Google reaches agreement with authors

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: "Steven Schear" <steven.schear () googlemail com>
Date: December 1, 2008 6:24:27 PM PST
Subject: Google reaches agreement with authors

Google have reached a historic agreement to allow the scanning and  
digitizing of something very much like All the World's Books. So here  
is the long dreamed-of universal library, its contents available (more  
or less) to every computer screen anywhere.

The suit was filed in September 2005 when Google embarked on an  
audacious program of copying onto its servers every book it could get  
its hands on. This was a lot of books, because the Internet giant  
struck deals with the libraries of the University of Michigan,  
Harvard, Stanford and many others. On its face this looked like a  
brazen assault on copyright, but Google argued that it should be  
protected as a new kind of "fair use" and went on scanning during two  
and a half years of secret negotiations.

By now the company has digitized at least seven million titles. Many  
are old enough to be in the public domain — no issue there — and many  
are new enough to be available in bookstores, but the vast majority,  
four million to five million, are books that had fallen into a kind of  
limbo: protected by copyright but out of print. Their publishers had  
given up on them. They existed at libraries and used booksellers but  
otherwise had left the playing field.

As a way through the impasse, the authors persuaded Google to do more  
than just scan the books for purposes of searching, but go further, by  
bringing them back to commercial life. Under the agreement these  
millions of out-of-print books return from limbo. Any money made from  
advertising or licensing fees will go partly to Google and mostly to  
the rights-holders. The agreement is nonexclusive: If competitors to  
Google want to get into the business, they can.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30gleick.html>

---------------------------------------------

I wrote about this copyright conundrum over 10 years ago, "COPYLEFT:  
Rethinking Intellectual Property in the Digital Age." <http://web.archive.org/web/20040624034123/http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/copyleft.htm 
>  Google and the authors have adopted something similar to one of my  
ideas (which was very radical at the time): place books back into  
active publication (especially digital) or effectively lose control of  
your copyright.

"About 50,000 U.S. books go out-of-print each year. The lack of  
continuous availability of these works runs counter to the implicit  
balance sought by the founding fathers between the needs of the public  
and copyright holders. In the past copyright holders could reasonably  
maintain that economics prohibited keeping works in print. But with  
practical, economic and ubiquitous on-line means, this is no longer a  
barrier.
This being so, why should copyrights on "significant" (e.g., written  
works with a length greater than 20,000 words) commercialized works  
continue when the public cannot gain ready access to copies of them?  
This logic follows from the use-it-or-lose-it concept of trademarks.  
Changes are need to ensure the public that such "significant"  
commercialized copyright works are continuously available.

Under this recommendation the works must remain available from the  
copyright holder or their licensee. Specialty resellers (e.g., hard to  
find book locators) wouldn't count, but electronic publication would.  
If a copyright holder fails to keep a work continuously available,  
then after a brief interval (e.g., six months) the copyright would  
lapse."

SteveRSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>




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