Microsoft Blasts Google Book Deal 165
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."
Haul down the competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Haul down the competition (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, there is that, but on the other hand they are absolutely spot on, the article is the best summary I've seen of the problems with the Google book deal. I dislike Microsoft, and I use Google all the time, but this deal really is a bad one.
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."
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Yep. You can dislike someone who tells you that 2+2 = 4, but you shouldn't let that make you argue that the answer's 5. How the Hell Google got this past the courts, I have no idea.
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How the Hell Google got this past the courts, I have no idea.
Taken in a vacuum, there is no problem with this deal. The problem only arises should publishers refuse in future to cut the same deal with others, at which point the publishers open themselves up to FTC/DoJ involvement, lawsuits or both. Google has no part in that, and the Google settlement remains a perfectly reasonable deal.
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Uh, no, there are huge problems with this deal that have nothing to do with competition. If approved, the deal would modify US and intl. copyright law, subject rightsholders (many of whom have no knowledge of the deal and thus no opportunity to object) to compulsory licensing in perpetuity with no judicial recourse ("arbitration," anyone), and exempt Google from not just past copyright violations (the ostensible subject of the lawsuit) but all future ones as well.
It's theft, pure and simple, and Google's o
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It's not theft; if you hold copyright you are still eligible to sell the book yourself. It's copyright infringement.
I still think it's bullshit, but it's not theft.
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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:5, Insightful)
The GFDL and GPL aren't about money, though, so being able to get money off Google in return for them stripping the document's recipient of the rights that you want them to have is not an answer.
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True, but keep in mind that there's an opt-out requirement, so if you want out you have to let them know.
You have all the same (insanely restrictive) rights under copyright law.
Insanely restrictive things like "uhh, please don't make money off my books without my permission."
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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. True, but keep in mind that there's an opt-out requirement, so if you want out you have to let them know. You have all the same (insanely restrictive) rights under copyright law. Insanely restrictive things like "uhh, please don't make money off my books without my permission."
I believe the opt-out period already ended sometime last week. I still don't understand how those publishers were able to make such a deal without explicit permission from each author they represent. That is unless authors have to give the publishers a lot more control than I thought. As much as I'm opposed to the way copyright laws have evolved, somehow this doesn't seem like they're looking out for the rights of the authors, but just trying to cut the best deal for their company.
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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.
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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.
If they're going to be profiting from giving rights to these works to Google, then it certainly seems that it should have something to do with copyright law. I understand why they don't want it to be opt-in rather than opt-out, but the fundamental problem is copyright law itself. This class-action suit just waves away the problems to allow some people to profit from the deal, copyright law be damned.
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The settlement agreement is dated Oct. 28, 2008. I think people had plenty of time to opt out.
What amazes me is that this class action settlement (if accepted) would effectively write electronic copyright law (as there is none),
Not QUITE, though practically it may be. What it's basically saying here is that any lawsuit that could be filed against Google over its actions here are being settled here and now. Google simply gains the protection of issu
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This is a class action suit, which means if you sit on your duff you lose your rights.
It's about preventing public access to these works (Score:2, Insightful)
Google's plan to digitize and bring online all books is of immense value to society. All of the objections offer only to prevent this great service with no alternative. Therefore they are bad.
As noted in the summary, Microsoft had their own effort and abandoned it. Too bad for them. They don't now get to prevent somebody else from doing it. If they want to pick the effort back up they're welcome to provide a competing service - Google's deal is not exclusive.
Microsoft attempting to prevent Google fro
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Google's plan to digitize and bring online all books is of immense value to society. All of the objections offer only to prevent this great service with no alternative. Therefore they are bad.
The alternative, mentioned time and again, is for Congress to write an exception into copyright law for the republication of protected works that are not currently being published. This would guarantee residuals to the authors (possibly held in trust by the WGA or another organization for authors who aren't easy to locate). It would open the field up to any electronic publisher and would allow for the handling of future works. Google would have the advantage of the search technology they have in place and t
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Unfortunately, Google has no control over congress or copyright laws (otherwise, they probably would have pushed for copyright reforms to keep the project in its original form—instead of making it Google Obscure/Out-of-Print Book Search). What they do have is the ability to come to a private settlement with the parties that are opposed to Google Book Search. So they did that.
I don't know how you construed this as giving Google a monopoly on anything. Anyone else trying to provide a similar service has
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Well, there is that, but on the other hand they are absolutely spot on, the article is the best summary I've seen of the problems with the Google book deal. I dislike Microsoft, and I use Google all the time, but this deal really is a bad one.
No, they're entirely wrong. This argument has been repeated so many times (and it's really interesting to see Microsoft actually saying this now, as opposed to having others say it for them) that people are buying it. Let's make a comparison:
I sell you an ice cream cone for 5 cents. Someone else goes running all over the neighborhood yelling about how there's no way that I will sell everyone else an ice cream cone for 5 cents, and therefore your ice cream cone must be taken away.
Are the flaws in that logic
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I sell you an ice cream cone for 5 cents. Someone else goes running all over the neighborhood yelling about how there's no way that I will sell everyone else an ice cream cone for 5 cents, and therefore your ice cream cone must be taken away.
Are the flaws in that logic obvious now?
Here's a better comparison. Google takes my ice-cream, and lots of other peoples' ice creams, and sells them for 5 cents. We sue in a class action suit, but the result is that Google can continue selling anyone's ice creams for 5 cents and give us 3 cents, unless we opt out. Now the other ice-cream sellers are all put out of business because they aren't allowed to take anyone else's ice-creams and sell them for 5 cents because no-one sued them for trying to. Now I know that ice-creams (physical property) ar
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Here's a better comparison. Google takes my ice-cream, and lots of other peoples' ice creams, and sells them for 5 cents. We sue in a class action suit, but the result is that Google can continue selling anyone's ice creams for 5 cents and give us 3 cents, unless we opt out. Now the other ice-cream sellers are all put out of business because they aren't allowed to take anyone else's ice-creams and sell them for 5 cents because no-one sued them for trying to. Now I know that ice-creams (physical property) are a bad analogy, but you sometimes have to work with what you've got.
Yep, that's pretty much exactly not how the law works.
Google cut a deal. It's a passably good deal for Google (it's actually a bad deal for libraries who really did want to see the point made that providing their collections online was for the public good, and embodied in fair use doctrine). There's no reason that the deal should not be allowed, of course, just like any other deal that publishers make.
What you're trying to claim, here, is that organizations that make good deals with publishers should be fau
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To get a similar deal, a competitor would need to either be sued (so the courts could authorize a deal) or Congress would need to grant an exception to copyright. You can't create a contract with "All publishers" unless you actually get an agreement with all publishers. The class action lawsuit gets around this by allowing Google to settle with all members of the class at once (even if those class members are not aware of the litigation). What's worse is that all the publishers who have lawyers working on t
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They didn't cut a deal with publishers, they cut a deal with some publishers, on behalf of everyone in the world that holds copyright on a book. The only way to do that is to break the law and hope to get sued, otherwise you cannot compete with Google. That's not an acceptable way to do change how copyright works.
There's no way that this deal can be called a settlement for past infringement. It's a licence to commit future infringement, and that's ludicrous. I re-assert that I would not object to this if th
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I think the basic idea is a good one, but it just needs to be non-Google-specific.
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I think the basic idea is a good one, but it just needs to be non-Google-specific.
Absolutely. There's no way that the publishers can justify not cutting other business looking to do a Google Books like system the very same terms. No one has really tried to do that yet, though, so Microsoft is having a hey day accusing Google of somehow preventing publishers from doing so in the future.
Interestingly, Microsoft could have simply spun up their old book-scanning project and demanded the same terms as Google is getting from publishers. The problem is that Microsoft doesn't want to be in that
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It's good if you want to read books for free, bad if you're a copyright holder who just saw your rights usurped.
A library is good if you want to read books for free, bad if you're a copyright holder who just saw your rights usurped.
These things are equivalent. Google sought to make this point, and the publishers apparently were concerned enough that they would win that a settlement was sought. The terms of the settlement are very valuable to publishers, opening up a new source of revenue for them.
Will publishers then turn around and screw authors out of any of the benefit? Almost certainly, but to blame Google for pu
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Almost certainly, but to blame Google for publishers having treated authors like dirt for the past 50 years+ is rather an odd stance to take.
Nobody's really blaming Google here, or they shouldn't be, except inasmuch as they were clearly acting unlawfully when they started this project and should be penalized for doing that thing, not given free money. It's sort of hard to blame the WGA, either: One hopes they ran the numbers and found their clients would benefit more from this settlement than from the likely damage award or a flat cash-money settlement. The blame lies with the judges who reviewed and allowed the settlement. It's against the very
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For example, Masnick and Sullivan think that Google's huge scanned library is the result of free market competition, and that the lawsuit by the Author's guild came out of nowhere. But it's not free competition if you compete with others by blatantly ignoring copyright, when the others actually abide by it. The lawsuit against Google was completely predictable, and predicted by many.
There's a simple reason why other companies offer only small
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I'm not sure how Google managed to launch their book search without putting 'we are committing wholesale copyright infringement and are liable for statutory fines of several billion dollars' in their SEC filings. If the Authors' Guild had pressed for the full statutory fines for wilful infringement, which go up to $150k/work, then Google would be bankrupt.
If that were true, there would be no settlement.
As it turns out, there was a large concern that Google would win the case.
Google's argument is that libraries are perfectly within their rights to host their collections online, and that's a service that Google is willing to provide to them.
The publisher argument goes along the lines of: libraries are fine as long as they require the burden of seeking them out. As soon as they are easy to use, there should be no fair use doctrine employed.
I don't envy publishe
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Even reading it as you put it I find Google argument very shaky. No one actually admits that Libraries are within their right to do anything else than lend actual books to actual physical subscribers. Hosting works online is a massively different matter, and moreover Google was making money off the deal. I think they would have lost, but IANAL.
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Yes, because there are absolutely no legitimate reasons to be against Google or national health care. (Or at least I assume that's what you mean by health care machine.)
This is a good thing because you get to read the books you want. Who cares about the rights of others when your own privileges (not rights mind you) are expanded. You don't have an right to read and enjoy another persons hard work without compensation, but you'll gladly walk over their right to demand compensation if it give you the privi
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A friend recently lost most of her sight I was told yesterday, it can be restored if she is operated on within the next 3 weeks.
Trouble is she doesn't have insurance, apparently medicaid will take about 90 days to get if she gets it and it will be too late.
surprising thing her and her husband oppose obama's health care reforms, how can anyone support a system that leaves them blind when its preventable.
How can Americans accept such a system? Which other countries fail to provide health care for its citizens
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surprising thing her and her husband oppose obama's health care reforms, how can anyone support a system that leaves them blind when its preventable.
I would doubt that Obamacare would help her. It would probably be similar to medicare (or most normal insurance systems) and take more than 3 weeks to fund.
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Re:Haul down the competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Any "evil" in this deal is the reflection of a broken copyright
system and is not a reflection of Google megalomania. This is
simply what happens when Media Moguls get greedy. The same thing
happened with iTunes. The RIAA had a fit of artistic megalomania
and handed Apple a future monopoly on a silver platter.
Neither Google or Apple are the "problem" here.
The real problem are the IP cartels.
Re:Haul down the competition (Score:4, Insightful)
All the court should care about is whether this venture is legal or not.
No idea why people are so keen on protecting Google though. This looks like they're trying to make a deal with a subset of publishers that will affect everyone, and give Google their own private version of copyright law.
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It's like the new "in" thing, everyone wants one.
Re:Haul down the competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is being given a private version of copyright law that applies to what they don't own.
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I am actually in favor of some "overriding" agreement of this nature, since otherwise it will be impossible to make a digital archive of all books. Individually negotiating with every rights own, ever, is not realistic. And the rights weren't granted in the current technological environment anyways, so while you can argue this grants google new rights the authors never intended, you could also argue that prohibiting the digital library grants authors new rights that were never intended, either.
So far, the
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In that case, don't you think it should be up to Congress to specifically create an exception to current copyright law for the purposes of digital libraries?
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Might have something to do with how this book scanning venture is good for the people. It makes content more accessible, and that is always good. Well, for some it's not so good, but their goal is usually only monetary gain, which is a totally different point of view.
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No idea why people are so keen on protecting Google though. This looks like they're trying to make a deal with a subset of publishers that will affect everyone, and give Google their own private version of copyright law.
I can't say about other people. But for me, the point is Google is the first one to take the effort to actually do this (scanning the books and make it available). Now that Google has done it, everyone comes and criticize them for this and that, but would any of them do this thing if Google has not done it?
With this in mind, the motive of all those naysayers are very suspect. Do they simply want to kill Google's initiative at the start and leave us without digital access to old books? And thus keep thei
Google was NOT first (Score:2)
The Open Book Alliance started with Professor Raj Reddy at CMU and Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive. They started their scanning and making public system about five years before Google cracked a single book. Brewster personally asked Larry Page to join them as they had a mature scanning system that had already scanned hundreds of thousands of books in India, Page decided that Google would go on it's own. (Google really doesn't partner with anyone)
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[...] and give Google their own private version of copyright law.
I've addressed the other points elsewhere, but this one needs careful examination.
Contracts between a copyright holder and a publisher (or between a publisher and a secondary publisher, which is what the Google deal is) exist for one reason and one reason only: to grant rights to the publisher which the copyright holder otherwise retains under copyright law.
That is, providing "their own private version of copyright law," is what copyright contracts do. In fact, it's what the GPL does as well. It's the creat
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give Google their own private version of copyright law.
Have you even read the settlement? There is nothing in it that is even close to what you are talking about. The agreement is a completely non-exclusive. Microsoft is free to strike the same deal with the book publishers if they CHOSE to. What it boils down to is Microsoft doesn't want to spend the money and do the work to redigitize the world's book (yes I know about their half assed effort). So instead of being a competitor they are trying to either 1)
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All the court should care about is whether this venture is legal or not.
Well, I agree with the spirit. The settlement should be judged on its own merits and not what it does or doesn't do for MS. But that judgement has nothing to do with whether it's "legal". It's legal if the judge approves it; there's guidelines but no strict rules here.
The question the judge needs to ask is if the settlement is in the interest of the class, especially those who aren't directly represented by the prosecution. The summary is very on-point as to why it may not be, though again it's a sub
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"When was the last time you paid Google for its search results"
When was the last time Google paid me for ads appearing in my browser? Given that Google has a ton of money they obviously get more out of search than an individual does. I'm not complaining, but Google search is a business not a public service.
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"Except if it's Bill."
Or Larry. Or Sergey.
What was your point again?
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].
Sour grapes ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sour grapes ? (Score:4, Insightful)
NO one should be allowed to get this deal. That's sort of the whole point.
And the alternative is... (Score:2)
...to just see all these books vanish forever?
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...which will happen WHEN exactly?
Most of the works in question are already overdue.
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Yes these books are so valuable that it's OK to throw the authors rights in the trash. It's not as if they wrote something important ... oh wait.
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Can you actually make an argument for why? I mean, if Google can enter into "promise you won't sue us" agreements with publishers, and retire the legal risks of making orphaned works available, that's good for all of us isn't it? Or are you trying to suggest that the law should change instead? How long should Google wait for that exactly?
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Well, maybe someone will be allowed to have a deal where they can rip us off more than before, and everyone will be happy - except us. All this is more about money than (C), always will be.
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NO one should be allowed to get this deal. That's sort of the whole point.
So would humankind be better off without digital access to old books?
Would you rather the old books are not scanned and stored, so if the last physical copy is lost, the content would be lost forever?
Isn't the whole purpose of copyright the betterment of humankind? Why wouldn't the betterment of humankind trumps whatever "rights" held by copyrights holders?
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"Isn't the whole purpose of copyright the betterment of humankind?"
Not the primary purpose. Among other things copyright was used to protect the moral rights of the author.
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And how would having digital, accessible copies old books damage the "moral rights" of their authors?
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Fine. But I don't have the money to file a lawsuit in the US, especially against Microsoft. Who has those sort of resources that isn't commercial, and if you are commercial, what's your justification to your shareholders to pursue an action against someone that isn't a competitor to you? The only parties other than commercial rivals that can do this are either (a) class action by members of the public (a slow and lengthy process to build this sort of momentum, though you can consider the FSF speaking out a
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But objections should come from an independant source, not a commercial rival.
So long as objections are relevant and factual, why does it matter where they come from?
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If M$ were offered the same deal, they would snap it up immediately & not have such objections to it. I would prefer to see Google running this than M$.
And you would be surprised by Microsoft being hypocritical?
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If M$ were offered the same deal, they would snap it up immediately & not have such objections to it. I would prefer to see Google running this than M$.
Despite your persuasive dollar signs, I'm not convinced that MS is capable of evil on this scale.
What?? Both Microsoft and FSF on the same side? (Score:4, Funny)
Google must be Really Evil (TM) to incur the wrath of Microsoft and the FSF at the same time!
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Well, FSF hates them because they are the evil ones, and Microsoft hates that *they* can't be the evil ones. ;)
Forest, meet trees (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to get excited about this deal one way or the other without feeling like it's getting annoyed at the bloodsucking tick you found on the sofa -- without noticing that the tick is on the back of a snarling rottweiler. The underlying problem is our broken intellectual property system -- or even the very idea of intellectual property -- and not the specifics of how one company or another takes advantage of it.
I'm a bit worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not entirely sure I like the sound of that. It sounds like an abuse of the class action system for commercial gain.
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Far too many people seem to ignore the detail that Google is a private company which has making money as a primary objective, and providing services is mainly a means to an end.
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Re:I'm a bit worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you need to stop listening to the propaganda being spewed by the opposition and actually make up your own mind.
Google is getting some "promise not to sue" agreements from publishers.. that's it. They can't enter into agreements with these publishers to get promises that cover works the publishers don't hold the copyright on.
Is it too much to ask that people understand the subject before expressing their outrage? Oh wait, what am I asking.. duh.
Re:I'm a bit worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
What part of class action law suit.. (Score:2)
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No, Google cannot enter into agreements with publishers as you describe, but they can propose a wide ranging settlement against a class action, where all class action members are those described as being publishers. The court then agrees that settlement for all class action members, including the absent ones.
That i
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I'd be surprised if that bit of potential case law survived a challenge in a higher court. Of course, IANAL, but I don't see how a contract can be binding on any entity that is not an actual party to the contract.
That said, the reality is that going up against a company as large as Google requires incredibly deep pockets, and a proper challenge might well be out of the reach of all but a few large corporations, the CEOs of which could all fit comfortably in my living room. Having Microsoft involved might ac
Of course they say its illegal (Score:2)
They didn't get a piece of the pie.
Whiners.
I'm dyin' here (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in this one paragraph, Microsoft says:
1. Competition and open/free markets are good.
2. The diverse interests of the many outweighs the greed of the few (a corporation).
3. Closed-door negotiations are bad.
4. Copyright law serves the public.
5. Joint ventures are bad.
6. We should be worried about the millions of unenfranchised who were left out of a back-room deal.
*boggle*
*boggle*? (Score:2)
I'm confused (Score:3, Interesting)
Hypocritical Microsoft (Score:2)
There is one, and only one, reason Microsoft is protesting this: they tried to do the same thing, and failed while Google can make it work. Period. End of story.
Microsoft has no moral qualms about anything that hurts non-Microsoft publishers, regardless of the societal damage it may or may not cause, if it would increase Microsoft's market power. The only reason Microsoft would even care about societal damage would be to calculate the spin needed to make their market rape look like feeding the poor.
As a
sore losers! (Score:2)
Sounds to me like there own deal fell through, so they think google's should too, because its impossible for anyone else to actually come up with a business model for this that might satisfy not just themselves but others too...M$ are just sore losers.
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.
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I have a hard time feeling bad, frankly. If you don't want your work to be public, don't publish it. Copyright is still defined by the U.S. Constitution to be of limited duration, even if "limited" is effectively forever thanks to the knob-polishers in Congress.
Ebsco? (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words... (Score:2)
"damn, why didn't we come up with this? Can we steal the idea?"
"no, it would be TO obvious"
"damn, what else can we do?"
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Your "rights" over your own works should END the moment you view them as NOT WORTH PUBLISHING ANYMORE.
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He shrugged it all off as that google isnt going to make much money, if any, by distributing my work without my permission.. concluding that its ok for them to distribute my work without my permission.
Its fucking bullshit. If you want to distribute my work, which is *currently* not being printed, then call me up and maybe we can hammer out a contract. This isnt about the books owned by publishers, this is about every book currently under copyright.
In this deal, google gets to steal from me
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This site allows authors and other rights holders of out of print (but copyright) books to submit a claim by January 5, 2010. In return they will receive $60 per full book, or $5 to $15 for partial works. In return, Google will be able to index the books and display snippets in search results, as well as up to 20% of each book in preview mode. Google will also be able to show ads on these pages and make available for sale digital versions of each book. Authors and copyright holders will receive 63 percent of all advertising and e-commerce revenues associated with their works.
So if you are paying attention and actively defending the copyright of your (out-of-print) book, Google will pay you a fee for scanning the book into their database. This will provide your (out-of-print) book with increased visibility, provide a platform for the (out-of-print) book to be sold, create a brand new advertising revenue
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Additionally, the idea of copyright is that if I own the copyright on something, you need my express permission to copy it. What if I published something and then decide that it contains major flaws and wa
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.
Mechanical license.