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.'"

Re:Resolved?

[Attila Dimedici]

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).

Re:A monopoly in what?

[icebike]

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.

Re:A monopoly in what?

[icebike]

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.

Re:A monopoly in what?

[Namarrgon]

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.