more on Google to Offer News Archive

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: September 7, 2006 8:31:53 AM PDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] re: Google to Offer News Archive
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com

[Note:  This comment comes from reader Sally Richards.  DLH]

From: "sally" <sally () sallyrichards com>
Date: September 6, 2006 11:27:01 PM PDT
To: dewayne () warpspeed com
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Google to Offer News Archive

I hope Google and its partners in this venture remember the terms they
purchased the stories under. Many freelance pieces "published years  
ago," did
not include Internet rights under standard contracts. any of those  
stories
were pre-commercial Internet. And many of those contracts have long  
since
disappeared with time.

Many of those contracts included First North American Rights. I have  
to remind
publishers many times over that they did not purchase all-inclusive  
rights
when I do vanity searches and find my articles on the Internet that were
purchased under First North American Rights. My guess is that a lot of
freelancers will have to go into the business of being their own  
police and
lawyer when this new business model for Google comes about.

You know, whenever Kinko's makes a print of a photograph, they ask  
you to sign
a release notifying you of copyright laws and stating that you  
personally own
the rights to the photographs they are reproducing. Perhaps it's time  
to start
holding Google responsible for its content.... And to put a Can-spam law
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm into place where
there's a flat $11,000 fee in place when a company is found in  
violation of
the law (although, I'd like to see how many times that law has been  
implemented).

Even if Google agrees to take the content off the site, you have  
sites like
the Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/index.php that will keep that
content up forever. In the end, it's usually the people who create  
the content
who make the least, and the companies that don't give a damn about  
rights (or
say, "Who cares, sue me,") that end up profiting the most.

The only way that's going to end is if there is some kind of law  
protecting
content creators from companies that violate rights contracts. Writers
currently have to prove damages, and with no way to audit microsales,  
how many
times something has been accessed, for how much $$ and if it is  
originally
what brought a surfer to the site (if so, what other purchases were  
made on
that visit), damages cannot be physically proven.


Sal

Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>



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