"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
29 September 2005I thought Pirate Day was last weekMatt Deatherage sees one serious problem with Google Print's Library Project:
Google wants a full, digital copy of a book it did not purchase or license. It wants to keep and use the full text of a book, without any permission from the copyright holder. What Google does with that copy is irrelevant.
This is the same argument as software piracy or music piracy, but now with books. The ability to copy the data doesn't mean it's legal. If this means Google Print can't work, then everyone involved will have to figure out some way to make it work. Google's "we'll do it and you'll like it, trust us" attitude does not trump intellectual property. As a music collector, I've run up against this myself. Until recently, almost nothing released on the Cameo/Parkway labels was commercially available. I have on my shelf a lot of these old recordings. And even though you couldn't go to the store and buy any of this material, the law permits me only to make copies for myself: it quite clearly does not permit me to distribute them to others. Google Print could be an invaluable tool for searching old public-domain material; but if they really want to include material under copyright, it's their responsibility to pony up the bucks for it. Posted at 10:13 AM to Almost YogurtGoogle isn't distributing full copies of the works to others. If anyone is doing that, it's the libraries. But that is what libraries do, isn't it? "Ponying up the bucks" for copyrighted content is kind of hard when a work has been out of print for 40 years, the publisher no longer exists, and the author is probably dead. Where would you start? Posted by: Doug Lay at 5:24 AM on 30 September 2005I'm thinking that the best path might be that followed by the American Song-Poem Music Archive, which has issued recordings of the lyrics that were written by unsuspecting amateurs hoping to get a break in the music biz by answering ads for same; sales of their recordings generate royalties which are placed in a trust fund on behalf of the composers, whoever they may be, and should they present themselves, they will be presumably cut a check. CGHill: The solution you present would be terrific (though probably legally questionable) if Google were making the full text of "orphaned" books available. As it stands, given that the snippets Google are offering are almost certainly covered under Fair Use, I don't think they owe any authors or publishers a penny. I respect that others will disagree on that. The courts will decide. Posted by: Doug Lay at 12:06 PM on 30 September 2005If they're going to keep it down to the snippet level, I don't have any problem with it: fair-use provisions should prevail. I just don't want to see it growing into entire book transfers at a single shot. |