CNN; Google book scanning: Cultural theft or freedom of information?:
"A proposed partnership between the French government and Google is stoking fears in France that the country's literary treasures will fall under commercial control of a U.S. technology company.
Frederic Mitterand, the French minister of culture, has said that Google came to France with "the attitude of a conqueror" signing "unacceptable" and "one-sided" deals.
He told Le Monde newspaper that the deals involved "excessive confidentiality, impossible exclusivity and casual --even leonine --clauses on copyright."
For some, however, Mitterand's reaction is puzzling -- including one of the libraries concerned. Believing that access to their archives can promote French culture, the city of Lyon's library has signed an agreement with Google, hoping to scan as many as 500,000 books in 10 years.
The first text uploaded online was a rare 16th century collection of doomsday predictions from the French philosopher Nostradamus.
Under the Lyon Library contract, Google will scan its books and manuscripts for free. In exchange, the library gives Google the right to use the scanned documents commercially for the next 25 years.
"I find it normal and good that that book is scanned in Lyon where it was written. So I don't see the problem between using a method developed in the U.S. to promote heritage and culture in France or Europe. I don't understand the problem," Patrick Bazin, Director of the Lyon Library, told CNN.
The library's collection includes national literary treasures and collectibles, such as a 16th century bible, in 12 languages.
That means security is a top concern and Google is therefore keeping the location of its scanning secret.
"By putting them on the Internet, much larger circles of society, including non-specialists, can read these works and enjoy them and find them useful," Bazin added.
"They are works that touch upon all sorts of subjects of life, of the universe," he continued.
"They concern everyone and so they matter to everyone, and so they have to be made available to everyone by scanning them."
At the national level, officials like Mitterand have expressed a strong preference to keep the digitizing an internal affair, and even develop a rival to Google. So far the government has earmarked $1 billion dollars to boost its own online database, known as Gallica.
However, in January, an independent review for the French culture ministry criticized the lack of progress made by Gallica, and recommended a public-private partnership with Google.
Since starting in 1997, Gallica has scanned less than one million documents and about 145,000 books, according to the UK's Financial Times newspaper.
At the same time, the report concluded that deals between Google and libraries around Europe were disproportionately favorable for Google, and a better distribution would need to be brokered without the exclusivity clauses for France.
Philippe Colombet, the head of Google Books in France, has said in the past that exclusivity was needed to guarantee a return on the investment of scanning, but that he welcomes a partnership with the state.
In a statement emailed to CNN, Colombet reiterated "Google's commitment to work more than ever in partnership with publishers and other actors in the book industry to help create a virtuous ecosystem for books in the digital era."
Currently Google has seven library partners in Europe, including Lyon. It is only scanning out-of-copyright works in Europe.
While the final details remain to be hammered out, the pace of Google's process makes it hard to eschew.
Google has already scanned more than 12 million books into its global index since the Google Books project launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2004."
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/02/08/google.livres.france/
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Digital Scrum; Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/21/10
Jeffrey Young, Chronicle of Higher Education; Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Digital Scrum:
History shows that intellectual property is more complex than either its creators or copiers care to admit, says a Chicago scholar
"The history of publishing is swimming with pirates—far more than Adrian Johns expected when he started hunting through the archives for them. And he thinks their stories may hold keys to understanding the latest battles over digital publishing—and the future of the book.
Johns, a historian at the University of Chicago, has done much of his hunting from his office here, which is packed so high with books that the professor bought a rolling ladder to keep them in easy reach. He can rattle off a long list of noted pirates through the years:
Alexander Pope accused "pyrates" of publishing unauthorized copies of his work in the 18th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, a man known as the "king of the pirates" used the then-new technology of photolithography to spread cheap reprints of popular sheet music. In the 1950s, a pirate music label named Jolly Roger issued recordings by Louis Armstrong and other jazz greats from LP's that the major labels were no longer publishing. A similar label put out opera recordings smuggled from the Soviet bloc.
Along with the practice itself, "pirates" in publishing just keep resurfacing, and Johns argues that the label is no accident. He sees it as the pirates' attempt to evoke romantic notions of seafaring swashbucklers. Sure, the copying done by culture pirates may be technically illegal, but they have long claimed the moral high ground, arguing that they are not petty thieves, but principled heroes rightfully returning creative work to a public commons by making free or cheap copies available.
"There is an association with a certain kind of liberty—living perhaps alongside the law rather than in direct opposition to it," Johns says. "What the pirate community can represent is a kind of alternative that has its own virtues."
Johns has collected these and other pirate lessons in a new book, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg to Gates (University of Chicago Press). The weighty work, more than 550 pages, covers hundreds of years of history of copyright and intellectual property in the West, focusing on the stories of those angling to disrupt prevailing practices.
The codified rules and laws allowing an author or publisher to claim exclusive rights to a literary work—what we now call "copyright"—did not develop until the 18th century, long after the printing press was invented. And since then the notion has been challenged again and again—sparking controversy long before the latest disputes over the pirating of music, movies, and other material over high-speed digital networks."
http://chronicle.com/article/Learning-From-Culture-Pirates/64294/
History shows that intellectual property is more complex than either its creators or copiers care to admit, says a Chicago scholar
"The history of publishing is swimming with pirates—far more than Adrian Johns expected when he started hunting through the archives for them. And he thinks their stories may hold keys to understanding the latest battles over digital publishing—and the future of the book.
Johns, a historian at the University of Chicago, has done much of his hunting from his office here, which is packed so high with books that the professor bought a rolling ladder to keep them in easy reach. He can rattle off a long list of noted pirates through the years:
Alexander Pope accused "pyrates" of publishing unauthorized copies of his work in the 18th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, a man known as the "king of the pirates" used the then-new technology of photolithography to spread cheap reprints of popular sheet music. In the 1950s, a pirate music label named Jolly Roger issued recordings by Louis Armstrong and other jazz greats from LP's that the major labels were no longer publishing. A similar label put out opera recordings smuggled from the Soviet bloc.
Along with the practice itself, "pirates" in publishing just keep resurfacing, and Johns argues that the label is no accident. He sees it as the pirates' attempt to evoke romantic notions of seafaring swashbucklers. Sure, the copying done by culture pirates may be technically illegal, but they have long claimed the moral high ground, arguing that they are not petty thieves, but principled heroes rightfully returning creative work to a public commons by making free or cheap copies available.
"There is an association with a certain kind of liberty—living perhaps alongside the law rather than in direct opposition to it," Johns says. "What the pirate community can represent is a kind of alternative that has its own virtues."
Johns has collected these and other pirate lessons in a new book, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg to Gates (University of Chicago Press). The weighty work, more than 550 pages, covers hundreds of years of history of copyright and intellectual property in the West, focusing on the stories of those angling to disrupt prevailing practices.
The codified rules and laws allowing an author or publisher to claim exclusive rights to a literary work—what we now call "copyright"—did not develop until the 18th century, long after the printing press was invented. And since then the notion has been challenged again and again—sparking controversy long before the latest disputes over the pirating of music, movies, and other material over high-speed digital networks."
http://chronicle.com/article/Learning-From-Culture-Pirates/64294/
Friday, February 19, 2010
Who's afraid of digital book piracy?; (London) Guardian, 2/18/10
Alastair Harper, (London) Guardian; Who's afraid of digital book piracy?:
With the iPad and e-readers on the rise, will pirated books become as common as illegal music and films?:
"For years, we have been able to combine our taste for music and film with our desire to stick it to the man, and all from the safety of our PCs. Our literary habits, however, have perforce remained largely legal. The closest we could come to the same thrill is by wearing a deep-pocketed coat to WH Smiths – which is such an analogue approach to theft. Soon, however, even the bookish will be able to frustrate Lord Mandelson because, at long last, thanks to the iPad, digital book piracy is almost upon us.
The surest sign of this is that industry figures have started producing dubious statistics to show how endemic it is. In the US, it's just been announced that 10% of books read are now pirate texts. The same report claims that piracy has cost US publishers $3bn. But the source of the statistics was a company named Attributor, who provide online piracy protection for the publishing industry. Like a plumber tutting over the state of your pipes, they have a vested interest in finding problems.
A glance at the top seeded ebooks on Pirate Bay shows that Christopher Ricks isn't about to lose much sleep over the downloaders. Filling the top slots are Windows 7 Secrets, Adobe CS4 for Photographers and, shamelessly playing up to the stereotype of all geeks being lonely boys, the Jan/Feb edition of Playboy magazine. According to Freakbits, the only non-technical or sexual downloaded book in 2009 was the Twilight series – a choice that only goes to show how masturbation and Photoshopping mess with the mind.
More mainstream books are found on Scribd, a site you might well use – it's great for finding free books, citations and excerpts. It's also home to an awful lot of copyright infringements. You can find everything: Tintin in America, Martin Amis's Time's Arrow, Alastair Campbell's The Blair Years, Richard Brautigan. Heck, there's even a bunch of Guardian book bloggers, bundled together in a self-published book of literary quotations.
The interesting thing is just how openly available these books are from the site's servers. In fact, Scribd has a very old-school approach to piracy. It pitches itself as a document-sharing service, just as Napster pitched itself as a way of sharing sound files – a euphemism as transparent as a newspaper ad offering "escorts".
Publishers' lawyers will most likely eventually compel Scribd to close, or to turn it into a legal online shop (authors such as Stephen King already sell their digital copies through the site). Certain juicy targets for piracy, such as Stephanie Meyer or JK Rowling, have already had their legal battalions ensure no illicit Potters or vegetarian vampires appear online. That the rest of the industry hasn't yet bothered shows how small the impact of piracy has been on publishers thus far. Faber clearly don't see the need to police the Alan Bennett plays available on Scribd, since most of their audience still prefer physical copies.
The blog The Millions recently hosted an amazing interview with an American book pirate who provides e-copies of books because of his open-source, anti-copyright beliefs. Dutifully, he scans and proofs every book he uploads. The thought of all that repetitive effort, a kind of digital ironing, is quaintly charming – like a farmer tending to his patch with a sickle, his back squarely turned to the rolling Google combine harvester. It's such a lot of work and, outside textbooks, it makes so little impact that publishers haven't needed to pay the lawyers' fees to stop it.
But this is about to change. As e-readers become ubiquitous, publishers know they need to go digital. And being digital, no matter how much drm you shove in, means content will be pirated. Anyone will be able to get any new book you want if you know how to look for it.
But, despite the statistics, I don't believe book piracy will ever be as endemic as it has become with music and film. We've moved on from the pre-iTunes days when the only way of getting an MP3 of a song was to find it on Napster. Publishers were keen to get on board with the iPad straight from launch because they knew it was the safest way to protect and to disseminate their product. One editor at a big publisher told me just how desperate his company have been to woo Apple over the last 18 months.
More importantly, though, publishers have a headstart on the music and film industries and already have some experience of what happens when controlled content is made widely available for free. Victorian publishers were convinced public libraries would ruin them: they didn't. Lending libraries brought books off the estates and into the tenements, and publishers were suddenly selling a lot more books to a lot more people. This happened as the result of a system that, like Spotify, allowed readers to legally obtain books for free while the authors still received some money. If the publishing industry can remember its own history, digitisation should be a doddle."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/feb/18/digital-book-piracy-copyright
With the iPad and e-readers on the rise, will pirated books become as common as illegal music and films?:
"For years, we have been able to combine our taste for music and film with our desire to stick it to the man, and all from the safety of our PCs. Our literary habits, however, have perforce remained largely legal. The closest we could come to the same thrill is by wearing a deep-pocketed coat to WH Smiths – which is such an analogue approach to theft. Soon, however, even the bookish will be able to frustrate Lord Mandelson because, at long last, thanks to the iPad, digital book piracy is almost upon us.
The surest sign of this is that industry figures have started producing dubious statistics to show how endemic it is. In the US, it's just been announced that 10% of books read are now pirate texts. The same report claims that piracy has cost US publishers $3bn. But the source of the statistics was a company named Attributor, who provide online piracy protection for the publishing industry. Like a plumber tutting over the state of your pipes, they have a vested interest in finding problems.
A glance at the top seeded ebooks on Pirate Bay shows that Christopher Ricks isn't about to lose much sleep over the downloaders. Filling the top slots are Windows 7 Secrets, Adobe CS4 for Photographers and, shamelessly playing up to the stereotype of all geeks being lonely boys, the Jan/Feb edition of Playboy magazine. According to Freakbits, the only non-technical or sexual downloaded book in 2009 was the Twilight series – a choice that only goes to show how masturbation and Photoshopping mess with the mind.
More mainstream books are found on Scribd, a site you might well use – it's great for finding free books, citations and excerpts. It's also home to an awful lot of copyright infringements. You can find everything: Tintin in America, Martin Amis's Time's Arrow, Alastair Campbell's The Blair Years, Richard Brautigan. Heck, there's even a bunch of Guardian book bloggers, bundled together in a self-published book of literary quotations.
The interesting thing is just how openly available these books are from the site's servers. In fact, Scribd has a very old-school approach to piracy. It pitches itself as a document-sharing service, just as Napster pitched itself as a way of sharing sound files – a euphemism as transparent as a newspaper ad offering "escorts".
Publishers' lawyers will most likely eventually compel Scribd to close, or to turn it into a legal online shop (authors such as Stephen King already sell their digital copies through the site). Certain juicy targets for piracy, such as Stephanie Meyer or JK Rowling, have already had their legal battalions ensure no illicit Potters or vegetarian vampires appear online. That the rest of the industry hasn't yet bothered shows how small the impact of piracy has been on publishers thus far. Faber clearly don't see the need to police the Alan Bennett plays available on Scribd, since most of their audience still prefer physical copies.
The blog The Millions recently hosted an amazing interview with an American book pirate who provides e-copies of books because of his open-source, anti-copyright beliefs. Dutifully, he scans and proofs every book he uploads. The thought of all that repetitive effort, a kind of digital ironing, is quaintly charming – like a farmer tending to his patch with a sickle, his back squarely turned to the rolling Google combine harvester. It's such a lot of work and, outside textbooks, it makes so little impact that publishers haven't needed to pay the lawyers' fees to stop it.
But this is about to change. As e-readers become ubiquitous, publishers know they need to go digital. And being digital, no matter how much drm you shove in, means content will be pirated. Anyone will be able to get any new book you want if you know how to look for it.
But, despite the statistics, I don't believe book piracy will ever be as endemic as it has become with music and film. We've moved on from the pre-iTunes days when the only way of getting an MP3 of a song was to find it on Napster. Publishers were keen to get on board with the iPad straight from launch because they knew it was the safest way to protect and to disseminate their product. One editor at a big publisher told me just how desperate his company have been to woo Apple over the last 18 months.
More importantly, though, publishers have a headstart on the music and film industries and already have some experience of what happens when controlled content is made widely available for free. Victorian publishers were convinced public libraries would ruin them: they didn't. Lending libraries brought books off the estates and into the tenements, and publishers were suddenly selling a lot more books to a lot more people. This happened as the result of a system that, like Spotify, allowed readers to legally obtain books for free while the authors still received some money. If the publishing industry can remember its own history, digitisation should be a doddle."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/feb/18/digital-book-piracy-copyright
Judge Hears Arguments on Google Book Settlement; New York Times, 2/19/09
Motoko Rich, New York Times; Judge Hears Arguments on Google Book Settlement:
"The federal judge overseeing the proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed against Google by groups representing authors and publishers heard from a handful of supporters and a parade of objectors to the deal at a hearing Thursday in Manhattan.
At the beginning of more than four hours of testimony in a packed courtroom, Judge Denny Chin of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York said he would not rule immediately on the settlement because there was “just too much to digest.”
Among the supporters of the deal, which would allow Google to create an extensive digital library and bookstore, were the president of the National Federation of the Blind, the librarian of the University of Michigan and a lawyer for Sony Electronics, all of whom said that the agreement would make millions of hard-to-find books available to a vast audience.
Opponents — who cited various concerns relating to competition, privacy, abuse of the class-action process and the violation of copyright — included lawyers for rivals Amazon.com and Microsoft, representatives of various authors and estates, literary agents and speakers representing Pennsylvania and Germany.
William F. Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general with the Justice Department, reiterated points the department made in a filing this month that raised legal objections to the agreement. Mr. Cavanaugh said the Justice Department was continuing its antitrust investigation into the settlement.
While saying that the department “applauds the benefits of mass digitization,” Mr. Cavanaugh said that “our concern is that this is not the appropriate vehicle to achieve these objectives.”
The settlement, originally announced in October 2008, arose out of a copyright infringement suit brought by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google, which had been scanning millions of books from libraries. The complex agreement outlined a plan that would allow Google to make the scanned books available online for searching, as well as create new ways for authors and publishers to earn money from digital editions of works that had long been off the market in print form.
Speaking in support of the settlement, Lateef Mtima, director of the Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University, said the settlement would aid in the “development of a thriving, vibrant culture.”
But because the settlement would allow Google to scan and profit from copyright-protected books without the explicit permission of individual authors, the deal generated a litany of complaints. Critics also pointed out that Google would have the right to scan and sell so-called orphan works, those whose authors could not be found or whose rights owners could not be identified.
“You can’t settle a claim for copyright infringement by authorizing the miscreant to continue to infringe copyright,” said Hadrian Katz, a lawyer for the Internet Archive, a nonprofit group that is scanning books for its own digitization project.
Mr. Katz, along with the Justice Department and several other objectors, suggested that Google and its partners amend the settlement to require that authors choose to participate.
Daralyn J. Durie, a lawyer for Google, said the deal was fair because it compensated authors and publishers for any works sold through Google. She said it would be prohibitively expensive to track down millions of authors and negotiate individual deals to display or sell their works digitally.
Michael J. Boni, a lawyer for the Authors Guild, said that a rights registry that would be set up as part of the settlement would make every effort to find authors of orphan works."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/technology/19google.html?scp=2&sq=google%20books&st=cse
"The federal judge overseeing the proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed against Google by groups representing authors and publishers heard from a handful of supporters and a parade of objectors to the deal at a hearing Thursday in Manhattan.
At the beginning of more than four hours of testimony in a packed courtroom, Judge Denny Chin of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York said he would not rule immediately on the settlement because there was “just too much to digest.”
Among the supporters of the deal, which would allow Google to create an extensive digital library and bookstore, were the president of the National Federation of the Blind, the librarian of the University of Michigan and a lawyer for Sony Electronics, all of whom said that the agreement would make millions of hard-to-find books available to a vast audience.
Opponents — who cited various concerns relating to competition, privacy, abuse of the class-action process and the violation of copyright — included lawyers for rivals Amazon.com and Microsoft, representatives of various authors and estates, literary agents and speakers representing Pennsylvania and Germany.
William F. Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general with the Justice Department, reiterated points the department made in a filing this month that raised legal objections to the agreement. Mr. Cavanaugh said the Justice Department was continuing its antitrust investigation into the settlement.
While saying that the department “applauds the benefits of mass digitization,” Mr. Cavanaugh said that “our concern is that this is not the appropriate vehicle to achieve these objectives.”
The settlement, originally announced in October 2008, arose out of a copyright infringement suit brought by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google, which had been scanning millions of books from libraries. The complex agreement outlined a plan that would allow Google to make the scanned books available online for searching, as well as create new ways for authors and publishers to earn money from digital editions of works that had long been off the market in print form.
Speaking in support of the settlement, Lateef Mtima, director of the Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University, said the settlement would aid in the “development of a thriving, vibrant culture.”
But because the settlement would allow Google to scan and profit from copyright-protected books without the explicit permission of individual authors, the deal generated a litany of complaints. Critics also pointed out that Google would have the right to scan and sell so-called orphan works, those whose authors could not be found or whose rights owners could not be identified.
“You can’t settle a claim for copyright infringement by authorizing the miscreant to continue to infringe copyright,” said Hadrian Katz, a lawyer for the Internet Archive, a nonprofit group that is scanning books for its own digitization project.
Mr. Katz, along with the Justice Department and several other objectors, suggested that Google and its partners amend the settlement to require that authors choose to participate.
Daralyn J. Durie, a lawyer for Google, said the deal was fair because it compensated authors and publishers for any works sold through Google. She said it would be prohibitively expensive to track down millions of authors and negotiate individual deals to display or sell their works digitally.
Michael J. Boni, a lawyer for the Authors Guild, said that a rights registry that would be set up as part of the settlement would make every effort to find authors of orphan works."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/technology/19google.html?scp=2&sq=google%20books&st=cse
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Library Associations Support Online Software Reseller in Vernor v. Autodesk infringement lawsuit; District Dispatch, ALA Washington Office, 2/16/10
District Dispatch, ALA Washington Office; Library Associations Support Online Software Reseller in Vernor v. Autodesk infringement lawsuit:
"On Thursday, February 11, the American Library Association (ALA), the Association for College & Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) – the Library Associations – joined a coalition of public interest and consumer groups in urging a federal appeals court to preserve consumers’ rights and the First Sale Doctrine (which allows libraries to lend books) in a battle over an Internet auction of used computer software.
An amicus curiae brief was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation – joined by the Library Associations, the Consumer Federation of America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Public Knowledge – in support of plaintiff Timothy Vernor. Vernor is an online software reseller who tried to auction four authentic packages of Autodesk’s AutoCAD software on eBay. Autodesk sent takedown notices to block his auctions and threatened to sue him for copyright infringement, claiming that its software is only “licensed,” never sold.
At the heart of the case is the First Sale Doctrine – an important limitation under Copyright law that gives copyright holders control over the first vending or sale of their work(s). The first sale doctrine steps in after an individual copy has been sold and puts further disposition of the copy beyond the reach of the copyright owner. The first sale doctrine is fundamental for libraries and other organizations such as archives, used bookstores and online auctions, as it allows a “second life” for copyrighted works.
The brief argues, in part, that the first sale doctrine is well-established, serves critical economic and democratic values, and promotes access to knowledge, preservation of culture, and resistance to censorship. Libraries rely on provisions in the Copyright Act, such as first sale, to accept donations of special collections and to preserve these works. If Autodesk wins this case, software vendors would potentially be permitted to evade the first sale doctrine via contractual license agreements. Such a ruling could allow other copyright owners to follow suit with licenses on books, CDs, DVDs, and other media, with strong implications for libraries and our users.
The full amicus brief can be viewed here."
http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=4388
"On Thursday, February 11, the American Library Association (ALA), the Association for College & Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) – the Library Associations – joined a coalition of public interest and consumer groups in urging a federal appeals court to preserve consumers’ rights and the First Sale Doctrine (which allows libraries to lend books) in a battle over an Internet auction of used computer software.
An amicus curiae brief was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation – joined by the Library Associations, the Consumer Federation of America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Public Knowledge – in support of plaintiff Timothy Vernor. Vernor is an online software reseller who tried to auction four authentic packages of Autodesk’s AutoCAD software on eBay. Autodesk sent takedown notices to block his auctions and threatened to sue him for copyright infringement, claiming that its software is only “licensed,” never sold.
At the heart of the case is the First Sale Doctrine – an important limitation under Copyright law that gives copyright holders control over the first vending or sale of their work(s). The first sale doctrine steps in after an individual copy has been sold and puts further disposition of the copy beyond the reach of the copyright owner. The first sale doctrine is fundamental for libraries and other organizations such as archives, used bookstores and online auctions, as it allows a “second life” for copyrighted works.
The brief argues, in part, that the first sale doctrine is well-established, serves critical economic and democratic values, and promotes access to knowledge, preservation of culture, and resistance to censorship. Libraries rely on provisions in the Copyright Act, such as first sale, to accept donations of special collections and to preserve these works. If Autodesk wins this case, software vendors would potentially be permitted to evade the first sale doctrine via contractual license agreements. Such a ruling could allow other copyright owners to follow suit with licenses on books, CDs, DVDs, and other media, with strong implications for libraries and our users.
The full amicus brief can be viewed here."
http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=4388
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight; New York Times, 2/8/10
Motoko Rich, New York Times; Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight:
"Google’s e-book retail program would be separate from the company’s class-action settlement with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project, under which Google has scanned more than seven million volumes — mostly out of print — from several university libraries. That settlement was recently imperiled by a filing from the Department of Justice that said it still had significant legal problems with the agreement, even after a round of revisions. The settlement is subject to court approval.
Google users can already search up to about 20 percent of the content of many new books that publishers have agreed to enroll in a search program. According to publishers, Google originally said it would automatically enroll any book sold through Google Editions in the search program. An executive from at least one of the six largest publishers said the company did not agree with those terms. Mr. Clancy said that Google would not require books sold through Google Editions to be part of the search program.
Last May Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google, told publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York that Google’s program for selling new e-book editions would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle.
Google, without its own e-reader, wants to be a Switzerland of sorts, competing with Barnes & Noble and other e-book sellers to become the preferred digital bookstore on devices other than the iPad or the Kindle, such as Android smart phones.
In general, publishers are eager for Google to enter the e-book market because they want more competition. “We would love to have a diverse marketplace for e-books,” said Maja Thomas, senior vice president for the digital division of Hachette Book Group, which publishes blockbuster authors like James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer. Since Google would contribute to such diversity, Ms. Thomas said, “we welcome them.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/books/09google.html?scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse
"Google’s e-book retail program would be separate from the company’s class-action settlement with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project, under which Google has scanned more than seven million volumes — mostly out of print — from several university libraries. That settlement was recently imperiled by a filing from the Department of Justice that said it still had significant legal problems with the agreement, even after a round of revisions. The settlement is subject to court approval.
Google users can already search up to about 20 percent of the content of many new books that publishers have agreed to enroll in a search program. According to publishers, Google originally said it would automatically enroll any book sold through Google Editions in the search program. An executive from at least one of the six largest publishers said the company did not agree with those terms. Mr. Clancy said that Google would not require books sold through Google Editions to be part of the search program.
Last May Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google, told publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York that Google’s program for selling new e-book editions would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle.
Google, without its own e-reader, wants to be a Switzerland of sorts, competing with Barnes & Noble and other e-book sellers to become the preferred digital bookstore on devices other than the iPad or the Kindle, such as Android smart phones.
In general, publishers are eager for Google to enter the e-book market because they want more competition. “We would love to have a diverse marketplace for e-books,” said Maja Thomas, senior vice president for the digital division of Hachette Book Group, which publishes blockbuster authors like James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer. Since Google would contribute to such diversity, Ms. Thomas said, “we welcome them.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/books/09google.html?scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse
Monday, February 8, 2010
Google: We will bring books back to life; (London) Guardian, 2/5/10
David Drummond, (London) Guardian; Google: We will bring books back to life: We at Google could make that wealth of knowledge available at a click. And authors would earn too:
"If you love books and care about the knowledge they contain, there is a problem that needs to be solved. Somewhere in the region of 175m books exist in the world today. A tiny fraction of those are in print and for sale in bookshops or on the web. Another small portion are so old that they are out of copyright and anyone can use them.
But the remainder of the world's books – indeed the majority – are out of print but in copyright. They are hard for people to find unless they know exactly what they are looking for, and it's very difficult for copyright holders to exploit them commercially. Although copies may be available in libraries, they are effectively dead to the wider world.
Imagine if it were possible to bring those books back to life, to enable people who might be interested in the knowledge they hold to find them, buy them and read them. This is what the Google Book Search Settlement seeks to achieve. It's not just our vision, it's one we share with authors and publishers groups.
Google's founders recognised the problem back when Google was just a start-up in the late 1990s. They proposed a project to digitise all the world's books, but at that time the idea seemed so far-fetched they couldn't persuade anyone in the company to work on it. It took a further five years before Google Books was born. Today, users can access information contained in more than 10m books.
Like many things that have not been tried before, the project has proven to be very controversial. In 2005, Google was sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Since then we have worked closely with those groups to reach a settlement aimed at a shared goal – to unlock the wealth of information held in out-of-print books and to fairly compensate those who hold the rights to the works involved. We believe that the settlement is a good one, not only for authors and publishers but also for readers.
Yet doubts remain, and there is particular concern among authors that they are in danger of handing control of their work to Google. Let me address that concern and dispel some of the myths.
The settlement aims to make access to millions of books available either for a fee or for free, supported by advertisements, with the majority of the revenue flowing back to the rights holders. A new not-for-profit registry will be created to identify the rights holders of lost books and to collect and distribute revenues.
And the rights holders will remain in control. The reality is that they can at any time set pricing and access rights for their works or withdraw them from Google Books altogether.
Some have questioned the impact of the agreement on competition, suggesting it will limit consumer choice and hand Google a monopoly. In reality, nothing in this agreement precludes any other organisation from pursuing its own digitisation efforts. We wish there were a hundred such services. But despite a number of important projects to date – and Google has helped fund some of them – none has been on the same scale simply because no one else has yet chosen to invest the time and resources required. But if there are to be a hundred services in future, we have to start with one.
If we successful, others will follow. And they will have an easier path. The road towards the digitisation of the world's books has so far been anything but smooth and there are, no doubt, further obstacles ahead. In Europe there will need to be new arrangements involving authors and publishers, as the current settlement will benefit only readers in the United States. We believe that it is a journey well worth undertaking.
The truth is that readers around the world who seek the information locked in millions of out-of-print books currently have little choice other than to travel to a small number of libraries in the hope of finding what they are looking for. And if you're an author, you have no way to make money from your work if it's out of print.
Imagine if that information could be made available to everyone, everywhere, at the click of a mouse. Imagine if long-forgotten books could be enjoyed again and could earn new revenues for their authors. Without a settlement it can't happen."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/05/google-bringing-books-back-life
"If you love books and care about the knowledge they contain, there is a problem that needs to be solved. Somewhere in the region of 175m books exist in the world today. A tiny fraction of those are in print and for sale in bookshops or on the web. Another small portion are so old that they are out of copyright and anyone can use them.
But the remainder of the world's books – indeed the majority – are out of print but in copyright. They are hard for people to find unless they know exactly what they are looking for, and it's very difficult for copyright holders to exploit them commercially. Although copies may be available in libraries, they are effectively dead to the wider world.
Imagine if it were possible to bring those books back to life, to enable people who might be interested in the knowledge they hold to find them, buy them and read them. This is what the Google Book Search Settlement seeks to achieve. It's not just our vision, it's one we share with authors and publishers groups.
Google's founders recognised the problem back when Google was just a start-up in the late 1990s. They proposed a project to digitise all the world's books, but at that time the idea seemed so far-fetched they couldn't persuade anyone in the company to work on it. It took a further five years before Google Books was born. Today, users can access information contained in more than 10m books.
Like many things that have not been tried before, the project has proven to be very controversial. In 2005, Google was sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Since then we have worked closely with those groups to reach a settlement aimed at a shared goal – to unlock the wealth of information held in out-of-print books and to fairly compensate those who hold the rights to the works involved. We believe that the settlement is a good one, not only for authors and publishers but also for readers.
Yet doubts remain, and there is particular concern among authors that they are in danger of handing control of their work to Google. Let me address that concern and dispel some of the myths.
The settlement aims to make access to millions of books available either for a fee or for free, supported by advertisements, with the majority of the revenue flowing back to the rights holders. A new not-for-profit registry will be created to identify the rights holders of lost books and to collect and distribute revenues.
And the rights holders will remain in control. The reality is that they can at any time set pricing and access rights for their works or withdraw them from Google Books altogether.
Some have questioned the impact of the agreement on competition, suggesting it will limit consumer choice and hand Google a monopoly. In reality, nothing in this agreement precludes any other organisation from pursuing its own digitisation efforts. We wish there were a hundred such services. But despite a number of important projects to date – and Google has helped fund some of them – none has been on the same scale simply because no one else has yet chosen to invest the time and resources required. But if there are to be a hundred services in future, we have to start with one.
If we successful, others will follow. And they will have an easier path. The road towards the digitisation of the world's books has so far been anything but smooth and there are, no doubt, further obstacles ahead. In Europe there will need to be new arrangements involving authors and publishers, as the current settlement will benefit only readers in the United States. We believe that it is a journey well worth undertaking.
The truth is that readers around the world who seek the information locked in millions of out-of-print books currently have little choice other than to travel to a small number of libraries in the hope of finding what they are looking for. And if you're an author, you have no way to make money from your work if it's out of print.
Imagine if that information could be made available to everyone, everywhere, at the click of a mouse. Imagine if long-forgotten books could be enjoyed again and could earn new revenues for their authors. Without a settlement it can't happen."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/05/google-bringing-books-back-life
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