The Settlement covers Books only if they were published on or before January 5, 2009. Books published after January 5, 2009 are not included in the Settlement
Huh; my mistake. I looked through the settlement itself and that wasn't clear - it refers to the class as rights holders on or before that date, but later talks about any published work copyrighted after 1922. I took that to mean that works published in the future by class members - including a lot of publishers - would be covered in the agreement.
Clearly, I read it wrong, although in fairness, the language of the settlement isn't clear to a layman. The FAQ represents the understanding that members of the settlement will have and is therefore how the courts would interpret a dispute.
None of this makes me happier about the deal - it only means Google gets more limited exclusive rights than I thought, and nobody gets to electronically publish future orphaned works without breaking the law in the same way Google did. My opinion that Congress should address the issue of orphaned works as a general change to copyright law remains unchanged.
If I could unmod my own comment, I would - it's clearly misinformative, not informative. Thanks for the correction, and ditto to the others that did so.
My one single question regarding Google's arrangement is, whether they have an "exclusive" deal, or not.
It's exclusive in the sense that anyone wishing to publish electronically, other than Google, must have copyright contractually assigned by the copyright holder, but Google is no longer bound by copyright laws when choosing to publish books which are not currently being printed (including future books).
The exception is that, if Google rejects a book, the Registry may assign the electronic printing rights, under the same terms, to someone else.
There's a bit (a lot) more to it - copyright owners may, with limitations, stop Google from publishing their books, and with limitations, may set the price of the books. But it binds current and future authors and publishers to file specific forms in specific ways at specific times if they don't want Google sellin' their stuff.
Yes, which is why I don't see why folks are hailing it as some sort of beatific concession on Google's part.
The difference between your example and what Google's doing is simply the deal under which they gained exclusive publishing rights of orphaned works, no more or less.
Really? What is this bullshit? Perhaps you have a better suggestion on what we should do in order to bring these books back from the dead. Be fucking happy that Google is a pro-competitive company and stop being a damned douchebag.
The same suggestion as always: Lobby Congress to open rights to orphaned works to publishers, with residuals going into trust via the WGA, the US Copyright Office, or a new administrative organization. And I'd hesitate to call "allowing others to buy from us, then resell" pro-competition.
And before you decide to fire back, how many companies do you know of with the spare resources, manpower, or motivation to do this thing properly?
Lexis-Nexis comes instantly to mind. Penguin Books, Del Ray Publishing, Microsoft, Ballantine Books, the Gutenberg Project, Yahoo!, AOL, Borders Books and Music, and plenty of others could pull it off, albeit some at a smaller scale. There's probably thousands of shops that would love to publish orphaned specialty titles electronically. And I strongly suspect that, if the rights to publication were open, nonprofits by the dozens would appear instantly to publish some titles.
Google: Google will host the digital (out-of-print) books online, and retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore will be able to sell access to users on any Internet-connected device they choose.
Oh, joy. So what they're saying is that they retain their questionably-obtained monopoly over publishing these titles, but instead of paying them for a copy of the book, I can instead choose to pay both them and a retailer surcharge for a DRM-protected copy of the book? Exciting!
It's awful nice of Google to open up new channels of income for themselves. Why, I can't imagine why anyone would want to be allowed to compete directly. Anyone who does must be evil.
It's on their front page. It's called "Deny Digital Dangers". It links to every click matters.
Ah, thanks. I checked out the other "deny digital dangers" button, which leads to their store, but not that one. Foolish of me, to think that two links with (almost) identical labels would go to the same place.
So I guess it's legit. It seems kind of poor form for a self-described Internet security company to encourage people to run apps on random domains without clearly confirming the site's authenticity, tho'.
.. articles that use links to "everyclickmatters.com" and such.
Maybe using this tool is not such a smart idea?!?
Precisely what I wanted to say. Add in the fact that symantec.com doesn't have a link to it that I was able to find, and it sounds pretty phishy. I also note that Symantec has no press release regarding this tool on their press releases page, and Merrit's Symantec page makes no mention of it.
Almost certainly, but to blame Google for publishers having treated authors like dirt for the past 50 years+ is rather an odd stance to take.
Nobody's really blaming Google here, or they shouldn't be, except inasmuch as they were clearly acting unlawfully when they started this project and should be penalized for doing that thing, not given free money. It's sort of hard to blame the WGA, either: One hopes they ran the numbers and found their clients would benefit more from this settlement than from the likely damage award or a flat cash-money settlement. The blame lies with the judges who reviewed and allowed the settlement. It's against the very nature of jurisprudence to rewrite legislation in the courtroom. This is supposed to be a nation under rule of law, not rule of lawyers.
Google's plan to digitize and bring online all books is of immense value to society. All of the objections offer only to prevent this great service with no alternative. Therefore they are bad.
The alternative, mentioned time and again, is for Congress to write an exception into copyright law for the republication of protected works that are not currently being published. This would guarantee residuals to the authors (possibly held in trust by the WGA or another organization for authors who aren't easy to locate). It would open the field up to any electronic publisher and would allow for the handling of future works. Google would have the advantage of the search technology they have in place and their brand recognition. However, it would prevent them from getting complacent knowing that nobody can compete - another publisher who better-manages their collection could become the leader. There might also be a market for smaller, specialized collections, but with the current settlement we'll never know.
Google's plan is of immense value to Google. I'll grant that it's better'n the standing system (nothing), but society would do well to have clear laws to handle the rights rather than a limited "first grabbed, first served, if you talk fast and have lots of money" agreement.
TFA doesn't address the real questions: who thought of this? I can't wait to pay 50% more for a second screen to my ebook reader so that I can look at both pages surrounding every other page break at the same time.
Well, my opinion is still "features be damned". I would gladly pay more for a reader that ensured my privacy and ownership, regardless of whether I'm paying for bloat as well. Mind you, that's not to say your comment is by any means uninsightful. It's just not important to me when compared to the question of what personal concessions I'd have to make before I'm allowed to purchase one.
I keep reading the post over and over, trying to figure out how they hide the words "...includes the words "Don't Panic" written in large letters on the back."
TFA doesn't address the real questions: What formats can it handle? Will it only be able to handle some bizarre custom, DRM-protected format? Will it primarily deal with some bizarre custom, DRM-protected format? Will Asus have remote control to fiddle with my files? Will it gather data about me, what I'm reading, and/or who I'm calling on Skype?
I refuse to get excited until I know whether it's More of the Same (TM) or not, shiny features be damned.
Am I the only one who always gives their birthday as 01/01/1970 and their zip code as 20500?
I mean, seriously. They don't need to know. Why would I give 'em the right numbers? They're lucky I even allow them to have rough demographic data.
That's great until you want, for example, a bank account or a telephone number. At that point, you're pretty much stuck giving 'em correct information.
Incidentally I just checked, and as I suspected, Mexico is a civil law country, not a common-law country, so I doubt very much that case-law from anywhere else applies. So much for precedent.
Defining Mexico as a "civil law" country is oversimplifying. Like most legal systems, it's hard to pigeonhole. I'm sure in your studies of Mexican law you've run across the concept of jurisprudencia definida, binding case law issued via writ. As with virtually every modern court system, it is not unheard of for Mexican courts to look to what other countries have done when forced to work outside of strict statutes.
As Mexico has handled plenty of IP cases, I can't imagine their courts would look elsewhere, tho'. (Not a matter of law, but if it comes to damage calculations, Sony's own valuation of music will almost certainly be relevant, regardless of where they were figured.)
Well, sometimes they are. Just as American judges can look to foreign rulings when there's little local precedent, foreign judges will often look to see what's been done in America. Foreign precedents aren't generally binding, except in the case of certain treaties, but they may be used. I agree that the summary overstates the case - it's fun to do the math based off American awards but it shouldn't imply that Mexican courts are bound to it - but use of foreign precedents is not, uh, unprecedented. I doubt that applies here, tho', since I'm sure there's been plenty of infringement suits in Mexico over the years.
Regardless of the issue of precedent, I could totally see a foreign court using Sony's own per-song valuation when awarding damages, regardless of where that valuation was made. It'd be a foolish lawyer who doesn't point to Sony's own litigation when calculating damages, since Sony values its IP so highly. On the flip side, if Sony argues that the songs are nearly worthless, that could likewise be used effectively in American courts against them.
Thanks for posting that, because I couldn't read the guy's stuff even though I'm a big fantasy, sword & sorcery 'n scifi fan. I'd rather reread ancient stuff like Zelazny, Moorecock or even, tier down stuff like 'The Black Company'. I tried a couple of times and just couldn't bear up under his prose.
I'm with you - and the parent, and the GP. I tried the first book years back and put it down unfinished. Still, it pains me to see even a bad author's work unceremoniously passed along to some hack who can't do original work. I feel the same way about Herbert, whom I never much liked, and Adams, whom I did. I fully expect to see Discworld books after Pratchett leaves us and the thought makes me cringe.
(Offtopic, but for the record, Zelazny is one a my favorite authors, and I'm forced to admit to never reading Moorecock.)
I wouldn't say that. Lego is renowned as one of the best companies in the world to work for: They treat their employees well, pay them well, give them good bennies, and don't nickel and dime 'em. They don't shift jobs to countries where they can exploit workers. If selling out their brand name lets 'em avoid selling out their employees, then I'm all for it.
The author offers no support for this claim whatsoever and is clearly speculating.
And Cory's support comes from where? His head? Remember that some of BoingBoing's income comes from Amazon links, so they may be more inclined to give 'em the benefit of the doubt. Linky to a moderator in the comments saying they get money from Amazon.
His link is to the EFF, which doesn't mention any copyright notice. They link to the Times, which mentions no notice. I'll stick with the Times, which has a bit of a better rep for accuracy than BB, leaving the burden of proof on Amazon.
Your link backs me up: Cory implied that the seller didn't have rights to the book, but his source article, from the EFF, says explicitly that the publisher had the rights to sell it then changed its mind. Amazon makes no statement saying otherwise in your link or Cory's source link.
The EFF article, in turn, links to the same Times article I did.
I think you're missing a key detail, that the books were pulled because the SELLER (that is: not Amazon) was selling the books illegally via Amazon.
You are mistaken. The publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic version. The copies were sold legitimately from a publisher with the rights to do so. Linky.
How else would you explain the 2 month time period that elapsed before a decision was made?
The time it took Amazon to analyze the bad press. Kindle buyers are netizens - and pretty sophisticated ones, overall; the very demographic that read the stories about that incident. It took 'em two months to work out that their most likely customers know about the incident and are pissed.
Had it not hit pretty much every major tech blog and news site, I doubt Amazon would've bothered even apologizing. By now, they've likely noticed their numbers are not recovering and are trying another round of the damage control thing.
So not exactly apathy for the customer, IMO, but checking whether they could get away with apathy.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if it hurts the mice to be lifted by their livers. I wonder if the liver warms and cooks while they're still alive.
You could satisfy your curiosity by simply reading the article.
The Settlement covers Books only if they were published on or before January 5, 2009. Books published after January 5, 2009 are not included in the Settlement
Huh; my mistake. I looked through the settlement itself and that wasn't clear - it refers to the class as rights holders on or before that date, but later talks about any published work copyrighted after 1922. I took that to mean that works published in the future by class members - including a lot of publishers - would be covered in the agreement.
Clearly, I read it wrong, although in fairness, the language of the settlement isn't clear to a layman. The FAQ represents the understanding that members of the settlement will have and is therefore how the courts would interpret a dispute.
None of this makes me happier about the deal - it only means Google gets more limited exclusive rights than I thought, and nobody gets to electronically publish future orphaned works without breaking the law in the same way Google did. My opinion that Congress should address the issue of orphaned works as a general change to copyright law remains unchanged.
If I could unmod my own comment, I would - it's clearly misinformative, not informative. Thanks for the correction, and ditto to the others that did so.
My one single question regarding Google's arrangement is, whether they have an "exclusive" deal, or not.
It's exclusive in the sense that anyone wishing to publish electronically, other than Google, must have copyright contractually assigned by the copyright holder, but Google is no longer bound by copyright laws when choosing to publish books which are not currently being printed (including future books).
The exception is that, if Google rejects a book, the Registry may assign the electronic printing rights, under the same terms, to someone else.
There's a bit (a lot) more to it - copyright owners may, with limitations, stop Google from publishing their books, and with limitations, may set the price of the books. But it binds current and future authors and publishers to file specific forms in specific ways at specific times if they don't want Google sellin' their stuff.
Isn't that how most retail sales work?
Yes, which is why I don't see why folks are hailing it as some sort of beatific concession on Google's part.
The difference between your example and what Google's doing is simply the deal under which they gained exclusive publishing rights of orphaned works, no more or less.
Really? What is this bullshit? Perhaps you have a better suggestion on what we should do in order to bring these books back from the dead. Be fucking happy that Google is a pro-competitive company and stop being a damned douchebag.
The same suggestion as always: Lobby Congress to open rights to orphaned works to publishers, with residuals going into trust via the WGA, the US Copyright Office, or a new administrative organization. And I'd hesitate to call "allowing others to buy from us, then resell" pro-competition.
And before you decide to fire back, how many companies do you know of with the spare resources, manpower, or motivation to do this thing properly?
Lexis-Nexis comes instantly to mind. Penguin Books, Del Ray Publishing, Microsoft, Ballantine Books, the Gutenberg Project, Yahoo!, AOL, Borders Books and Music, and plenty of others could pull it off, albeit some at a smaller scale. There's probably thousands of shops that would love to publish orphaned specialty titles electronically. And I strongly suspect that, if the rights to publication were open, nonprofits by the dozens would appear instantly to publish some titles.
Google: Google will host the digital (out-of-print) books online, and retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore will be able to sell access to users on any Internet-connected device they choose.
Oh, joy. So what they're saying is that they retain their questionably-obtained monopoly over publishing these titles, but instead of paying them for a copy of the book, I can instead choose to pay both them and a retailer surcharge for a DRM-protected copy of the book? Exciting!
It's awful nice of Google to open up new channels of income for themselves. Why, I can't imagine why anyone would want to be allowed to compete directly. Anyone who does must be evil.
It's on their front page. It's called "Deny Digital Dangers". It links to every click matters.
Ah, thanks. I checked out the other "deny digital dangers" button, which leads to their store, but not that one. Foolish of me, to think that two links with (almost) identical labels would go to the same place.
So I guess it's legit. It seems kind of poor form for a self-described Internet security company to encourage people to run apps on random domains without clearly confirming the site's authenticity, tho'.
.. articles that use links to "everyclickmatters.com" and such.
Maybe using this tool is not such a smart idea?!?
Precisely what I wanted to say. Add in the fact that symantec.com doesn't have a link to it that I was able to find, and it sounds pretty phishy. I also note that Symantec has no press release regarding this tool on their press releases page, and Merrit's Symantec page makes no mention of it.
This sounds like a clumsy hoax to me.
Almost certainly, but to blame Google for publishers having treated authors like dirt for the past 50 years+ is rather an odd stance to take.
Nobody's really blaming Google here, or they shouldn't be, except inasmuch as they were clearly acting unlawfully when they started this project and should be penalized for doing that thing, not given free money. It's sort of hard to blame the WGA, either: One hopes they ran the numbers and found their clients would benefit more from this settlement than from the likely damage award or a flat cash-money settlement. The blame lies with the judges who reviewed and allowed the settlement. It's against the very nature of jurisprudence to rewrite legislation in the courtroom. This is supposed to be a nation under rule of law, not rule of lawyers.
Google's plan to digitize and bring online all books is of immense value to society. All of the objections offer only to prevent this great service with no alternative. Therefore they are bad.
The alternative, mentioned time and again, is for Congress to write an exception into copyright law for the republication of protected works that are not currently being published. This would guarantee residuals to the authors (possibly held in trust by the WGA or another organization for authors who aren't easy to locate). It would open the field up to any electronic publisher and would allow for the handling of future works. Google would have the advantage of the search technology they have in place and their brand recognition. However, it would prevent them from getting complacent knowing that nobody can compete - another publisher who better-manages their collection could become the leader. There might also be a market for smaller, specialized collections, but with the current settlement we'll never know.
Google's plan is of immense value to Google. I'll grant that it's better'n the standing system (nothing), but society would do well to have clear laws to handle the rights rather than a limited "first grabbed, first served, if you talk fast and have lots of money" agreement.
I don't think the original article suggests they are the same, although it does seem surprising if this thing can produce 2A.
If it produces 9V, I would not be the least surprised if it puts out 2A across 4.5 Ohms resistance.
TFA doesn't address the real questions: who thought of this? I can't wait to pay 50% more for a second screen to my ebook reader so that I can look at both pages surrounding every other page break at the same time.
Well, my opinion is still "features be damned". I would gladly pay more for a reader that ensured my privacy and ownership, regardless of whether I'm paying for bloat as well. Mind you, that's not to say your comment is by any means uninsightful. It's just not important to me when compared to the question of what personal concessions I'd have to make before I'm allowed to purchase one.
I keep reading the post over and over, trying to figure out how they hide the words "...includes the words "Don't Panic" written in large letters on the back."
Obligatory link.
I refuse to get excited until I know whether it's More of the Same (TM) or not, shiny features be damned.
Am I the only one who always gives their birthday as 01/01/1970 and their zip code as 20500?
I mean, seriously. They don't need to know. Why would I give 'em the right numbers? They're lucky I even allow them to have rough demographic data.
That's great until you want, for example, a bank account or a telephone number. At that point, you're pretty much stuck giving 'em correct information.
Incidentally I just checked, and as I suspected, Mexico is a civil law country, not a common-law country, so I doubt very much that case-law from anywhere else applies. So much for precedent.
Defining Mexico as a "civil law" country is oversimplifying. Like most legal systems, it's hard to pigeonhole. I'm sure in your studies of Mexican law you've run across the concept of jurisprudencia definida, binding case law issued via writ. As with virtually every modern court system, it is not unheard of for Mexican courts to look to what other countries have done when forced to work outside of strict statutes.
As Mexico has handled plenty of IP cases, I can't imagine their courts would look elsewhere, tho'. (Not a matter of law, but if it comes to damage calculations, Sony's own valuation of music will almost certainly be relevant, regardless of where they were figured.)
A precedent (despite what a poster above thinks) is a ruling by a higher court in the same jurisdiction.
Black's Law Dictionary disagrees with you, as does SCOTUS. I'm'a go out on a limb here and say that you're full of it.
Precedent's in USA aren't precedents everywhere
Well, sometimes they are. Just as American judges can look to foreign rulings when there's little local precedent, foreign judges will often look to see what's been done in America. Foreign precedents aren't generally binding, except in the case of certain treaties, but they may be used. I agree that the summary overstates the case - it's fun to do the math based off American awards but it shouldn't imply that Mexican courts are bound to it - but use of foreign precedents is not, uh, unprecedented. I doubt that applies here, tho', since I'm sure there's been plenty of infringement suits in Mexico over the years.
Regardless of the issue of precedent, I could totally see a foreign court using Sony's own per-song valuation when awarding damages, regardless of where that valuation was made. It'd be a foolish lawyer who doesn't point to Sony's own litigation when calculating damages, since Sony values its IP so highly. On the flip side, if Sony argues that the songs are nearly worthless, that could likewise be used effectively in American courts against them.
Thanks for posting that, because I couldn't read the guy's stuff even though I'm a big fantasy, sword & sorcery 'n scifi fan. I'd rather reread ancient stuff like Zelazny, Moorecock or even, tier down stuff like 'The Black Company'. I tried a couple of times and just couldn't bear up under his prose.
I'm with you - and the parent, and the GP. I tried the first book years back and put it down unfinished. Still, it pains me to see even a bad author's work unceremoniously passed along to some hack who can't do original work. I feel the same way about Herbert, whom I never much liked, and Adams, whom I did. I fully expect to see Discworld books after Pratchett leaves us and the thought makes me cringe.
(Offtopic, but for the record, Zelazny is one a my favorite authors, and I'm forced to admit to never reading Moorecock.)
So, what you're telling me is Lego sold out.
I wouldn't say that. Lego is renowned as one of the best companies in the world to work for: They treat their employees well, pay them well, give them good bennies, and don't nickel and dime 'em. They don't shift jobs to countries where they can exploit workers. If selling out their brand name lets 'em avoid selling out their employees, then I'm all for it.
HE KILLED A FOUR YEAR OLD.
Golly. Sounds like you have personal knowledge of the case.
The author offers no support for this claim whatsoever and is clearly speculating.
And Cory's support comes from where? His head? Remember that some of BoingBoing's income comes from Amazon links, so they may be more inclined to give 'em the benefit of the doubt. Linky to a moderator in the comments saying they get money from Amazon.
His link is to the EFF, which doesn't mention any copyright notice. They link to the Times, which mentions no notice. I'll stick with the Times, which has a bit of a better rep for accuracy than BB, leaving the burden of proof on Amazon.
In short: Copy of the notice or it didn't happen.
That was the first version of the story. Amazon later stated what the GP said
Your link backs me up: Cory implied that the seller didn't have rights to the book, but his source article, from the EFF, says explicitly that the publisher had the rights to sell it then changed its mind. Amazon makes no statement saying otherwise in your link or Cory's source link.
The EFF article, in turn, links to the same Times article I did.
I think you're missing a key detail, that the books were pulled because the SELLER (that is: not Amazon) was selling the books illegally via Amazon.
You are mistaken. The publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic version. The copies were sold legitimately from a publisher with the rights to do so. Linky.
How else would you explain the 2 month time period that elapsed before a decision was made?
The time it took Amazon to analyze the bad press. Kindle buyers are netizens - and pretty sophisticated ones, overall; the very demographic that read the stories about that incident. It took 'em two months to work out that their most likely customers know about the incident and are pissed.
Had it not hit pretty much every major tech blog and news site, I doubt Amazon would've bothered even apologizing. By now, they've likely noticed their numbers are not recovering and are trying another round of the damage control thing.
So not exactly apathy for the customer, IMO, but checking whether they could get away with apathy.