Once Again, US DoJ Opposes Google Book Search

angry tapir and several other readers passed along the news that the US Department of Justice has come out against the revised agreement to settle copyright lawsuits brought against Google by authors and publishers. This is a major blow to Google's efforts to build a massive digital-books marketplace and library. From the DoJ filing (PDF): "...the [Amended Settlement Agreement] suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the Court in this litigation. As a consequence, the ASA purports to grant legal rights that are difficult to square with the core principle of the Copyright Act that copyright owners generally control whether and how to exploit their works during the term of copyright. Those rights, in turn, confer significant and possibly anticompetitive advantages on a single entity — Google."

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Google just took it upon themselves to violatie other people's copyrights without even consulting with the authors and publishers?

To put it a way the slashtards might understand. Imagine if some company took a bunch of copyrighted GPL code and stripped it of it's original copyright and license because maybe the original author(s) couldn't be found and then slapped a brand new license. And then after getting caught doing this the company gets some bogus settlement where it's decided that other orphaned GPL code's authors only have some arbitrary short time to come forth otherwise this company will take their work and do the same. Then imagine there is a backlash against this from the OSS community. Would you be going on andd on about how the OSS community should be striking a deal instead of saying no? Would be you claiming they are "missing" some opportunity as well?

Re:Yay!

[Rockoon]

If Google wants to strike a deal with me, then why are they litigating with other people?

No, Google does not want to strike a deal over my rights with me. Google wants to strike a deal over my rights with those other people.

This is slashdot. We think that copyright terms are way too long and so forth. This isnt the solution.

Re:Yay!

[petermgreen]

The problem is there are lots of books out there where it is not reasonably practical to get in touch with the copyright holder. Hell with some of them the copyright holder probablly doesn't even know they own it (BTW does anyone what happens legally to a copyright a company owns but doesn't know they own when said company goes bankrupt?).

IIRC Google decided to make such books available anyway claiming that doing so was fair-use (a somewhat tenuous claim) and someone sued them over it, got the case made a class action and tried to settle the case in a very pro-Google way.

I really wonder if they initiated the class action deliberately to let them get things settled in Googles' favour, if they did then it's a blatant abuse of the class action system.

Re:Yay!

[Pojut]

It could be my ignorance of the way the industry works (which is most likely), but what I'm getting at is this could be used as another avenue for income. What Google did was wrong, yes...but there is still money to be made (not to mention the public gaining even more access to information.)

I'm just curious why people want to shut it down instead of shaping it to work to their advantage. Right now, no one is benefiting...but everyone could be.

Re:Good

[Richard_at_work]

IMHO the entire concept of an 'orphaned work' is a fiction designed to push this agenda - a copyright holder shouldn't have to make themselves known to anyone, regardless of the reason.

I agree that shorter copyright durations should be granted, with a clearer expiration line for works, but the entire line of reasoning regarding 'orphaned works' should not be one enshrined in law anywhere.

Do no evil

[grapeape]

Somewhere along the way Google forgot one of its own rules. Their subtle yet ever encroaching methods of "helping" the world seem more of an attempt to ensure that google is firmly entrenched in every aspect of our daily lives. IMHO their approach is just wrong. We have lived for thousands of years without street level photos online of our homes and without navagable photos of the insides of public buildings and retail spaces, do we really need them? Many see them as an invasion of privacy.

I'm already concerned about google wanting to control the storage and distribution of medical records, financial records and other areas they seem determined to control.

It took being bitten by the hand that fed them to finally come out againt their own willingness to censor in China, but still show a willingness to cowtow to political and well connected interests.

Their gmail, adsense, and cookie policies are well lets just say less than privacy friendly.

As for books and other media, this should be a opt in system rather than an opt out. If spam was opt out many more would be protesting but its violation is the same. Many argue its to protect media that would be lost in the future, but the proper fix for that is to change laws not skirt around them because your some big coporation.

I just dont see how "do no evil" and a great desire to become big brother can peacefully co-exist.

Opt-In Copyright?

[BlackCreek]

Why can't these guys introduce some required opt-in copyright for works older than say 25 years? Make the renewal 20 years long and put a US$5 price on it.

Lawrence Lessig has been arguing for something like this for years... it would solve the orphaned works problem, and Disney probably wouldn't care, so they actually might let it happen.

who fucking cares about author's rights

[circletimessquare]

for the vast majority of author's we're not talking about jk rowling: they're obscure. and their works are, frankly, unknown, out of print, forgotten. such that putting the artificial boundary of negotiating with thousands of random yahoos and working out arcane legal arrangements with all of them is completely unwieldy, unworkable, and monetarily not worth the effort

instead, dump all their work in one big database for free, and these authors, because of much greater ease in accessing their works, see an IMPROVEMENT in their accessibility, marketability, and prominence. imagine fucking that

it gets to a point where copyright law is simply gets in the way of technological, social, and cultural progress

there are numerous examples of people wanting to use obscure works, and finding it daunting and impossible to contact anyone to get the rights. the perverse result being that exposure, and therefore money to be made, is denied to these obscure works. copyright law is BLOCKING the long tail and therefore blocking profit making for authors via ancillary means

i'm so sick of copyright law. it needs to be actively destroyed, not simply ignored. luckily, the internet makes copyright's uselessness easily demonstrated. it's easy to circumvent copyright on the internet. meanwhile, enforcing copyright on the internet is a fool's errand. go at it teenagers, bring this ridiculous house of cards from a dead technological era crashing down. copyright is absurd, a farce, it's dead

Samuel Clemens

[quotes]

I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. Let the grand-children take care of themselves. That would take care of my daughters, and after that I am not particular. I shall then have long been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it. It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in the United States are protected by the bill. I like that. They are all important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the Copyright law I should like to see it done. I should like to see oyster culture added, and anything else. I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall not take away from any man his profit. I don't like to be obliged to use the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, "Thou shalt not steal," but I am trying to use more polite language. The laws of England and America do take it away, do select but one class, the people who create the literature of the land. They always talk handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great, monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it. I know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit. I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the possession of the product of a man's labor. There is no limit to real estate. Doctor Hale has suggested that a man might just as well, after discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the Government step in and take it away. What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the 88,000,000 of people. But it doesn't do anything of the kind. It merely takes the author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the publisher double profit. He goes on publishing the book and as many of his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear families in affluence.

Re:I agree with the DOJ

[SecurityGuy]

I agree with the government's position on this one. What started out as a lawsuit over the scanning of books (to make them searchable, which I consider fair use)

Unfortunately, that you consider it fair use doesn't really matter. Fair use is defined, and it is not defined to include copying an entire work for your own commercial purposes, which is exactly what Google did.

Google should be sued for a vast sum of money over this, just like you or I did if we copied all the works the RIAA or MPAA get so jumpy about "just to make them searchable".

You don't get to abuse other people's property rights just because you're Google.

Re:Opt-In Copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is there was a time when this would have worked. That time is LONG since past.

Take disney for example. Now lets say they like the idea. They have THOUSANDS of 'big' works, and probably millions of smaller works. Dozens upon dozens of smaller companies they have bought. They would literally have to get its whole catalog in order. Every scrap of extra info. The hundreds of different releases of snow white. All the extra cells, extra art work, extra everything cataloged and tagged.

So your talking hundreds of people you would have to hire to archive all of this info. Track it. Make sure they are the proper owners. What were the original contracts involved etc...

Now for *EACH* work (and this could be a quite a large pile of things for each movie) has to have a fee paid on it. Lest it fall out of copyright too soon.

The idea you speak of sounds good at first. Until you realize what a LARGE pile of things some of these companies have. They will not put up with that idea.

They literally did not have to keep track of it. They barely keep up with what they have now (and then only if it is convenient and very cheap or makes them money). But now they would. It is a huge cost to them and they do not want it. Movies never make money any way. Just act the dude who played darth vader.

Re:Do no evil

[mcgrew]

We have lived for thousands of years without street level photos online of our homes and without navagable photos of the insides of public buildings and retail spaces, do we really need them?

Jesus H. Christ, you sound like my 78 year old dad. We lived thousands of years without computers, telephones, electricity, automobiles, airplanes, and indoor plumbing, do we really need them?