the toll-booth model of InPo, was Google Print

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Levine <johnl () iecc com>
Date: October 25, 2005 1:24:18 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: the toll-booth model of IP, was Google Print


> Back to Google Print.  I've received a number of notes from
> self-described "small" published authors regarding the GPfL project.
> Listening to the proponents of GPfL, you'd expect these authors to be
> among the strongest supporters of the project.  But in fact, the view
> I hear over and over again is that they feel that Google wants to
> "steal" from them, and is treating them arrogantly.

This is the toll booth model of intellectual property.  Lots of people
with small bits of IP engage in wishful thinking and conclude that if
there's a bazillion dollars flowing somewhere and .001% of it happens
to flow in the vicinity of their IP, by golly, they want their
commission on .001% of a bazillion.

Unfortunately, in the real world, that ain't how it works.  I have
written a lot of books about the Internet, in which there are a lot of
pictures of web sites.  I have always maintained that the use of these
images falls squarely within fair use (confirmed in practice by a
complete lack of threats or complaints over the past 12 years), but
for a while in the maximum greed part of the dot.com bubble, my
publisher was demanding permission for everything.

So what happened?  For about half of the screen shots I would have
used, I decided I didn't care that much, and I did something else.
For the rest, we had someone send them a letter asking for permission.
If the answer was "OK" or perhaps "OK if you acknowledge us on the
copyright page", we used it.  If they set conditions or asked for
payment, we dropped it.  As a result, the books in that era had a lot
of screen shots of the Census Bureau and other public domain sites,
and nobody got paid anything.  I think my actions were completely
typical of what real authors do under those circumstances.

The alternative to leakage and no money isn't leakage and money, it's
no leakage and no money.  Would that be to anyone's benefit?  I don't
think so.  Considering that the goal of the copyright clause is to get
material published and eventually into the public domain, a strict
interpretation that made incidental copies illegal and made it
impossible to do projects that use harmless copies of other people's
stuff would also be contrary to public policy.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl () iecc com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for  
Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor
"I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.

Claimer: I belong to the Author's Guild, but the moment I heard about
their suit, I wrote to them and told them to leave me out of any class
they try create for it.



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