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Authors' Guild Goes After University Book Digitization Projects
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Ars Technica:
"With the planned settlement between Google and book publishers still on indefinite hold, a legal battle by proxy has started. Google partnered with many libraries at US universities in order to gain access to the works it wants to digitize. Now, several groups that represent book authors have filed suit against those universities, attempting to block both digital lending and an orphaned works project. The suit is being brought by the Authors' Guild, its equivalents in Australia, Quebec, and the UK, and a large group of individual authors. Its target: some major US universities, including Michigan, the University of California system, and Cornell. These libraries partnered with Google to get their book digitization efforts off the ground and, in return, Google has provided them with digital copies of the works. These and many other universities have also become involved with the HathiTrust, an organization set up to help them archive and distribute digital works; the HathiTrust is also named as a defendant."
The courts should rule first of all that the guilds have no standing with respect to works of authors they do not represent... which, despite their name, is a lot of them.
... that people get to read these works!
As a writer I understand the tension between wanting to be read and wanting to be paid. Some want only the former, some the latter; I want both, kind of like eat to live and live to eat combined. Such is my right. But I find the resistence to digitization foolish, a fixation on money and a holdover from dead tree books plus a first use doctrine many publishers and authors never liked. It's obstructionist.
As a reader, full speed ahead. I am so tired of books missing at the library or out of print. Then there's the allure of getting a book within thirty seconds. Yes, I'll pay for the privilege, can we please hurry up with an eye to both principles (get read, get paid)? And books in the public domain? Rapture. (Topic for another day: The insane extension of copyright in the Mickey Mouse / Sonny Bono Act.....)
To me, this story shows the importance of keeping Project Gutenberg moving forward, slowly but steadily.
we as a society have an interest in seeing the bargain upheld or at least renegotiated to reflect the changing circumstances so that it can continue to be upheld.
Well then trot out these authors, or the heirs of those who are dead AND have abandoned their works and lets us sit down and renegotiate. Google has long asked for any information to find these people or their heirs. They are a search company. They couldn't find them. Your level of indignation suggests you know where they are and how badly they have been treated.
Dead before the cut-off date, (i forget the exact date here, but its somewhere in the 20s IIRC) then there is no problem.
Living and already have given permission or withheld it, again no problem.
But this middle ground of unknown authors, who are quite probably dead with no heirs accounts for a tiny tiny number books, which Google will immediately remove if the authors should appear. Too date, not a one of them have.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
the US constitution had it right: copyrights and patents exist for the purpose of promoting progress. the primary goal isn't to give people a living - particularly not to guarantee profits to some company. we need to rethink the whole legal infrastructure around the concept of IP...
When the borrower dies or disappears, the loaned item is repatriated by the loaner. The orphan books being digitized are works where the author is unfindable. There is nobody to negotiate with. Unless someone like google preserves the works, they will simply turn to dust and disappear forever. Effectively, the author has reneged on the copyright deal by vanishing without a trace and taking the works with him.
If google has wronged someone, let that someone or a rightful heir come forward and say so. Their silence tells us they either don't feel wronged or don't care (perhaps they're past caring due to a mild case of dead).
Consider, if the Author's Guild wins something on the behalf of one of these authors, do you REALLY think they will stick it in a safe until they can track the guy down? Or will they just compound the wrong by stealing the absentee author's rightful awards? Given that copyright has been lengthened several times now, it is quite likely that the authors of some of these orphaned works had every expectation that their books would be in the public domain by now.