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Federal Judge Rejects Google Books Deal
14erCleaner writes "US Circuit Judge Denny Chin has rejected a $125 million settlement between Google Books and the author's guild that would have allowed Google to publish all out-of-work fiction online. Chin has previously ruled more favorably on this case."
lame
to represent all authors of out of print fiction? Can I install myself
as the representative for all out of print romance?
What a load of cowpucks
I know I should be posting something serious and insightful, but I've just been reading the "Shatner's Birthday" /. thread, and misread the judge's name for a second.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you think the patent troll attorneys are bad, wait for the lawyers to come out of the woodwork here.
Despite its attempts to spin itself as the white knight, Google is far from altrusitic and this ruling is a victory for the little guy. It was bad enough when Google started illegal scanning copyrighted works. It was bad enough when Google's only response was "fine we'll stop, but only when you specifically ask us to for YOUR books". But the deal that would give Google such extensive control over the scanning and sale of these works? That was unacceptable and I'm glad the judge agreed. I really wish people would wake up and realize that Google has long since abandon its "Don't be Evil" motto.
Once again the legacy business model behemoth that is, well, anything from the USA it seems right now, stamps all over innovation. I bet there's hundreds of books that would be useful to me that could either not be found over here, out of print, or just plain overpriced that need some better system for handling them in this age.
Judge Chin does make a good point. Even though the book is out of print, the author is still the copyright holder and should have say in whether or not the out of print book may go into a Google digital library. After all, maybe the publisher decided to drop the book because it wasn't selling and the author may want to look for a different publisher or attempt to self-publish. I can see the digitalization of out of print material where the author is deceased and therefore has no say in the matter.
...is that their fonts are not clear at all, though readable. With today's technology, I expected a much better looking font regime from a powerful company like Google.
Sadly, there is virtually no competition yet in this area.
Granted the Google-opoly might not be the best solution in the world, but it seems like the public would benefit from some mechanism for dealing with the printed word equivalent to abandonware. And if not Google, it might be Amazon, since the Gutenberg project doesn't seem to be going anywhere these days. Is that any better?
How does some guild get authority to represent all authors of out of print fiction?
Well, according to TFB (blurb), that's essentially the judge's rationale for rejecting the deal.
I am torn: on one hand, I believe that copyright law no longer "promotes the progress of Science and useful Arts", so I would like to see Google have the ability to make a sweeping digital library of abandonware books (seriously, if the authors aren't selling the book, how are they harmed?)
However, if this deal went through, it seems likely that it would have been the birth of another MAFIAA-style intellectual property racket.
So, perhaps we are considering the situation from an artificially constrained viewpoint. The pragmatic approach to getting the digital library would have been to take the deal with this newborn devil, but we would have to live with those consequences. The idealistic approach would be to "fix" copyright law so that such a library could be created... you know, the better to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Does anyone else want some of what I am apparently smoking to cause me to have such fantastic & vague ideas (haha)? Maybe I got hit on the head or something.
This really infuriates me. I have about 20 out of print books that would have netted me some nice cash but now a stupid judge says NO. WHY???? It would mean my books would be archived and I like that idea. They're never going to make more money in any event. And now I lose about $ 1200!!!!!!
2.4 Non-Exclusivity of Authorizations.
The authorizations granted to Google in this Amended Settlement Agreement are non-exclusive only, and nothing in this Amended Settlement Agreement shall be construed as limiting any Rightsholderâ(TM)s right to authorize, through the Registry or otherwise, any Person, including direct competitors of Google, to use his, her or its Books or Inserts in any way, including ways identical to those provided for under this Amended Settlement Agreement.
Google was not trying to get exclusive rights to anything. Anyone and everyone else would have been free to scan in books and sell them exactly like Google wanted to do.
Everyone posting here about how evil Google is for wanting exclusive rights to sell these books is wrong. None of them have read the proposed settlement and they have no clue what they're talking about. They're spreading FUD and you idiots are falling for it.
We live in a digital age . publishers should be putting the whole back catalog to the beginning of time out in some sort of eBooks.
Google is a publishing company. It typically believes it has the right to profit from content created by other people, even without their permission. In fact, that is their entire business model -- selling ads against content created by other people. (search is how they draw in the eyeballs, or it used to be, now they also have phones, web services, etc.)
But in this deal with the "Authors Guild" they were really overreaching. They were trying to make themselves the defacto publisher of all copyrighted works. Period. Without paying the copyright holders ("the artists and writers") a dime.
Some companies might have tried to cut deals with authors to put their books on some kind of google branded service. But not google -- they try and get the laws re-written and cut deals with large, bureaucratic organization to make their behavior legal, and then dress it all up in "Freedom."
For google, this was never about "out of print" books. They wouldn't be out of print if there was money in them. This was always about the money. Thanks to this ruling, if Google wants money from publishing books they are going to have to make deals with authors. Just like any other publishing company.
Wait... how can a judge reject a civil settlement?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
They can pry my out of print works out of my cold dead hands after my legal heirs have had a century to Profit off of it, right, Disney?
But, seriously, I was writing before there was an Internet, and on what preceded the Internet and other dead trees while Google was but a gleam in their shareholders eyes.
Step AWAY from my Junk, Google!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
A while back I was doing some research on vacuum tube based logic circuits (don't ask). My random googling brought up repeated mention of several books. They may even be public domain by now, I'm unsure. They dated to around WWII.
Anyhow, regardless of copyright status, the things were absolute fucking unobtainium. It really is a shame that things like this essentially get lost to the wheel of time. Whether it be due to copyright, or just plain being out of print and public domain. It's a crime against knowledge.
Fortunately I don't think this will be the case in the future, as most currently released books are surely digitized (legally or not) and hopefully will be around by the time they are hopelessly obsolete, out of print, lacking demand, commercially unviable, and/or enter public domain.
Sent from my PDP-11
Google is going to have to take this one on the chin.
It doesn't matter if they show you 1 page, or half a page, or just 1 sentence.
What *does* matter is: They already have illegally scanned the entire book, and saved the entire book into a computer database, with multiple backup copies. And that is a *brazen violation* of existing copyright law.
I just thought of this, and hadn't seen anyone else mention it. What happens to the used book market? Instantly, a lot of people who have property of some value now will have its value erased. There's a book I want to read that's out of print but usually around $30. I'll buy it eventually. The instant it goes on the net for free, the value of a used copy goes to zero for me.
I just finished reading the entire decision. It was quite interesting but at 45 pages I doubt many people here would bother.
The judge pointed out quite a few problems with the settlement proposal, but two of the most important are:
1) It's pretty likely that the settlement would violate a number of US and international laws.
2) It would contradict recent US Supreme Court decisions that say it is the job of Congress to update copyright law for changing technology.
As an example, I think it is fairly safe to assume that Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick is deceased.
Like a vampire?
Or if he had some supernatural abilities like flying or bending bullets which may have allowed him to have a supernatural life span?
Who knows, maybe there IS some truth in that story that "his" obituary actually said Henry Melville.
Maybe he is still alive, wandering the world, moving silently down through the centuries, living many secret lives, struggling to reach the time of the Gathering - when the few of his kind that will remain shall battle to the last.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If you're convinced that's true, digitize them yourself and self-pub on Kindle, PubIt, Smashwords, etc. It's not that hard.
It is when your publisher holds the rights but doesn't find it profitable enough to issue a new edition of your book.
On the other hand, try to buy it off from them - and they will set some imaginary price based on "projections of sales" and copyright extended a day or two beyond forever.
Incidentally, there was recently some talk on Slashdot regarding such issues.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
A monopolistic organization that freely gives out copyrighted works without permission from the authors? Sounds a lot like my local library.
What we need is better orphan works legislation.
I'm all for copyright owners getting their due according to the law as it stands (different argument as to if that law itself needs fixing), but it's not fair for creative third parties to require navigating a mnefield to locate rightsholders who can run the gamut from "Oh I'm so happy someone is finally letting my dusty creativity see the light of day again" to "greedy I am, pay me a fortune or I sue you to hell", and some of which may pull a Rambus and hide in the shadows waiting for a substantial investment to be made before they swoop in with a racket.
What needs to happen is that for a publisher who has done his due diligence and failed to find any copyright owner, he should be able to profit from his work after paying the most possible to an escrow account.
I'd create a "orphan works trustee" that auctions off annual publishing contracts based on who offers to pay the most in royalties per copy. Contracts are reauctioned annually, and royalties collected are held in escrow for the copyright holder after deduction of reasonable overhead expenses not to exceed 20 percent of gross.
Once the copyright owner is found, any existing publishing contract is assigned to them and the work in question, as well as all other works by them, become blacklisted in the registry, and they become responsible for any further publisher negotiation.
Still need to work out how long to wait, if ever, to actively seek out orphan works copyright holders, and how much, if any, of royalty revenues to "bill" for the expenses involved, as well as what to do with royalties left over if a search is fruitless.
I don't think an opt-in strategy is bad. It won't catch all the fish in the sea, but the majority of what gets through the net isn't worth preserving anyway.
Google is worth like a gazillion dollars. Google has the resources to simply do what it wants anyway and wait for injured parties to come forward. So long as they are reasonably careful about selecting out of print books for which owners cannot be readily tracked down, one could reasonably expect them to be able to publish THOUSANDS of books like this while having to settle only a few lawsuits filed by copyright holders.
Can any of those "lesser competitors" get away with this? Perhaps if that "lesser" is named Microsoft. Not many, though.
Each author put a notice at the front of the book: Copyright #### John Doe - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
There it is! The opt-out notice. It clearly means: "Don't copy this book unless you have permission IN ADVANCE".
If Microsoft tried to pull this off, could you imagine the outcry?
Google just tried to gain the rights to nearly every book ever written, for pennies on the dollar, and they almost got away with it.
Are all geeks so blinded by reflexive anti-copyright attitudes that we can't be alarmed at the prospect of one company gaining so much power at the expensive of authors
Library of Congress regularly tosses out books and does not have them on microfiche or other archival method. Found this out on a recent visit there. I asked how they were able to store so many copyrighted materials coming in over the years. The head librarian I spoke to stated, "we keep on the significant ones".
I dived deeper into that... What do you mean by "significant"? She said, "you know, we don't keep Barbara Cartland Romance novels, for instance". Really?, I asked.
What about Edgar Alan Poe, he was a penny paperback writer in his day. Would they toss his stuff too if he were to write today?
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
How can a Judge reject a settlement between the two parties? If the Authors guild has accepted Google's offer, what the heck is the Judge objecting to?
If I hit you with my car, and we settle for 20k$, the judge can't be like sorry, that amount is too small, I'm going to overrule it... Its an agreement between two parties not 3. This is civil court is it not? Its not like they are trying to settle something criminal.
TFS uses this phrase, I assume they mean out of print?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think people agree that having these orphaned books available would be a good thing. The problem then becomes that we don't want Google to have some special privilege to access them. What if the books were available through some public service, and Google was merely a consumer of that service? Amazon, Google, and Joe's Random Website could all have equal access to these books.
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
Yes, it does suck if you don't have a good reversion-of-rights clause in the contract. On the other hand, if the contract doesn't explicitly license electronic rights to the publisher (and assuming nothing like a blanket "all rights" grant), then you can still go ahead and e-pub yourself.
(Disclaimer: IANAL - but I am an author who has read plenty of publishing contracts and signed a few of them.)
After all... Any law or contract is open to interpretation.
By your lawyer, your publisher's lawyerS and in the long, drawn-out end - a judge somewhere.
One might even end up being sued by the people who are holding his/her work as a hostage.
They've already proven that they don't give a fig about the author or his work by sitting on it and not printing it - cause it is more profitable to do that.
Which is in the end the only thing they hold sacred. They ARE a business after all, not a charity for unprofitable writers.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It is my understanding, from reading copyright law, that Google was acting as an archivist or as a library. Libraries are allowed to copy any work for archival purposes. It is not like they provide downloads of the books, or charge for the service.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Think about it. Disney is keeping a pretty tight leash on all it's IP, so nothing they create could possibly ever be seen as an orphaned work. But Disney does "borrow" a lot from the public domain. If orphaned works were to be given some sort of exception in copyright law, now Disney has a larger pool to "borrow" from in their next animated movie.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-