Google To Remove "Inappropriate" Books From Digital Library 192
Miracle Jones writes "In an interview with Professor (and former Microsoft employee) James Grimmelmann at the New York Law School, who is both setting up an online clearinghouse to discuss the Google book settlement and drafting an amicus brief to inform the court about the antitrust factors surrounding "orphan books," he revealed that Google will be able to moderate the content of its book scans in the same way that they moderate their YouTube videos, leaving out works that Google deems "inappropriate" from the 7 million library books it has scanned. The Fiction Circus has called for a two-year long rights auction that will ensure that these "inappropriate" titles do not get left behind in the digital era, and that other people who are willing to host and display these books will be able to do so. There is only one week left for authors and publishers to "opt out" of the settlement class and retain their rights or raise objections, and Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has been stopped from jumping on board Google's settlement as a party defendant and receiving the same legal protections that Google will get. A group of authors, including Philip K. Dick's estate, has tried to delay the settlement for four more months until they get their minds around the issue." In related news, Google is seeking a 60-day extension to the period in which it's attempting to contact authors to inform them of their right to opt-out of the terms of the settlement.
You Would Think... (Score:4, Interesting)
...that Google might have learned something from the massive backlash against Amazon for supposedly doing something similar?
I suppose we'll have to wait and see what gets flagged as "inappropriate." Whatever the case, I'm guessing that people won't care nearly as much as t hey did with Amazon.
How can a third pary lawsuit change my rights? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I don't understand, as an author who holds copyright in at least one book that is out of print, is: how can a lawsuit to which I am not a party give *my* rights under copyright law to someone else?
That seems to be fundamentally wrong.
Tangentially, I find it somewhere between interesting and amusing (or perhaps scary) that Google appears to have made no attempt to contact me, despite the fact that I'm hardly the most difficult person to find.
Even more tangentially, there doesn't seem to be any place to go to see if google has actually digitized a book in which I have rights. Someone please correct me if there's a way to do that. (But in any case, why should I be the one who has to go and see if they've infringed rights? They are the ones who are supposed to seek permission from me.)
Frankly, this whole "settlement" seems utterly unconscionable.
Re:Burn 'em! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How can a third pary lawsuit change my rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny thing about class action... are you sure you aren't a party to the lawsuit?
Re:How can a third pary lawsuit change my rights? (Score:2, Interesting)
You know, I thought that when I replied to the OP too, but in, say, a class action suit brought against a company in which I own stock, I get a letter saying I need to opt in (essentially) to be a part of the settlement, if any. If I'm automatically part of the class why is that bit of communication necessary?
Blame the author's Guild, not google (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, what I don't get is what this summary means. Is it talking about "censorship", about porn, or about digital rights management/copyright issues. The summary seems to vacillate between either of those interpretations, and most people here immediately seem to assume "censorship", but I don't really see how they can conclude that with any degree of certainty.
Reading the article (which is pretty badly written) it seems to be about "porn" mostly, but they fail to explain why we are supposed to care, or why the fact that google has a non-exclusive deal with the AG makes the current situation worse. Apparently they're blaming Google for not having competitors, which seems pretty stupid.
Right now those orphaned (and other) books aren't accessible, nor in the PD, and this won't change if Google partially publishes and partially censors them (as they still won't be PD), but apparently if google censors them there will be no other way for us whatever to access those books, which seems something of a stretch. (but hey, sensationalist journalism is great. It's almost as though they've confused GOOG for MSFT, the twits.)
Secondly, the auction house idea seems even more legally untenable than this deal with the AG is.
Lastly, what is the relevance of P.K. Dick's estate to the discussion, other than as a name?
Welcome to Class Action Lawsuits. (Score:5, Interesting)
When a class action lawsuit is approved to go forward, then anyone and everyone defined in that class is bound by the terms of the eventual settlement unless they specifically opt-out in writing. The lawyers bringing the class action suit are supposed to contact the members of the class, but when the class is so large, this often only happens by means of a few postings in trade literature, or some commercials run on TV or the like.
A similar thing happened to my parents. They (foolishly) bought a car on a lease-to-own program, where a certain amount of what you pay in the lease is supposed to apply to the eventual purchase price. Well, in addition to being a bad deal to begin with, the dealership did even not live up to these terms and also played games like applying additional payments toward future interest incurred instead of the principle. They broke their contract and the law in several instances cheating my parents (and all their other customers) out of thousands of dollars each.
Anyway some lawyer decided to bring a class action lawsuit against them for this, and eventually "won". The result - the lawyer got a ton of money, each of the screwed customers got like $50 and the dealership got off for a fraction of what they had cheated their customers out of. The laywer claimed he mailed letters to all the customers affected by this notifying them of the class action (my parents were specifically listed as such a customer as found in discovery), but they don't ever remember getting such a thing. The first they heard about it was when they tried to bring legal action against the dealership and were told they couldn't because they had been part of a class settlement, but they could contact the lawyer and request their share of that settlement if they wished.
Class action lawsuits may have been created with good intention, but the actual outcome is enrich scummy lawyers and to indemnify corporations against lawsuits for cheap.
Google is a business, not the end-all (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How can a third pary lawsuit change my rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
Your rights under copyright law come entirely from the government and legal system: without copyright laws, you would have no such rights at all. So, just as the government can choose to keep granting more and more rights to some favoured parties (the music industry), so it can choose to arbitrarily take copyright rights away from other people (such as you). If you didn't want that to happen, you should have bribed some politicians.
I know it seems unfair, but that seems to be the way it works.
Re:Burn 'em! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure it's actually that easy to create sockpuppet accounts on amazon. I know for sure that they will not allow you to post a review until you make at least one purchase, which means you've not only had to spend some money, but presumably also had to supply them with a credit card that correlated with your real-world identity. Also, IIRC amazon backed off on the censorship thing, claiming it was all a mistake.
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not censorship unless it's banned by the government.
Wrong. [google.com]
Any suppression of publication is censorship. (Your examples of stores choosing what to carry is a red herring; they're distributors, not publishers.) And in fact it happens all the time, and we accept it as a fact of life. The question is, when should censorship be disallowed? In the US we've taken the line that censorship by the government is generally wrong and that corporate censorship is generally okay. But as corporations get more powerful -- as their effect on the lives of the average citizen becomes less and less distinguishable from the effect of government -- we may have to revise that view.