either see another settlement similar to the book/author settlement (with more royalties), or Google will just cut out everything they couldn't successfully OCR, on the assumption that it is an image of unknown providence. This is certainly an awkward situation, and I would like to second Palestrina's earlier recommendation that everyone read what Lessig had to say about the obstacles presented by this sort of compilation work.

Pulitzer?

[symbolset]

I don't care if you won the Pulitzer for the photo. We're talking about 50 year old books. It's immoral to say that after 50 years the photographer that took the photo present on one page of a 300 page book, properly licensed at the time, is entitled to by his authorship of that one trivial photo prevent the collection of the library of the world's culture simply because of some subsequent legal interpretation of copyright law. It's absurd in a way only a lawyer can appreciate. If you're hanging your hopes on this, you're doomed because at least 99% of these rights are owned by faceless non-sympathetic resellers of rights.

Keep up your objections and - mark my words - the law will be changed to strip your rights in far more extensive ways than you envision. Copyright's purpose is to promote progress. Your objections are a perfect example of why copyright does not serve this purpose. Your every objection is an argument for the abolition of copyright.

Re:Pulitzer?

[wickedskaman]

This is not really that strange or without precedent. There are many TV shows that have not been released to DVD, Bluray, or digital release because of one or more songs used in the show that were not explicitly given permission to be released in other formats. Some of these series will never be re-released in these formats because the cost of buying permission is prohibitive.

Nice one

[FreeUser]

Game, set and match.

Internet Freedom: 1
Copyright Cartels and their shills: 0

Re:And so it goes....

[ClosedSource]

"If you can't profit on a movie in the first year after its release (let alone the first 10 years), then perhaps producing YouTube quality work is all you should be doing..."

But where does this magic year come from?

Re:Stupid laws

[Pofy]

"They are digitizing works and make them available for search. "

So they are creating a copy of the work! Creating copies are covered by copyright. So are creating copies of basically anything now OK?

Re:And so it goes....

[blair1q]

The mores of society do not include stealing whatever you can right-click, no matter what the mores of socially inept online society want to believe.