Google Files a Revised Books Settlement Proposal 51
At 14 minutes to midnight last night, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers filed a revised settlement agreement with a US district court in New York. Here is the blog post of Dan Clancy, Google Books engineering director. Google has provided an outline of the differences from the original settlement (PDF) and a FAQ (PDF); the full revised settlement (PDF) is also available. In brief, the changes include limiting the settlement to books published in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia; a court-appointed fiduciary to represent the rights of orphaned works' (undiscovered) rightsholders; and further opening up Google's library to competitors in ways that don't favor Google. The new plan was immediately criticized as a "sleight of hand" by the Open Book Alliance, a consortium of Google's opponents including Microsoft and Amazon. The Internet Archive said, "None of the proposed changes appear to address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest."
Why open to competitors? (Score:3, Insightful)
"and further opening up Google's library to competitors in ways that don't favor Google"
Why? Isn't Google doing all the work here?
Or are the competitors going to split the costs of scanning the books with Google?
Nothing to do with work. (Score:4, Informative)
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Why? Isn't Google doing all the work here?
I daresay the authors helped a little.
Google Is A Steamroller (Score:5, Insightful)
Google does not care what Microsoft thinks. Google does not care what publishers think. Google does not care what you think.
Google's stated objective is to gather, index and make publicly searchable every piece of information on the planet. Books included. They don't care about minor setbacks like publishers or authors complaints, or even lawsuits. Google is going to keep on scanning and digitising books and will quite patiently wait until the day it feels it can get away with putting them online. I imagine that their are literally millions of works sitting on Google's backend servers, waiting for the day when Google can use its muscle to get an agreement. Perhaps you might regard this as a good thing.
Now ask yourself this: What else has Google put on its backend servers?
I remind everyone reading this that aside from the odd token law, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever restricting private companies from compiling and indexing whatever data they want internally. Who knows what kind of information on people and societies that Google is privy to, and what applications they have in store for it. Stop and think about projects like Streetview. A lot of people really do not like the idea of pictures their houses and gardens being put on a globally accessible site, linked to map information. Does Google care? No. They'll continue to gather Streetview data, even in places where it is illegal to put it online, patiently waiting for the day when they can do as they please.
Google is a steamroller. You may think you've stopped them today, but they'll go on gathering information, and indexing it, and making application for it until they can wow a judge, or legislature, or the public with some fantastic application which shows how easy and harmles it is to provide all this data. Meanwhile, we have a private corporation with a now gargantuan databases on the lives, habits and details of the majority of the online population; soon to the the majority of the world population. How far do they have to go, before this becomes wrong?
This company's stated ambition is to know everything. How much do they know already?
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"A lot of people really do not like the idea of pictures their houses and gardens being put on a globally accessible site, linked to map information."
Well, they can do something about it: Google Street View has to reshoot in Japan [cnet.com].
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Who the f**k modded the parent post as Flamebait? That post provides very good and accurate information and should be considered Insightful!
If a company wants to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, they would simply *index only* that information and provide the relevant links to that information. That means no caching, no archiving, no permanent storage whatsoever... just crawl the site(s) for content, create the index and links, then dump the crawled content.
If,
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I do not see how preventing someone from deleting his content from the internet is in the slightest way wrong. If people care enough about something to archive it, then it has positive value for society, and allowing future generations to access it benefits society. Copyright may forbid such archives but it shouldn't - its intent is to make sure as much content as possible is put out there, and preventing archives does the exact opposite.
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I remind everyone reading this that aside from the odd token law, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever restricting private companies from compiling and indexing whatever data they want internally.
I don't see any problem with any one person or group compiling information legally compiled, in fact, I think the more the merrier and the better for all. The dissemination of information is a good thing. Arguments can be brought to bear on how the information is collected and used, and, laws have to protect some personal information.
I've previously suggested a business plan be looked at that would have individuals and organizations sell/contract their "vital statistics" to a co-operatively held entity. The
Not suitable for GFDL... (Score:2)
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The GFDL is a copyright license. If you want to, you can bypass the GFDL and deal with copyright directly. This settlement allows Google to process copyrighted works with no license, so they should similarly be able to process GFDL works.
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This settlement allows Google to process copyrighted works with no license, so they should similarly be able to process GFDL works.
That's exactly the problem. It makes a mockery of all non-financial licenses to copyrighted works, by letting Google unilaterally make its own licensing terms.
NO, Google is becomming the Public Domain (Score:4, Insightful)
It goes like this, with GPS the jinn of mapping was out of the bottle, you no longer needed spot-highs, theodolites and thousands of hours work. digital cameras, GPS and drone-aircraft have made wide area mapping cheap, and obsoleted most uses of spy satalites. Streetview is little different, I know that if I dont want people looking into my garden or house I have to build a wall or close the curtains/shutters.
I am fed to the back teeth with Luddites railing against Google for doing, systematically, what is legal, and what anyone could do. As for the vested interests of the MPAA, RIAA, Book & Journal publishers. Librarians and the rest of the so called 'content-industry' the more Google steamroller them the better.
The problem here is not Google, it is silly, ineffective or knowingly corrupt laws: in the US, Congress, strictly following the Constitution, needs to enact sensible Personal Privacy laws (vide France, Switzerland) and to enact and define a short commercial Copyright period of say 12 years.
Then Google can re-open the Library of Alexandria,
Disney will need to make some new films,
and progress and education may trump commercial greed.
For example, Fairchild Camera & Instrument, TI and a nascent Intel stopped the semi-conductor industry by preventing Universities teaching the technology, that is the way to make the USA into a third world country quickly.
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2. The Mickey Mouse example says that the man who wrote that sarcasm is invisible here on Slashdot, a 12 year copyright on Mickey would make Disney do some good new work, which they mightily fear, and would be good for
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This is precisely Google's mentality. If is is legal and possible to collect, index and offer the data, they will do it. There is no consideration of ethics or the effect on ordinary people or indeed wider society. Has Google maps been a positive force on society. Probably yes, but consider the effect on companies like TomTom. Has Google's tracking and profiling of web surfers o
Re:NO, Google is becomming the Public Domain (Score:5, Insightful)
Has the automobile been a positive force on society? Probably yes, but consider the effect on companies that sell buggy whips (who didn't then migrate into S&M paraphernalia). And the effects on butterflies, deer, etc.
TomTom has no innate right to make money based on their mapping technology. Sorry.
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There is no consideration of ethics or the effect on ordinary people or indeed wider society.
That is patently false. YOU happen to disagree with their ethics, but the simple truth is that it is and always has been acceptable to drive down a public street and shoot video. The fact that most people have never even THOUGHT about it is proof positive of how acceptable it is! You don't get upset when one person takes a picture of your house because they like what you've done with it, and probably wouldn't notice in any case; even if you did, and went to court over it, cooler heads would prevail, realizi
Re:NO, Google is becomming the Public Domain (Score:4, Informative)
It was a library where everything in it was a copy. They literally copied every book that came through town and put it there for public use.
Today that would be heresy, evil to be sure and they would be burned to the ground. How do we look back on Alexandria? One of our greatest educational and cultural achievements of all time. Many people are still upset thinking about it burning down, the books destroyed.
Google is attempting to make old dead books available (selling them FOR the author, while taking a small slice). And we think this is a bad thing? This is pathetic. We should be and authors as well should be thanking Google for saving these fading books.
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They literally copied every book that came through town and put it there for public use.
Today that would be heresy, evil to be sure and they would be burned to the ground.
Uh, we have that. [wikipedia.org] Of course, "came through town" has been changed to "registered for protection of copyright". Let's not forget the public library system, where we put copies of the most interesting works for the people to read. It's even distributed, so that christians can't burn them all down rioting over the nature of the holy trinity.
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Well, it's made the crudest sort of low level mapping cheap in the same way McDonald's has made the crudest sort of cooking cheap. A friend of mine works for a local public utility, their mapping department has actually grown larger over the past decade because of the increased need for IT su
Again you are a complete, IDIOT (Score:2)
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Whatever their stated goal, their actual goal became profit when they went public. If they sacrifice profit for the sake of squirreling away knowledge, their shareholders and board will reign them back in. The current stock price reflects shareholder belief that Google will continue to grow their profits, and if this doesn't occur the price will plummet in a very visible way.
For example, in the remote chance that Google doesn't make a cent off their book scanning after a few years, they will stop scanning b
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If Google really cared about that, they'd have done a much better job of scanning the books. And they wouldn't have insisted on a contract with various libraries that didn't allow anyone else to do the same thing.
(Am I wrong about that contract? I don't think so, but I don't know my original source for the information.)
I distrust ALL monopolies, including Google. Their slogan may be "do no evil", but that's not their practice.
P.S.: I'm quite happy for Google to index all information on the planet. I'm
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I'm still against this apprpriation of rights (Score:2)
Google is grabbing too much recent info (Score:5, Informative)
Google is trying to include a MAP BOOK my friend published 12 years ago. The company he had then is no longer is business, but he is updating the map every few years and publishing with a different company.
Google's OPT-OUT process is confusing and stupid.
Why should they get to sell a book that's only 12 years old, and a book that is in print and updated although under a different company name??
Isn't 12 years a little to recent to grab the copyright and sell, especially when it competes with an update product??
He's having a bear of a time opting out.
Confusion (Score:1)
I would like a 12 year world copyright period, without registration. Registration was a daft idea invented in the US, as is "The author XYZ... asserts
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A - opt-out, it is just forms, suck it up.
B - renew the copyright, easy
C - Do nothing, let Google sell it for you, It is doubtful anyone will buy the shitty old version if you are updating it. I doubt it will have any impact on you what so ever.
I think this is why people have a problem with it. They think the books they wrote that weren't worth copyrighting or maintaining the copyright on. That are currently not being sold. Th
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In the US, everything is automatically copyrighted. There are no formalities required.
Tricksy Lawyerses (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'm totally on Google's side when it comes to scanning books -- with or without permission -- for the purposes of making them searchable online, I find it outrageous that a lawsuit designed to stop Google from doing that should end up granting them rights they wouldn't have enjoyed before the lawsuit. It feels like a betrayal of the class by a plaintiff with somewhat narrower interests than those of the parties actually represented by the class.
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I thought Google was overreaching in scanning copyrighted books without permission--but let's leave that aside.
How is the class being betrayed? (I was one of those negotiating on behalf of the class.)
If you're concerned about books that are in print, these are not involved. The settlement does not affect them, unless the author and publisher both choose to get involved with Google.
In the case of out of print books, it's true that the settlement enables Google to make them available (more than just search).
Re:Tricksy Lawyerses (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright grants authors exclusive rights to their books for the entire length of the copyright term. This means Google is not allowed to sell out-of-print books without the author's permission, nor does it get to decide for how much the books are to be sold to them. The lawyers have betrayed the class by turning a lawsuit against Google into a settlement that benefits Google more than it benefits the class. The class was expecting a remedy, but instead they got their exclusive rights sold to Google under the terms of the settlement.
Perhaps it's true that the world would benefit from an orphaned works policy, but a class action lawsuit is not the proper place to set such policies. Orphaned works is a legislative issue, not to be settled for all authors through strategic class-action settlements.
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I take it you're not a lawyer? First-sale doctrine. [wikipedia.org]
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Except that Google isn't selling used books, but reprinting out-of-print books. The first sale doctrine does not apply to what Google is doing.
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Your position was that Google should be able to scan the books (despite the authors' "exclusive rights") freely, search them and thus profit from them, just not display them. If that's your view, I don't see how you can feel that the class is betrayed by the settlement. Every single member of the class is better off than if Google hadn't been sued. At best, they get some money. At worst, they are exactly where they were before. (Anyone can opt out.)
Google gets "exclusive rights" to nothing. Everything in th
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"Your position was that Google should be able to scan the books (despite the authors' "exclusive rights") freely, search them and thus profit from them, just not display them. If that's your view, I don't see how you can feel that the class is betrayed by the settlement. Every single member of the class is better off than if Google hadn't been sued. At best, they get some money. At worst, they are exactly where they were before."
Scanning books for the purpose of making them searchable online could, ideally,