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Frustrated Judge Pushes For Solution In Google Books Case
SpuriousLogic writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report:
"A Manhattan federal judge set a Sept. 15 deadline for Google, authors and publishers to come up with a legal plan to create the world's largest digital library, expressing frustration that the six-year-old dispute has not been resolved. At a hearing on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said if the dispute is not 'resolved or close to resolved in principle' by mid-September, he will set a 'relatively tight schedule' for the parties to prepare for a possible trial. ... Citing antitrust and copyright concerns, Chin had on March 22 rejected a $125 million settlement. He said it went 'too far' in allowing Google to exploit digitized copyrighted works by selling subscriptions to them online and engaging in 'wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission.'"
I'm not sure I understand how the judge thinks this is going to be "resolved" by the involved parties on their own. They appear to have diametrically opposed goals and philosophies:
No, that's not what it is about. The parties agreed on a settlement. But it's a class action, and the judge decided that the settlement went way beyond settling the disputes between the parties. The proposed settlement essentially rewrote copyright law as an "opt-out" system, with a special deal for Google for orphaned works. That went way too far, binding parties who were never involved in the suit.
There's probably going to be orphaned works legislation, but it will not give Google exclusive rights.
If there is good for humanity in it, what does it matter if they earn advertising revenue?
As a user, you would not be obligated to pay. So then it simply becomes a matter of your jealousy that Google is profitable.
Prior to Google Books your chance of finding most of these long-out-of-print books was essentially zero, unless you happened to live in a major city.
That Toshiba or Toro, or T-Mobile are willing to pay google to make it available to me for free bothers me not in the least. Get over yourself.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The problem is that Google wants to both include books that are still under copyright and charge a fee for access to them. Further, Google wants to include books that are still under copyright where the holder of copyright is either unknown, or no one knows where to find them. Just because Google does not know how to find an author does not give them the right to make copies of the author's work without permission.
Of course, this problem would go away if copyright only lasted for a reasonable amount of time (say something on the order of 10-30 years).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This is to be the greatest library ever assembled. It is worthwhile in and of itself. A noble goal to prevent the permanent loss of so much art and knowledge - to avoid the Great Forgetting. It is the very preservation of world culture.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Authors are either dead or unknown. Fate has already screwed them.
This is not an argument about current authors, or currently valid copyrights.
In no way is Google proposing to screw living authors or copyright holders out of money.
The works in question are abandoned works, where the copyright holders are unknown.
Why should OTHER authors or publishers profit from these abandoned works? Believe me, that is what this is, nothing but a money grab by publishing companies trying to lay claim to works long ago abandoned by authors, or works of dead authors where there is no clear copyright.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Don't be ridiculous.
Every person who has used google books knows you are lying.
How can you say its not available on line, and in the next sentence claim you only get blurry images? You can't have it both ways.
Its all on line.
Full texts are available, both imaged and OCRed flowing text, for all books that are free of copyright encumbrance. You can read the whole book.
Unless the publisher or author still holds a copyright and refuses to allow google to put it out there.
Your argument is internally inconsistent, at war with itself, and at odds with the facts. Do just a little research.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yes, but the publishers and copyright holders have been trying to make sure that they are the only ones who can re-publish public domain works and get a fresh copyright.
Google is muscling in on their business model by trying to more or less keep stuff in the public domain, and then give it away and effectively keep it in the public domain.
They've already bought laws in their favor, if Google beats them to the punch, corporate profits and executive bonuses could be affected.
The commons is something these companies do not want to persist.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It's simple, really. Either 1) let everybody and their dog copy and republish every book in the world, or 2) don't allow Google to be the only one to do it.
It's wrong to let a single private company break everybody's copyrights and punish everyone else who wants to do it.
2) don't allow Google to be the only one to do it.
Where does it say no-one else is allowed to do this? Section 2.4 of the Agreement explicitly says any rights granted to Google are non-exclusive, and copyright holders can happily authorise any other party to do the same things.
It's wrong to let a single private company break everybody's copyrights and punish everyone else who wants to do it.
You mean, like the CRIA, and their "unpaid list" (which got settled by them paying a fraction of the owed royalties, with no penalties and no liability, while they simultaneously sued others for punitive damages many thousands of times greater)?
And there was no "good faith" involved there - the vast majority of copyright holders were not only alive and well, but actively demanding their unpaid royalties.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The settlement explicitly says all granted rights are non-exclusive, and copyright holders are still free to authorise any other party to do the same thing.
Only Google would get to do it without authorization. That is the definition of exclusive, is it not?
"His name was James Damore."
authors of orphaned works cannot limit Google's right to pirate their works.
Not true. Section 3.5 (a) (i):
Right to Remove. A Rightsholder of a Book may direct that his, her or its Book not be Digitized, or if already Digitized, that the Book be Removed.
Of course, most authors of orphaned works have no interest in the matter (by definition), so in those cases, their 70% share of Google's sale and advertising revenues gets held in trust for 10 years, then distributed to literacy charities (Section 6.3).
While this doesn't automatically grant you or I permission to do what Google is doing, nothing in the Settlement Agreement prevents similar blanket agreements for any other party. You'll have to negotiate it yourself with the publishers and authors' groups. At worst, you could go ahead and do it anyway, make yourself the subject of a class-action suit, and settle that like Google did, but you may likewise be required to pay $80M + legal costs.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Many of these books don't belong to anybody identifiable; they are orphan works.
Of course, they should really be out of copyright entirely. Under our old copyright system they would be (because they wouldn't be registered), but under the idiotic copyright system European publishers imposed on the world and forced the US to agree to, they are now in limbo.
Thanks for the pointer to 3.5 (a) (iii), didn't see that.
rightsholders basically can't tell Google to remove their books from the archive except under highly limited circumstances, and provided Google feels it's convenient.
Section 3.5 (b) (i) explains that further. So, after the 2012 date, it's true that authors can no longer direct that Google remove the book entirely from their systems, but they can demand that Google not use it in any way - Google can't sell it, display it, show ads with it, collect other revenue from it, share it etc - but it must be made available to libraries if it's commercially available (as far as I can tell, anyway).
Authors can also direct that Google exclude portions of their work from display, revenue gathering etc, and Google will exclude at least that much (and will try not to overdo the exclusion). If Google disagrees with these directions, there's a Challenge procedure described, which sounds fair to me.
Also, remember that Google never negotiated individually with those authors either.
That was kinda my point. If Google can reach an agreement like this (which is still uncertain) without negotiating with the authors, then what's to stop any other party doing the same? There's nothing in the Settlement that prevents that.
I do agree it'd be ideal for the described Registry to be given authority in the settlement to make similar arrangements for orphaned works with other willing parties, without requiring a class-action settlement. I can also see why the judge is unwilling to sign off on what is a fairly fundamental shift in rights, from opt-in to opt-out, even if it's restricted to orphaned works. But I sympathise with Google's aims here, and short of Congress actually making copyright less restrictive for a change, I don't see any other way to make orphaned books more available at this scale.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?