More author opinions on Google Print

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "F. Parsons" <faeparsons () yahoo com>
Date: October 28, 2005 7:50:35 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: More author opinions on Google Print


Dave:

For IP, if you wish.
Carolyn Jewel
(Author and Author's Guild Member)



-------- Original Message --------
Subject:     President Nick Taylor on Google Library
Date:     Fri, 28 Oct 2005 15:38:04 -0400 (EDT)
From:     staff () authorsguild org <staff () authorsguild org>
Reply-To:     staff () authorsguild org
<staff () authorsguild org>
To:     carolyn () carolynjewel com


If you have trouble reading this email, go to the
online version.

In case you missed it, we wanted to recommend and send
to you Authors Guild President Nick Taylor's op-ed
piece (registration required, or read the copy below)
that appeared in last Saturday's Washington Post.

We also highly recommend the opinion piece in
yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle by Guild board
member Clarissa Pinkola Estés entitled "Bride of
Google -- Evaluating a Suitor's Character by How He
Courts" (no registration required).

Have a good weekend.

------------------------------------
 . . . But Not at Writers' Expense

By Nick Taylor
Saturday, October 22, 2005; A21

I am a writer.

For some time now -- too much time, I suspect my
editor believes -- I have been working on a history of
the Works Progress Administration. This has taken me
to states from Maine to California, into archives and
libraries, and on long and occasionally fruitful
searches for survivors of the Depression-era program.

I have invested a small fortune in books chronicling
the period and copies of old newspapers, spent
countless hours on Internet searches, paid assistants
to dig up obscure bits of information, and then sat at
my keyboard trying to spin a mountain of facts into a
compelling narrative. Money advanced by my publisher
has made this possible.

Except for a few big-name authors, publishers roll the
dice and hope that a book's sales will return their
investment. Because of this, readers have a wealth of
wonderful books to choose from. Most authors do not
live high on their advances; my hourly return at this
point is laughable.

Only if my book sells well enough to earn back its
advance will I make additional money, but the law of
copyright assures me of ongoing ownership. With luck,
income will flow to my publisher and me for a long
time, but if my publisher loses interest, I will still
own my book and be able to make money from it.

So my question is this: When did we in this country
decide that this kind of work and investment isn't
worth paying for?

That is what Google, the powerful and extremely
wealthy search engine, with co-founders ranking among
the 20 richest people in the world, is saying by
declining to license in-copyright works in its library
scanning program, which has the otherwise admirable
aim of making the world's books available for search
by anyone with Web access.

Google says writers and publishers should be happy
about this: It will increase their exposure and maybe
lead to more book sales.

That's a devil's bargain.

We'd all like to have more exposure, obviously. But is
that the only form of compensation Google can come up
with when it makes huge profits on the ads it sells
along the channels its users are compelled to
navigate?

Now that the Authors Guild has objected, in the form
of a lawsuit, to Google's appropriation of our books,
we're getting heat for standing in the way of
progress, again for thoughtlessly wanting to be paid.
It's been tradition in this country to believe in
property rights. When did we decide that socialism was
the way to run the Internet?

The New York Public Library and Oxford University's
Bodleian Library, two of the five libraries in the
Google program, have recognized the problem. They are
limiting the books scanned from their collections to
those in the public domain, on which copyright
protections have expired.

That is not the case with the others -- the libraries
of the University of Michigan, Harvard and Stanford.
Michigan's librarian believes that the authors'
insistence on their rights amounts to speed bumps in
the road of progress. "We cannot lose sight of the
tremendous benefits this project will bring to
society," he said in a news release.

In other words, traffic is moving too slowly, so let's
remove the stop signs.

Google contends that the portions of books it will
make available to searchers amount to "fair use," the
provision under copyright that allows limited use of
protected works without seeking permission. That makes
a private company, which is profiting from the access
it provides, the arbiter of a legal concept it has no
right to interpret. And they're scanning the entire
books, with who knows what result in the future.

There is no argument about the ultimate purpose of
Google's initiative. Great value lies in a searchable,
online "library at Alexandria" containing all the
world's books, at least to that fraction of society
that has computers, the electricity to run them and
Internet connections. It would make human knowledge
available on an unprecedented scale. But it must be
done correctly, by acquiring the rights to the
resources it wishes to exploit.

The value of Google's project notwithstanding, society
has traditionally seen its greatest value in the
rights of individuals, and particularly in the dignity
of their work and just compensation for it.

The people who cry that information wants to be free
don't address this dignity or this aspect of justice.
They're more interested in ease of assembly. The
alphabet ought to be free, most certainly, but the
people who painstakingly arrange it into books deserve
to be paid for their work. This, at the core, is what
copyright is all about. It's about a just return for
work and the dignity that goes with it.
The writer is president of the Authors Guild and is
the author of nonfiction books.
------------------------------------

Nick´s op-ed appeared opposite one by Mary Sue
Coleman, president of the University of Michigan
entitled "Riches We Must Share..."  (registration
required). Coleman suggests that the Google Library
project will help provide access to published works to
anyone in the world.  If she means works that are
still in copyright, then we face copyright
infringement that is even more troubling than what
we've alleged in our complaint.  If she means public
domain works, we of course have no objection.

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