Authors' Guild Goes After University Book Digitization Projects 170
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Ars Technica:
"With the planned settlement between Google and book publishers still on indefinite hold, a legal battle by proxy has started. Google partnered with many libraries at US universities in order to gain access to the works it wants to digitize. Now, several groups that represent book authors have filed suit against those universities, attempting to block both digital lending and an orphaned works project. The suit is being brought by the Authors' Guild, its equivalents in Australia, Quebec, and the UK, and a large group of individual authors. Its target: some major US universities, including Michigan, the University of California system, and Cornell. These libraries partnered with Google to get their book digitization efforts off the ground and, in return, Google has provided them with digital copies of the works. These and many other universities have also become involved with the HathiTrust, an organization set up to help them archive and distribute digital works; the HathiTrust is also named as a defendant."
Scram (Score:5, Insightful)
The courts should rule first of all that the guilds have no standing with respect to works of authors they do not represent... which, despite their name, is a lot of them.
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Enough to bankrupt them (Score:2)
Of course, it might be difficult from a practical standpoint to track down enough individual members who agree to be certified into the class
Does the Authors Guild have a newsletter? At $30,000 per work in statutory damages under United States copyright law, I guess it wouldn't take a lot of defendants to threaten to bankrupt the universities.
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Even if it isn't a class action (Score:2)
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Of course, it might be difficult from a practical standpoint to track down enough individual members who agree to be certified into the class, especially given the large numbers of works involved, but it may be possible depending upon what requirements are imposed by the judge to certify the class.
The moment that they're tracked down they are no longer authors of orphan works, i.e. Catch-22.
Re:Scram (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahem...
Authors in question are DEAD or unknown.
Re:Scram (Score:5, Interesting)
There really needs to be an astroturf rating.
For SexConker, what icebike said and I have to append. I have a book 200+ years old and I am damn well going to photocopy it, and will give that work up to whatever library wants to have a copy. As for the original book, long into the public domain, will be shoved up the ass of any lawyer or any copyright fist-fuck that tries to say shit.
I have some other very old books that will be scanned as well, for the preservation of their content. All in the public domain. You think my response is over the top? Copyright, and the trolls that defend it can fuck themselves. It's no longer serving the purpose it was intended for.
- One pissed off reader.
This is not about public domain works (Score:4, Informative)
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I still don't see why the fact that the authors cannot be found means the Authors' Guild thinks it has the right to intervene. The Authors' Guild is not a statutory copyright licencing society (like ASCAP are), so has no standing to sue over the copyrights of anyone who has not given them explicit permission to so do. Whether the use is fair use or not is something that can only be decided in a case brought by the authors themselves, because only the authors can actually say whether or not they would auth
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It's all about the greed. But technology is a genie that is out of the bottle and so much is changing. A friend of mine and I debate this a LOT; he's on the side of the MAFIAA and laughs about the teen girl who gets burned for downloading some MP3s. I tell him then that every library should be closed then because they violate copyrights as well. He doesn't like that. I say, think about it, what is the difference? When someone checks out a book, that author isn't getting any money from it. And they have reco
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Peace has descended upon my soul... There is hope after all.
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He thinks musicians are getting burned by the evil downloaders. I tell him they are like someone who builds a piece of furniture and puts it out on the curb, then complains it gets stolen.
Not stolen, it just gets sat on by random passer-bys. And sometimes gets used by a passer-by to build something completely new. Not to mention that the maker who's throwing temper tantrum about random passer-bys using his furniture himself used somebody else's furniture to make his own in the first place. That's the reality of creativity.
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Against reasoning like that, I can see why your friend might want to side with the MAFIAA.
As someone else pointed out, libraries don't copy. They lend. If you copy part of a library book without paying the appropriate license fee, then it is copyright violation.
Comparing digital goods to physical goods doesn't work (ie comparing a chair to a song). That is definitely some "reptile brained mode" thinking. The chair would be both inside his house, and out on the curb - and when someone tried to steal it, the
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I would remind your friend that artists make very little money on CD sales. This is why you see the publishers going after teenage girls, not an artist. Artists make money performing, and so many artists have started giving away their songs as mp3, to increase interest in the band, and therefore increase their income.
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I tell him then that every library should be closed then because they violate copyrights as well.
When someone checks out a book, that author isn't getting any money from it. And they have records and movies you can check out, why not close them for the producers of said records, books and movies not making any money?
I don't think loaning someone a book or CD was ever a copyright violation, and you'd be welcome to do it too. Though if they'd copied them and given away the copies, that would've been a different story. That really doesn't seem like a big distinction to us, but to most it is.
Unless the book is in electronic format. Then a different set of rules seem to apply.
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I don't give a shit for being seen as a tough guy.
The corporate abuse of the copyright as I see it is pissing me off.
So much to the point I am ready to soil myself with politics and run to clean this crap up. Soapbox, Ballot, Courtroom, Bullet. In that order.
- Dan.
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The courts should rule first of all that the guilds have no standing with respect to works of authors they do not represent... which, despite their name, is a lot of them.
The courts should first hit Google with the maximum penalty for copyright infringement, for each case of infringement they've committed. Because that's kind of what the whole case is about. If I can't photocopy a book and put it on my public website / private computer without permission of the copyright owner, then Google can't scan millions of books and put them into a university's public / semi-public library, nor can they index them on their public web site.
It's flagrant violation of copyright law, yet if you put a video of your birthday party on youtube, it's only a matter of time before the copyright bots block your video because it triggered on the performance of the copyrighted "Happy Birthday" song.
That is all wrong. The court can only hit Google with the maximum penalty for each case of copyright infringement for each person who goes to court and asks for it. In this case, it looks like some sort of industry group is suing. Too bad they can only recover for people they represent whose book has been copied. However, it may be worth it because they can sue if they can demonstrate one of their members had a book copied. They can then set a precedent for future cases by all authors.
Exactly. (Score:3)
They can then set a precedent for future cases by all authors.
I'm convinced that's exactly what they are trying to accomplish: [slashdot.org] they want to be the MAFIAA of written works, and seem determined to keep trying until they can bootstrap themselves into that position.
It's like watching The Omen [wikimedia.org], only real.
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Not if the books are out of copyright. Books that are out of circulation might be debatable. Books which the copyrights have never been enforced are again debatable. Books whose authors are dead, and there are no clear estate holders are very much debatable.
Who owns a book, if not the university that paid for it?
I've never heard that Google was digitizing books that are currently under copyright, current in print, and the authors or their estates are actively enforcing copyrights. If the owner of a 200
Re:Scram (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem is, the longer copyright terms get, the more works are lost for good.
Don't believe me? Think about how many books "under copyright" may be lost simply because nobody preserves a copy. Think about how many films are lost [wikipedia.org] merely because the original source, moldering under "copyright protection", went bad in the can down in the vaults of some MafiAA member and either is unreadable, or perished in a vault fire (early nitrate stock is NOTORIOUS for being susceptible to both).
We almost lost an amazing amount of black gospel music [baylor.edu] before a few concerned citizens stepped in; we STILL risk losing a large amount of it due to MafiAA meddling.
And that doesn't even discuss the loss of computer programs for formats and computers that won't expire copyright for decades, but are functionally already dead - the guy who built this [chrisfenton.com] is having a devil of a time finding software to test it with, merely because disk packs weren't maintained and SGI apparently wiped most of their archives. Or the various game consoles, or early home computers where most software was stored on highly volatile and quickly-degrading floppy disks...
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If a book becomes dead, it might be because of the bad content, although I would hate to see one become lost because of that specific reason. I'm the author of ten books. All are trade paperback format. All will disintegrate one day. I've digitized them all, because I inarguably own the copyright.
Yet two of them have turned up in Google Books, then were taken down at my demand. If they turn up in the universities, there is a fair-use copy they can manage (or more than one, depending on how many copies they
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So long as there is another copy of the information in that book available, nothing of value has been lost. It's the loss of information in losing the last copy of a book which matters.
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This is not a problem. The function of copyright law is to maximise profit. If these works were profitable, they would have been preserved. They were not, it cost too much to archive them, so they perished. In both cases, profit was best served.
I'm not making some polemical or rhetorical argument here(not fully anyway). Our modern copyright system revolves around the concept of private profit--not public interest--and as s
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The function of copyright law is to maximise profit
No it's not.
The function of copyright [wipo.int] is "to encourage a dynamic culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public."
library exemptions to copyright (Score:2)
oops... sorry google (Score:1)
when I read the story about the guy who ripped off the JSTOR archives by sitting in an MIT wiring closet, and got sued for it, i screamed "How is this different from what google does with google books? they didnt get copyright permission from all their authors..."
guess.. uhm.. oops. guess it wasnt THAT different.
Re:oops... sorry google (Score:5, Interesting)
The JSTOR guy wasn't charged with any copyright violations. JSTOR themselves seem to have distanced themselves from the criminal prosecution too by releasing a statement that they will not pursue civil charges and, by implication, they aren't behind the criminal charges. And then last week JSTOR made all of their public domain articles freely accessible to non-subscribers.
On the other hand, Google does need a slap-down here. The people they are "negotiating" with don't have any standing wrt to abandoned works - if they did, the works would not qualify as abandoned. If Google really wants this, they need to lobby for changes in the law. The MAFIAA has no problem buying senators, Google's got more than enough money to buy practically the entire senate. If they don't have a problem with "defensive" software patents, they shouldn't have a problem with defensive lobbying either....
AG == Righthaven? (Score:3)
Almost sounds like Righthaven, doesn't it? But why would Google need to get slapped down? I would think that the AG is the one getting out of line here in trying to represent people legally that it has no right to.
IANAL, so....lawyers, is it legal to represent someone without their expressed consent?
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IANAL, so....lawyers, is it legal to represent someone without their expressed consent?
That's the job of the attorney general - representing "the people" as a whole. Although, AFAIK no AG has anything to do with the Google Books case.
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Ok. Not used to AG having other meanings in a legal context.
It isn't that the Author's Guild is right or wrong, it's that Google is wrong.
As part of society I say abandoned works should be in the public domain and since Google wants to treat them that way then its only fair that everybody get to treat them that way, not just google because they are loaded with more than enough cash to fight anyone who does sue them.
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As part of society I say abandoned works should be in the public domain and since Google wants to treat them that way then its only fair that everybody get to treat them that way,
And Google prevents this HOW?
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It isn't that google is preventing anything. They are just as beholden to the copyright bargain as anyone else and that includes both sides of the bargain. When they break the bargain not only are breaking it with the authors of the abandoned works they are breaking it with every member of society - we gave those rights to the authors, not to google. Because copyright is merely a temporary loan from the public domain, we as a society have an interest in seeing the bargain upheld or at least renegotiated
Re:AG == Righthaven? (Score:5, Insightful)
we as a society have an interest in seeing the bargain upheld or at least renegotiated to reflect the changing circumstances so that it can continue to be upheld.
Well then trot out these authors, or the heirs of those who are dead AND have abandoned their works and lets us sit down and renegotiate. Google has long asked for any information to find these people or their heirs. They are a search company. They couldn't find them. Your level of indignation suggests you know where they are and how badly they have been treated.
Dead before the cut-off date, (i forget the exact date here, but its somewhere in the 20s IIRC) then there is no problem.
Living and already have given permission or withheld it, again no problem.
But this middle ground of unknown authors, who are quite probably dead with no heirs accounts for a tiny tiny number books, which Google will immediately remove if the authors should appear. Too date, not a one of them have.
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Well then trot out these authors,
No. I do not need to do that in order to say that Google is wrong. This is not a court of law and you aren't a lawyer. If anything the lawyers agree with me since the court has not dismissed the Author's Guild for lack of standing.
Re:AG == Righthaven? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the borrower dies or disappears, the loaned item is repatriated by the loaner. The orphan books being digitized are works where the author is unfindable. There is nobody to negotiate with. Unless someone like google preserves the works, they will simply turn to dust and disappear forever. Effectively, the author has reneged on the copyright deal by vanishing without a trace and taking the works with him.
If google has wronged someone, let that someone or a rightful heir come forward and say so. Their silence tells us they either don't feel wronged or don't care (perhaps they're past caring due to a mild case of dead).
Consider, if the Author's Guild wins something on the behalf of one of these authors, do you REALLY think they will stick it in a safe until they can track the guy down? Or will they just compound the wrong by stealing the absentee author's rightful awards? Given that copyright has been lengthened several times now, it is quite likely that the authors of some of these orphaned works had every expectation that their books would be in the public domain by now.
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When the borrower dies or disappears, the loaned item is repatriated by the loaner.
The problem is that is NOT the way the law is written. Not even kinda sorta, it is incontrovertibly not written that way. The handling of orphan works is one of the most broken things about current copyright law in the US.
I'm good with the law being changed to work that way. What I'm not good with is Google setting themselves up to break the law because they can afford to pay the consequences while just about everybody else can not. The law is not intended to be something anyone can violate as long as
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Google isn't wrong, the law is. It was sloppily written by a bunch of hacks that let power go to their heads as usual.
Who are they wronging? Perhaps the dead if you can be said to wrong a ghost (if you even believe in an afterlife). So why are the courts allowing a 3rd party to butt in? Because they're broken. If the courts didn't let anyone sue for any old thing, this wouldn't be an issue for anyone. It would go like this:
Small publisher publishes works still under copyright but abandoned. Nobody with an i
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Who are they wronging?
They are wronging everybody else in our society. We all still have to suffer those restrictions but Google doesn't simply because they "have the big bucks." They are effectively changing rule of law to rule of man and that is not how a democracy works. An oligarchy yes, but not a democracy.
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Why is it any skin off my nose if google makes a book by a dead author available to me? If I am wronged, I am wronged by anyone who would keep me from doing the same thing. I am wronged by the courts and the legislature.
Do Olympic athletes wrong you by accomplishing things you can't by virtue of genetic gifts and putting in a lot of sweat equity?
If someone is wronging us, it's the Author's Guild for helping to create a legal atmosphere where you and I can't afford to publish the works of an absentee author.
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If I am wronged, I am wronged by anyone who would keep me from doing the same thing.
No. You are wronged because someone with a lot of money gets to ignore the laws that you don't get to ignore. The law is not supposed to be some other entity outside of society - it is part of society. That "anyone" who keeps you from doing the same thing is you, and me, and google and your neighbor down the road and everyone else in this country. At least it is in a functioning democracy. But not in an oligarchy. Google's move to spend their way out of being equal before the law is inherently unde
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If all you got from my posts is "might makes right", you aren't reading for comprehension.
I am in favor of an egalitarian solution where we are all free to do what google is doing now, I just recognize that the roadblocks to that (and thus, the enemies of the egalitarian ideal) come from the courts, legislature, and the likes of the Author's Guild, not from google.
I simply recognize that sometimes might can allow you to do what you should be allowed to do anyway but aren't. The fault for that lies with who
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I am in favor of an egalitarian solution where we are all free to do what google is doing now, I just recognize that the roadblocks to that (and thus, the enemies of the egalitarian ideal) come from the courts, legislature, and the likes of the Author's Guild, not from google.
And what you aren't recognising is that google is just as much part of the problem.
As a member of society it is incumbent on google to pursue a fix through the democratic process. That is the way our society is designed.
You keep talking about putting the blame on the courts and legislature for standing in google's way. They are only standing in google's way because google is facing in the wrong direction. The right direction is the democratic process, the wrong direction is buying their way around it.
I
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That is why Google is trying to fight this. If they can get a ruling on this being legal, then there is nothing stopping you from using that very same ruling in court if someone tries to go after you. Precedent doesn't only apply to Google, it applies to you and me as well. Precedent is one way of changing the law to fit the real world, another way is getting the legislature to pass a new law, which do you think it easier/cheaper?
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If they can get a ruling on this being legal, then there is nothing stopping you from using that very same ruling in court if someone tries to go after you.
Are you sure about that? My understanding is that settlements do not establish precedent and settling seems to be all that Google has been trying to do.
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And if google gives the works away by offering it for free on their site (ad-supported to run the infrastructure) are they still wrong'ing society?
Sounds to me like you are suggesting the sell-out of a basic tenent of society - that everybody is equal before the law - for a shiny trinket. A shiny trinket that they are still going to make money on selling to us.
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But the AG never had those rights to give, and that deal never succeeded and was struck down. Now the AG wants that deal back, or at least they assert that they still have some say in this matter.
Look, its simply divide and conqueror, by suing Google in every country where there is even one author that is a member of such a guild. They still haven't any right to represent authors who are unknown, who have not given the AG written permission to represent them.
AG is a far bigger usurper in this case than Go
Cisco can bring criminal charges to court (Score:2)
all it has to do is ring up the Attorney General on the gigantic 3 foot tall "competition and free market" phone in the whitehouse.
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The MAFIAA has no problem buying senators, Google's got more than enough money to buy practically the entire senate.
Wouldn't that be evil?
Heaven forbid (Score:5, Insightful)
... that people get to read these works!
As a writer I understand the tension between wanting to be read and wanting to be paid. Some want only the former, some the latter; I want both, kind of like eat to live and live to eat combined. Such is my right. But I find the resistence to digitization foolish, a fixation on money and a holdover from dead tree books plus a first use doctrine many publishers and authors never liked. It's obstructionist.
As a reader, full speed ahead. I am so tired of books missing at the library or out of print. Then there's the allure of getting a book within thirty seconds. Yes, I'll pay for the privilege, can we please hurry up with an eye to both principles (get read, get paid)? And books in the public domain? Rapture. (Topic for another day: The insane extension of copyright in the Mickey Mouse / Sonny Bono Act.....)
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Such is my right.
Is it, though? Between this and the story about the EU copyright extension, it seems that both authors groups and content owners (and no, they aren't the same) are all supporting infinite copyright extensions with no provision for orphaned works. If your "right" to make money conflicts with society's interest in preserving this content for future generations, which wins out?
Competition from orphaned works (Score:2)
Re:Heaven forbid (Score:5, Insightful)
If your "right" to make money conflicts with society's interest in preserving this content for future generations, which wins out?
Well, you compromise. That's why copyrights and patents do and should expire.
Perhaps you misrepresented your position, but why should we compromise between what a special interest wants and what is best for society. Shouldn't laws just be what is best for society?
Without copyright, an author doesn't have spit unless they can negotiate a really really good deal with the very first reader.
Now look, I've made my living primarily as a writer for many years. The idea that copyright is the only viable business model for a writer is just bunk; especially in the internet age. You can post works for free and make money on ads. You can set up a fund whereby you only issue the next episode/issue/chapter when donations reach a certain level. You can use writing to promote a profitable business lecturing.
I'm not opposed to reasonable copyright law and certainly benefit from copyright laws on the books, but I'm of the very strong opinion that our current laws do more harm than good to society; and that is a trend that is only getting worse. Our society is run by big businesses and in that light the laws being passed make perfect sense. If you think what is good for big business is implicitly good for society, well I'm not sure rational discourse is even possible. We need to stand up and be clear about this complex issue; otherwise the majority will never care and the special interests will destroy what rightfully belongs to our descendants. Many works have vanished and every day the last copy of something gets destroyed. It is intolerable to me, and should be to you and everyone else. Please, think deeply on this topic.
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Writers are part of society. What is best for society includes their welfare (food, housing) and, for their readers (all of us), keeping them productive. Finally, this is for better or worse capitalism, so you have some control over the things you make (in Lockean theory). If you want to depart from that principle, fine, but don't just inflict it on the writers because it's easy!
The rest of your arguments are just that writers like musicians can get into some other business and give their work away. Well, s
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Yep. As I emphasized, the stuff should get read, and copyright at some point just gets in the way. I'm not sure how many authors, now dead, would have wanted the extensions to happen. *Disney* on the other hand wants to conserve its assets and didn't want to see new Mickey Mouses. That's the real fire behind these extensions, and weird sentimentality about the oeuvre of (semi-martyred) Sonny Bono. Now, most writers *don't* die with huge estates and do want to pass something of value to their heirs (it's unl
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Now look, I've made my living primarily as a writer for many years. The idea that copyright is the only viable business model for a writer is just bunk; especially in the internet age. (1) You can post works for free and make money on ads. (2)You can set up a fund whereby you only issue the next episode/issue/chapter when donations reach a certain level. (3)You can use writing to promote a profitable business lecturing.
1) Doesn't work without copyright. I'll just visit your website once, make a copy of your works, and post them on my own site. People will visit mine because it's a "book aggregator" -- all the best books in one place! I get money, you get nothing. Thanks for all your hard work!
2) Only works if you know exactly how much you expect to make from each work. Set your donations level too high, and it won't be reached and your fans will leave. Set it too low, and you're leaving money, perhaps a lot of money
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1) Doesn't work without copyright. I'll just visit your website once, make a copy of your works, and post them on my own site. People will visit mine because it's a "book aggregator" -- all the best books in one place! I get money, you get nothing. Thanks for all your hard work!
Though I don't speak for the GP, I can say that very few in here would want the abolishment of copyright. It's only the current term/length that people find offensive. I think that the original terms were pretty reasonable. Even the life of the original author (person, not company) + 5 years would be much more reasonable than life + 70 years. Or, say the lesser of life+30 years, or 45 years from the original date. Lasting more than 4-5 generations just isn't acceptable imho. The original 17 + 17 on r
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You probably need to modulate the length depending on what the object being copyrighted is. I find it reasonable that Mickey is copyrighted as long as Disney company actively use the character and that can be for a very long time. The same should be true of any work being actively exploited (i.e. being in print or software being distributed). I think we should have a very short expiry time for out of print, probably 10 years out of print for a book should make it fall in the public domain, 3 years for out o
Plane Crazy (Score:3)
Why is Mickey so special all of the sudden?
Because its copyright owner was one of the two biggest proponents of the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (aka the "Bono Act"). Disney holds exclusive license to the four books by A.A. Milne on which the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise is founded, and the first of the four (When We Were Very Young) would have entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2000, had the Bono Act not been enacted. The initial Mickey Mouse trilogy (Plane Crazy, The Gallopin' Gaucho, and Steamboat Willie) would hav
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[Providing them for free] Doesn't work without copyright. I'll just visit your website once, make a copy of your works, and post them on my own site. People will visit mine because it's a "book aggregator" -- all the best books in one place! I get money, you get nothing. Thanks for all your hard work!
Baen provides free copies of a huge number of their older books (often books 1 through (N-1) in an N-book series). Often they're bundled together in an ISO or a Zip file, in a variety of formats. (Epub, Mobi, HTML) Amazingly, Baen still makes lots of money selling physical books, despite their books being posted online in a manner which would be trivial to aggregate and re-post as a torrent. (Who knows, maybe someone has done that already.)
So ... releasing for free would work even without copyright, I im
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Sorry it took me so long to respond, and likely you won't read this, but on the off chance you will and you're open to changing your mind I thought it important to respond to your points.
1) Doesn't work without copyright. I'll just visit your website once, make a copy of your works, and post them on my own site. People will visit mine because it's a "book aggregator" -- all the best books in one place! I get money, you get nothing. Thanks for all your hard work!
This is certainly a consideration, but it leaves out an important aspect of human culture, people want to reward the authors. People see creators as people to be looked up to and they want to be associated with them. A little advertising and guilt tripping and it can be easily made "uncool" to bypass an author's channel and
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He stated "The idea that copyright is the only viable business model for a writer is just bunk."
I proved that statement to be false.
If he had posted, "I'm not opposed to arithmetic, but the idea that 2+2 is only equal to 4 is just bunk", should I have agreed with that as well, since I too support arithmetic?
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I was using Google books awhile back for some genealogical research. One of the books I was using was the Diary of Joshua Hempstead of New London, Connecticut [google.com], published in 1901, which was originally written in 1711-1758.
It's dull diary entries, mostly describing the weather, what task the author had accomplished that day, any income, and who died.
Oddly, the book was republished in 2008, in paperback format. I can buy it on Amazon for $39. But I would have never found it. I'm not related to the auth
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The best option i can see is to tack a levy on the net connection, and feed that into a creative support pool. Sure, it is not as fine grained as having a sum lifted on every download or every read/listen/view (what the laywers like to define as consumption, even tho nothing is really consumed). But in the end i think the only people that will loose out are the fat cat execs and their lawyers.
Thing is tho that for there to be a slice of the pool i think there is a need for a work to be registered rather the
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from your link I will remember mostly one thing:
If contracts were fish, then the contract on my house would be an ornamental carp, the book contract would be a bluefin tuna, and the option contract would be an angry great white shark.
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Patience, it will happen. I wonder about the translation barrier—good translation is expensive. No, not all of us Americans expect everyone to learn English. :) But also, the book I'm working on ... I'm very sensitive about the way I put things and have to wonder how much is "lost in translation." Anyway, these arte other issues from copyright.... Where do you live? I'll make it a priority!
Shows importance of Project Gutenberg (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, this story shows the importance of keeping Project Gutenberg moving forward, slowly but steadily.
Project Gutenberg has an end point (Score:2)
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Start digitizing books published prior to 1963 whose copyright wasn't renewed? Or start work on the books from 1923, which they will legally be able to publish in 7 years' time (I imagine it will take them at least the next 7 years to finish off everything worth keeping from prior to 1923).
Copyright Term Extension Act of 2018 (Score:2)
Start digitizing books published prior to 1963 whose copyright wasn't renewed?
For one thing, that set is also finite. For another, PGLAF would likely have to implement geolocation-based access control on these works and block them from view in non-rule of the shorter term countries in order to shield its assets in those countries.
Or start work on the books from 1923, which they will legally be able to publish in 7 years' time
For one thing, copyright owners might still be able to claim infringement even for intermediate copies. For another, you appear to forget the rumored Copyright Term Extension Act of 2018, for which The Walt Disney Company and the Estate of George Gershwin wi
Simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
a) do not digitize any of the books of authors in the Authors Guild that do not request their books be digitized.
b) pull the books of authors in the Authors Guild from the school library and all curriculum that do not give express permission to digitize their books.
be careful what you ask for because you might just get it and more.
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Unfortunately, the Authors' Guild do not publish a list of their members.
lol @ "the media" (Score:5, Interesting)
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http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2424634&cid=37382840 [slashdot.org]
I know I am wasting my time replying to the mafiaa AC mouthpiece, but you are a fool to think it's only about free shit. Read the link I just posted.
Research done this way would benefit us all if moneygrubbing assholes like you would just let the fuck go.
Sovereign Immunity might bar the lawsuit (Score:3)
You can't sue a State or the federal government unless they specifically allow it. Some States might allow their state universities to be sued, but most do not. There is already caselaw involving courts upholding sovereign immunity in these kinds of cases.
Might be a bit of a stumbling block in regards to suing the entities under the state sovereign immunity umbrella.
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Just a guess here, since I am not a lawyer, but I don't think sovereign immunity protects the states from being sued under federal law.
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It does and it does not. You can sue the state to change its practices, but you cannot sue for money damages.
Unless you sue under a specific federal statute that allows money damages. One such example is Section 1983—a statute specifically designed to allow folks to sue for violations of civil rights and receive money damages. (Prior to this, you could sue and win, but all you'd get was a change in behavior.
There is no similar statute for copyright. At best the plaintiffs can stop the behavior, bu
"Abducted?" (Score:4, Interesting)
First it was stealing, now it's abducted. The hyperbole increases. How long before we will be accused of 'killing' copyright holders? But it makes sense this time; we're dealing with the guild that supposedly represents people who know how to create inflammatory language.
Let us use our own hyperboles:
"With their infinitely extending copyrights, these guys have been commiting mass murder on the public domain!"
"They have totally vivesected our rights to have ideas come out of copyright."
"It's like they're hacking our limbs off, one by one!"
Rent seeking. (Score:3)
Copyright is clearly being abused. It's time to bring it back to 14 years and a 14 year renewal like when they had it in 1790. The framers of the Constitution did not set out to enable you to create one work and sit on your ass for the rest of your life and enrich your grandkids after your demise.
We should all ignore copyright law as it stands, as practicable. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
If you are an author: too bad. Your bad apples have declared war on society at large and stolen from the public domain.
--
BMO
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I don't know what your point is, AC, but please do feel free to copy this as many times as you wish. You may even put your own name to it. Have at it.
Same with all my comments here and in Usenet and on Facebook and wherever.
--
BMO
Let no good deed go unpunished (Score:2)
Don't these numbskulls realize that books unread are just paper?
Not even as good as toilet paper. At least that stuff has a purpose.
1st Rule... (Score:2)
1st Rule for the Digital Age: The moment you digitize something, you stand to lose control of it.
2nd Rule for the Digital Age: Don't digitize something you don't want to lose control over.
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"3rd Rule for the Digital Age: If you don't digitize it it will turn to dust."
But, by then I will have too.
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copyright isn't a right (Score:4, Insightful)
the US constitution had it right: copyrights and patents exist for the purpose of promoting progress. the primary goal isn't to give people a living - particularly not to guarantee profits to some company. we need to rethink the whole legal infrastructure around the concept of IP...
Suit is about how broad is educational fair use (Score:2)
This suit has nothing to do with public domain works. It is whether the universities and HathiTrust have a fair use right to digitize copyrighted works for which they can't request permission because they can't find the copyright holder and make digital copies available to students and faculty. This fair use claim is based on one of the four factors for determining fair use of a US copyrighted work: the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonpro
start their own digitization project (Score:2)
Why don't they start their own digitization project? I mean, iTunes and Netfix should be of some example here. How much money do Apple make off of iTunes? Why can't the Authors' Guild and its equivalents in Australia, Quebec, and the UK just come together and start their own iBookStore? They have the books, they have the money and they would be swimming in money like Apple with iTunes.
Are they really enjoy being the asses they are, or are they really that backward? That puzzles me for a long time, even befo
Does the author's coalition understand Congress? (Score:2)
The digital works wouldn't be deleted, but [the author's coalition] wants to see "any computer system storing the digital copies powered down and disconnected from any network, pending an appropriate act of Congress." (Note that they want them shut down and unplugged, just to be sure.)
Stopping the computers from running may be as simple as unplugging them, but getting Congress running takes a lot more money than the author's coalition is likely to have.
Solution (Score:2)
Simple solution:
1. Write a book (or a rant, for that matter)
2. Put it on the internet, somewhere it is likely to be copied illegally
3. Now go out on the streets, use a megaphone, and start proclaiming you're an author and you don't take it anymore.
4. Repeat every Saturday morning in a shopping mall.
5. People in your neighborhood will eventually hate copyright.
6. ?
7. Profit.
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In the many years since I was eligible to vote I have never once voted for either 'old party', but that hasn't changed anything yet.