Microsoft Blasts Google Book Deal 165
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the shaking-the-corporate-fist dept.
from the shaking-the-corporate-fist dept.
eldavojohn writes "With authors, scholars, the DoJ and publishers ripping apart the Google book deal, it's Microsoft's turn. They're claiming it's frankly an illegal 'joint venture' and not a settlement. According to ZDNet, Microsoft's four complaints against the deal are: 1) Future infringements are covered by the settlement, affecting the exclusive rights of absent class members for the life of their copyrights. 2) The deal gives away to Google vast rights that were not contested in the underlying litigation. The lawsuits dealt with Google's displaying brief excerpts. Instead of compromising on that infringement, the parties instead agreed to give away the rights to display entire books. 3) The publishers who negotiated this deal each have undisclosed side deals with Google, which will likely give them better terms than the class will get. 4) The publishers plan to exclude their own works from the deal. You might recall over a year ago Microsoft's own scanning effort died."
Re:Haul down the competition (Score:5, Informative)
You summarize my thoughts exactly. And I would also add that this deal is flamed by another party: the FSF. (fsf.org seems to be down atm, but here comes the link: http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-09-google-book-settlement-objection [fsf.org] )
"But under the proposed settlement, works released under the GFDL and similar licenses are lumped in with works under full restrictive copyright. Google would therefore be given permission to display and distribute these works without abiding by the requirement to pass the freedoms guaranteed under the GFDL on to Google Books readers."
Privacy Advocates (Score:5, Informative)
With authors, scholars, the DoJ and publishers ripping apart the Google book deal[...]
Add to that list privacy advocates [epic.org].
Re:Haul down the competition (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Haul down the competition (Score:3, Informative)
The FSF should know better than to take what is written in the media as accurate.
Here's the settlement: http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/intl/en/Final-Notice-of-Class-Action-Settlement.pdf [googlebooksettlement.com]
Simply put, if you're affected, and you want to, you can put in a claim form and get some money from Google.. on an on-going basis. If you don't want, nothing changes. You have all the same (insanely restrictive) rights under copyright law.
Anything else you have heard is bullshit.
Re:Haul down the competition (Score:3, Informative)
The publishers presumably didn't, the class representatives for the authors did. In class action lawsuits, you basically find a few named plaintiffs to represent all the unnamed plaintiff class members, and they get to make decisions regarding settlement. It has nothing to do with copyright law.
No more feeling sorry for Sony (Score:3, Informative)
http://thepublicindex.org/documents/responses [thepublicindex.org]
Filings in opposition tend to be substantial and weighty, citing both U.S. and international copyright law. Filings in favor tend to be of the "Gee, I like free books" sort. The most substantial of them is probably that from Sony, which is 20 pages long and filed by a NYC law firm, but, with one exception, it doesn't deal with the issues of copyright. Here's the closest Sony comes to admitting that authors have rights.
"The non-exclusivity provision of the Settlement--which makes plain that that the right given to Google do not permit copyright holders or the Registry itself from licensing e-book right to others--ensure that healthy, price-driven competition will remain after the Settlement is approved."
Yes, you read it right. The Google settlement gives Google and Google alone the right to display online for profit the contents of any book first published anywhere in the world since 1922 without the author's knowledge or consent unless they formally opted out by last Friday, September 4, 2009. Just heard about that? Tough luck. You've been screwed by Google with Sony's warm approval.
And to add insult to considerable injury, Google and Sony purr that Google's right is non-exclusive. What does that mean? Having brushed aside an author's copyright, they say, "Oh, well. We don't care if you sell someone else the right to publish your book. That is, if that someone else can compete with free." Under copyright law, of course, Google has no right to publish a book at all without the author's permission. They have no rights at all, much less exclusive rights. That's a good indication of ethically and legally clueless Google and Sony are.
Until I read this document, I felt sorry for Sony. They used to be so popular, now that aren't. But it helps to remember that much of their failure came from an obsession with protecting the copyrighted music they own. Now, in their zeal to sell their ebook readers, they're helping Google stomp on the copyright of several million authors. Color them hypocrites, very big hypocrites.
I no longer feel sorry for Sony. If they languish in obscurity, they're only getting what they deserve. Sony can't zealous defend their own copyrights by every nasty means available and run roughshod over the copyrights of others without deservedly getting sneered at.
The basic premise of the Google settlement is that any book not "commercially available" is effectively out of copyright. How would Sony feel if music fans regarded any music not available commercially at the moment as effectively out of copyright? That's what we are talking about here.