Slashdot Log In
Internet Archive Seeks Same Online Book Rights As Google
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Apr 19, 2009 12:26 AM
from the from-a-to-z-and-back-again dept.
from the from-a-to-z-and-back-again dept.
Miracle Jones writes "Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has jumped on Google's 'Authors Guild' settlement and asked to be included as a party defendant, claiming that they ought to get the same rights and protections from liability that Google will receive when the settlement is approved by federal court. From the Internet Archive's letter to Judge Denny Chin: 'The Archive's text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Technology: Justice Dept. Opens Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Books Deal 112 comments
Mad Hamster points out a NY Times report that the US Department of Justice has launched an antitrust inquiry (may require free registration) to take a look at the deal Google has made with book publishers and authors for its Book Search service. Quoting:
"Lawyers for the Justice Department have been in conversations in recent weeks with various groups opposed to the settlement, including the Internet Archive and Consumer Watchdog. More recently, Justice Department lawyers notified the parties to the settlement, including Google, and representatives for the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, that they were looking into various antitrust issues related to the far-reaching agreement. The inquiry does not necessarily mean that the department will oppose the settlement, which is subject to a court review. But it suggests that some of the concerns raised by critics, who say the settlement would unfairly give Google an exclusive license to profit from millions of books, have resonated with the Justice Department."
Update — 4/29 at 14:25 by SS: CNet has new information on the extension Google was seeking in order to contact rightsholders for a decision on whether to join the settlement or opt out. Google had originally asked for 60 days, but a judge has now granted them four more months.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
The author's right. Not enough pot (Score:5, Funny)
But then the world's economy will collapse completely.
I'm all for it. Everybody wins.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, I'm starting a new project. Wanna join? It's called "Project Mayhem".
At a minimum, this should be open to all comers (Score:1)
This needs to be an "open to all" arrangement, or the judge should reject the settlement.
Even if it is "open to all comers" it still should be scrutinized before a judge signs off on it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You mean that it should be a Reasonable and Non Discriminatory License [wikipedia.org]?
Re: (Score:2)
This needs to be an "open to all" arrangement, or the judge should reject the settlement.
Why?
It's a bunch of private parties (the Authors Guild) deciding, after having taken a company (Google) to court, to settle their differences without having the court impose something.
Should I get half your house just because you and your wife split it?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The going theory is that the Authors Guild is a Google sockpuppet.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, don't mind those folks. They're just upset that Area 51 [slashdot.org] came out of the closet and nobody has seen Elvis in quite some time.
Re:At a minimum, this should be open to all comers (Score:4, Interesting)
That may be so, but they only speak for themselves. Not the whole world. It's not exactly a great message your people are sending. Some judge in the US gets to decide on things that actually affect me, on the other side of the world. You want your copyright enforced in my country, but you don't much care about my copyrights. I don't get it?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds to me like you've got it precisely. If you want to consider international IP law, ask India about patents of Neem Tree Oil.
These laws aren't about justice. They aren't about fair recompense. They're about letting powerful corporations steal more stuff and then force you to pay for it. Ask Indonesia why it won't share it's recent strains of flu? They know that if they do, they're likely to be left to die when the next epidemic strikes. So they want to bargain for something they can count on whil
Re:At a minimum, this should be open to all comers (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are the general public -- the We the People of the Constitution -- and I and my wife acquired the house by fraud, yes.
I call creating anti-Constitutional international treaties and tricking Congress into implementing them in violation of the Bill of Rights fraud. If you do not, you should seriously consider getting a new dictionary. "Harmonization" is always anti-Constitutional, and the Berne Convention is anti-Free Speech.
With "orphaned" works, you should also consider that they are the worst of both worlds. Copyrights for these works protect no authors, but they still harm society in the same way as all other copyrights: They limit Free Speech, impose monopolies, suppress free expression, and create unnecessary legal action. All of these things harm society and the Progress that copyright was intended to support. It is, quite frankly, absurd that these works are protected at all, and the Author's Guild are a band of brigands for attempting to hold hostage the public's intellectual environment for their personal enrichment through the collection of monopoly rents (suppressing competition by limiting distribution of unprofitable "orphaned" works allows publishers to keep prices high).
Google is equally culpable in seeking to completely monopolise this information for their sole profit.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They limit Free Speech, impose monopolies, suppress free expression, and create unnecessary legal action.
How on earth does this limit "free speach" or "free expression"? In no way does it stop anyone going out and saying what they want. Furthermore, monopolies are generally awarded for innovation - something that Google has done here. No other project did anything about securing orphan works, and now that Google has their license they are all jumping on the band wagon like a pack of lions. Maybe, if archive.org or simillar went at it first, they would have the rights and this argument might not be happenin
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It does, if what they want to express happens to be a derived work based on an orphaned work.
See The Wind Done Gone [wikipedia.org] as a case in point where copyright was used in an attempt to limit artistic (and political) expression.
It obviously doesn't limit expression of pure ideas, per se. Was that what you meant?
Re: (Score:2)
I call creating anti-Constitutional international treaties and tricking Congress into implementing them in violation of the Bill of Rights fraud.
Anti-Constitutional treaties are not allowed by the Constitution. Treaties are effectively co-equal with federal law, subject to the Constitution, and judicial review can overturn them.
This is a common misunderstanding based on erroneous parsing of article VI. When article VI says "and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding", "the Constitution" is referring to the "the Constitution... of any State". Not only
Re: (Score:2)
Then please explain how the Berne Convention derivative work "rights" implemented in the 1976 Copyright Act do not violate the First Amendment as these "rights" apply to speech that has yet to be uttered. If I read a book and tell my friend about it on AIM, I may not get sued for it, but technically speaking, it is a derivative work -- especially if I mention the characters and the plot.
Also, since everything on the Internet is, for the purposes of copyright law "fixed in tangible form", how can I quote
Re: (Score:2)
There is not a court in existence, including SCOTUS, that would strike down the 1976 Copyright Act as unconstitutional -- even though it plainly is.
If you convinced the court that it was unconstitutional, it would strike down the act. The court didn't uphold CTEA just because it was driven by a treaty, the court upheld it because the court wasn't given what it considered a compelling argument for unconstitutionality.
If Lessig is not up to such a challenge, who is?
Lessig believes he could have, but that he screwed up by not giving the court the right argument. He focused on the "limited times" aspect, but the court found that the time is limited, even if repeated extensions could make it effectivel
Bad analogy - AG is a monopoly, of sorts (Score:2, Interesting)
Your analogy ignores the fact that the court system, in this case, is recognizing the Authors' Guild as the default representative of all authors, regardless if these authors actually have any formal relationship to it. Because of the court is granting this special right to the Authors' Guild, it might very well be the case that the court has the ability, or even an obligation, to regulate how the Authors' Guild does business.
A better analogy would be to compare the Authors' Guild to a local telecom monopol
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If the settlement only covered Author's Guild authors, that would be true. It doesn't. It covers ALL copyright holders. A sues B and the settlement extinguishes C,D, and Es claims (past, present or future) as well.
Re: (Score:2)
This needs to be an "open to all" arrangement, or the judge should reject the settlement.
The judge doesn't have the power to sign off on an open-to-all arrangement. He can only order a settlement between the named parties in the case, in this case the class of all book copyright and electronic distribution right holders and google (plus, if he permits the addition, internet archive).
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not a class action law expert and ongoing changes to the law may mean this is no longer true, but at one time class actions could be brought where the defendants were a class.
Even if he did this (which I wasn't aware he could do, but it does appear to be possible), the settlement would only apply (as I understand it) to those who are members of the class at the time the settlement is finalised. Such a settlement would not be particularly useful, AFAICS.
Great News (Score:1)
This is great news, but why is it that there appears to be no link to download the PDF of the document. On the linked site, that is annoying enough, but on the Open Content Alliance website, it seems purely hypocritical. How can the "Open" Content Alliance link to a proprietary, display only website? Where is the text? How annoying.
Because of the mentioned annoyance, I did not read the brief, but if it was not included in there, I think they should have asked for the protection to extended to all lib
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How can the "Open" Content Alliance link to a proprietary, display only website? Where is the text? How annoying.
Err... what's "view only" about it? Click the download button above the scribd viewer and you're presented options to download in pdf or plain text.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While you may be technically correct, scribd is a *very* annoying site that I have removed from my Google results. Hmm, let's wrap the text up in a fancy thingamajiggy that takes ages to load and can't be easily scrolled or resized.
It should be open! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
They've already got one [gutenberg.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It should be open! (Score:4, Informative)
The AG-Google agreement wouldn't affect Gutenberg at all. The Gutenberg Project only deals with works that are either public domain or works where the author gave permission for GP to use the works.
The reason the Author's Guild got upset with Google and eventually reached a settlement with them was because Google was dealing with "orphaned" works. These were books that, while restricted in distribution by copyright laws, were out of print for one reason or another. While Google saw this as part of their mission to increase the availiblity of information, the AG saw this as an encroachment on the rights of their members.
Parent
Re:It should be open! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thus Gutenberg should definitely worry about getting the ability to digitize orphaned works as soon as possible. 150 years is a long time. In the last 150 years, there was civil war in the US and many in other places, and two huge world wars, including one famous for book burning.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
A more general issue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the length of copyright term and the ever decreasing costs of storage, there are works, and will continue to be works that are within the term of copyright, but which have no (knows) extant owner. This is an issue.
Without an extant owner, it isn't even possible to ask for licensing permission, so the work will necessarily go unused (bootlegging excepted). Unless one considers absolutist copyright maximalism to be a virtue for its own sake, enforcing copyright on such works is insane.
The trick is, you don't want to make it too easy for a work to be declared orphaned. "Oh, Mr. Fungus, our statutory-search-for-author-notice ran for an entire month in the East Arkansas Hog Breeder Gazette and intelligencer and the North Anglian Lady's Christian Temperance Quarterly! What more reasonable a search could you possibly expect?"
Re:A more general issue... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless one considers absolutist copyright maximalism to be a virtue for its own sake, enforcing copyright on such works is insane.
Say you are a really large copyright organisation. Not only are you competing with other, similar organisations, but you are also competing with the public domain. Getting rid of that competition means getting rid of the public domain, which is what they are doing.
So yes, I imagine they are really all in favor of enforcing that absolutist copyright maximalism.
Parent
Re:A more general issue... (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue seems fairly obvious to solve, to me: You, as the copyright holder, must submit a copy of the document to the Library of Congress for storage in high-resolution (or whatever the content equivalent is), and must send them a registered letter or similar once a year for your work to be declared not orphaned.
If they don't receive a letter two years in a row, it becomes orphaned, but if you keep sending in letters, your copyright will continue until it expires.
A due-diligence search would therefore simply involve searching the LOC.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Copyright (c)2009 martin-boundary, Bibliotheque nationale de France.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it can be argued that we have no such limitations these days. Take a photograph, or a web comic, drawing, and so on as a digital image, or a text composition in a unicode text file etc. The national copyright registration office could keep a copy of it registered to your name, and you could submit all your digital files electronically. You could start the tra
Re: (Score:2)
I somehow think you are not entirely tracking on my argument, but I can't exactly put a finger on where.
1) I don't think it's unreasonable to deal with notifications for large numbers of documents, with the Internet and computers. Just submit a list of all your copyright numbers.
2)The CC license is a bastardization anyway. If you're not willing to continue to expend effort for things to remain under CC license (for which you presumably have a reason) then let them fall under orphaned works. Orphaned works d
Re: (Score:2)
How does that work for authors who are not US citizens? If they need to send it to the Library of Congress, why can't every other national library demand the same? If you have to take it to the national library of your own country, a full search of all national libraries are needed to determin the orphan-staus of a work. Of course, they could make a collaboration to make the search easier, but if you can't get them all to have the same terms, it is going to be a mess.
Well, we are presumably talking about
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
The issue seems fairly obvious to solve, to me: You, as the copyright holder, must submit a copy of the document to the Library of Congress for storage in high-resolution (or whatever the content equivalent is), and must send them a registered letter or similar once a year for your work to be declared not orphaned.
Woah woah woah! What is this?! Using the Library of Congress for its original intended purpose, instead of as a unit of measurement???
You my friend have just made many an enemy on slashdot from both sides of the fence :{
Re: (Score:2)
That's an obvious solution but not really a workable one for two reasons. First, there's the sheer amount of copyrighted work out there. The LOC is widely regarded as possessing the largest quantity of copyrighted books and other media on the planet but percentage-wise, I'm sure its only a fraction of what's actually out there. Yes, the LOC receives a copy of every work registered through the US Copyright Office but you don't have to register with the USCO in order for the work in order to be protected. (Al
Re: (Score:2)
I think you are misreading my comment- I am not suggesting that documents must be registered to be covered under copyright, but that they must be registered and maintained to avoid being considered orphans.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The issue seems fairly obvious to solve, to me: You, as the copyright holder, . . . must send them a registered letter or similar once a year for your work to be declared not orphaned.
Something much like your solution was used in the U.S. for 186 years. From 1790 to 1976, [wikipedia.org] holders of U.S. copyrights were required to send a letter renewing their rights at the half-way point in the term. If they failed to do so, their copyright expired. In 1976, that solution was deemed too onerous, too prone to error, too disrespectful of inalienable "moral rights", or just plain too unprofitable, and was replaced with automatic copyrights that don't require registration and last forever.* It wasn't a
Re: (Score:2)
Why is it an issue? The law guarantees protection for the owner of the rights - not access to the works by the public.
What you and this farcical 'settlement' want to do is to subvert the law so that rather protecting the rights holder you create a situation where the author has what
Re: (Score:2)
At least in the US(where I'm writing), the law guarantees protection for the owner of the rights entirely as a strategic measure. As much as the "intellectual property" pushers would like it to be otherwise, copyright is not property in the same sense as real property(and, even there, there are complications like Adverse possession)
The Public Domain Enhancement Act is good (Score:3, Interesting)
Archive.org is prior art as are so many others (Score:2, Interesting)
While I am not a lawyer, www.archive.org (and variously named predecessors) is "prior art" when it comes to storing huge amounts of electronic data, as, I am sure we will see very soon, many many many other parties.
"prior art" - isnt't that a patent law only thing? (Score:2)
www.archive.org (and variously named predecessors) is "prior art" when it comes to storing huge amounts of electronic data.
Isn't the phrase "prior art" only used in patent law?
So, if archive.org is indeed prior art, this only means that no one should be able to patent the business method of archiving the Internet.
(Maybe except archive.org, but they have probably been practicing that business method for so long that the patenting window of opportunity has expired.)
I'm not sure why you bring this up in a discussion of copyright.
possible monopoly to google (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I think the agreement and the lawsuit should be thrown out. As per boingboing (http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/17/google-book-search-s-1.html), this settlement potentially, baring something unforeseen, gives google a near monopoly on search and distribution on the majority of all the books ever published. While that alone is a pretty good argument for the settlement to be voided, the fact that an organization which only represents roughly 8000 writers out of all the writers in the world is c
Re: (Score:1)
Whoops my bad, the settlement only covers the US / American writers, however, just the same, I'm pretty sure that the writers guild should have no say over orphaned works
Heh. (Score:4, Funny)
"Hey! No fair suing Google and not us. We want to be sued to! SUE US DAMMIT!"
Orphans forever! (Score:2, Interesting)