Internet Archive Seeks Same Online Book Rights As Google

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.'"

Re:At a minimum, this should be open to all comers

[gringofrijolero]

The going theory is that the Authors Guild is a Google sockpuppet.

It should be open!

[Jane Q. Public]

What about the Gutenberg Project, and similar collections?

Archive.org is prior art as are so many others

[G3ckoG33k]

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.

Bad analogy - AG is a monopoly, of sorts

[Mathinker]

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 monopoly (but the monopoly of the Authors' Guild is less strong, it only monopolizes the representation of authors who choose to not represent themselves).

Re:A more general issue...

[Atlantis-Rising]

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.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:At a minimum, this should be open to all comers

[roberthl]

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 happening at all. Finally, your suggestion that orphan works create legal action is absurd - it's the people who want the books who do that.

The Public Domain Enhancement Act is good

[jbn-o]

I believe The Public Domain Enhancement Act [eldred.cc] does a good job of addressing orphaned works: it requires a $1 fee be paid no earlier than 50 years after the work was published and it creates a searchable database of works and copyright holders. Legislators should be pushed to champion this bill again (and again) to get it through Congress. One-time trying doesn't do the job (as we've all seen the corporate copyright holders show us). I concur with proponents of the PDEA that most copyright holders will not find it important enough to send in the $1 fee to extend their copyright past 50 years (plus the grace period described in the proposed bill).

Re:At a minimum, this should be open to all comers

[HiThere]

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 while they still have leverage. It's to my disadvantage, but I can sure understand their point of view. History is on their side. You can't count on the law when you don't have the power. The lesson is repeated over and over in scenario after scenario. And not just internationally. And it isn't racially biased either. Ask Joe Hill about the justice of law. It's about who has power.

Now to limit that argument, let me say they sometimes you can't buy justice no matter how powerful and rich you are. Being rich and powerful is no guarantee that the abusive forces of law won't be turned against you. It's just that this will only happen when someone else who is at least almost as rich and powerful as you instigates (even if covertly). A recent example was the suit against IBM by SCOx.pk apparently funded, in part, by Microsoft. SCOx had no case, and hasn't been able to demonstrate that it had a reasonable belief that it might have a case. But IBM has been cost millions of dollars that it will never be able to recover. Sometimes justice isn't available for sale because they're out of stock.

Orphans forever!

[AlbionTourgee]

Hopefully the judge will do the sensible thing, which is to give Internet Archive or whoever else wants the right to publish orphans and pay royalties for it, the right to do so. The Fiction Circus blog posting is truly silly. The Author's Guild was not set up by Google, that's for sure. Google just wanted to index all the books and provide links to where you could buy them. The Author's Guild (a long standing and very backward looking organization) sued, claiming that indexing was a violation of copyright. In other words, it was an effort to prevent Google from making their books more accessible on the web. Now you have people like this Fiction Circus clown saying, Google should be able to sell orphan books in electronic form, because others aren't alos doing it. So, we're better off with no one republishing orphan works. Great logic! That is, if you're against people having access to books. I haven't heard that Google opposes anyone else doing this. But, you have to have a committed, well run organization to pull it off. Microsoft, for example, gave a try at offering a book search service, but gave up after scanning a few libraries, it was too hard and not enough short-term profit, apparently. Now we find "libertarians" saying, Google shouldn't do it either, because, well, nobody else is doing it, and, let's keep it that way!