more on An author's dissent on Google Print

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tim O'Reilly <timoreilly () gmail com>
Date: October 30, 2005 12:36:47 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on An author's dissent on Google Print
Reply-To: tim () oreilly com


On 10/30/05,  David Pakman <david () dimensionalassociates com> wrote:


> This cannot be fair use because, among so many other reasons, the  
> copier
> is a COMMERCIAL entity actually making money by selling advertising
> around the copied works.

Dave, in response to this argument, it should be pointed out that the  
New
York Review of Books or the NY Times book review section are also
"COMMERCIAL entit[ies] actually making money by selling advertising
around the copied works."  Next time you read a book review (also
intended to help sell books and help people to find them), not the
extensive use of quotations from the book, surrounded on all sides
by advertising.

This argument, in short, is a complete canard.  And it's the dirty  
little
secret behind both the Author's Guild and AAP suits.  I've talked to
board members of both organizations, and while the talk is all about
copyright principle, before long, a note of envy, which soon swells
to an unmistakable whine, creeps in.  Google is making so much
money.  They'll make even more money here.  We ought to get a
piece of it.

And this despite the fact that the works that are causing most of
the controversy are those in the "twilight zone" of publishing:  the
60-odd percent of works that are neither in the public domain nor
in active commercial use.  No one's arguing about the public domain
works, and many of the commercial works are being opted in --
and do in fact create an opportunity for an author or publisher to
profit from Google's use of them.

These numbers are based on a recent study by the Online Online
Computer Library Center, which analyzed the books in the collections
of the five libraries participating in the Google Print for Libraries
project.  By their figures, only about 20% of the 10.5 million unique
titles in the collections of the five libraries working with Google
are out of copyright, using the 1923 change in the copyright law as a
dividing line before which you can assume books are out of copyright.
Meanwhile, another 10-20% are under copyright, in print, and being
commercially exploited. This is the realm of titles opted in by
publishers to programs like Google Print or Amazon Search Inside the
Book. That leaves 60-70% of all titles ever published in the twilight
zone, out of print, but still under copyright. For many of these
books, no one even knows any longer who owns the rights, and there is
no commercial incentive to figure it out, making the publishers'
request for "opt in" a fig leaf that will ultimately lead only to
continued neglect.  Google Print for Libraries brilliantly cuts the
Gordian knot that keeps these works in obscurity, creating an economic
incentive for publishers and authors to assert their rights in the
event that readers rediscover their value.

The OCLC study is at

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september05/lavoie/09lavoie.html

I've written some more about these numbers at

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/ 
oca_vs_google_print_library_pr.html

________________________________________________________
Tim O'Reilly, CEO O'Reilly Media
1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472
707-827-7150; fax 707-823-9746
http://www.oreilly.com; http://radar.oreilly.com; http://tim.oreilly.com


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