Does Google deserve to control our books?
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About an hour ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division has sent certain publishers formal requests for information about a settlement with Google Inc. In October 2008, Google made an agreement to provide much wider access to out-of-print books and a great many in-print, in-copyright works. The agreement resolved a number of lawsuits from the last several years. Google established a non-profit Book Rights Registry to ensure copyrighted works receive compensation via subscription services or ad revenue. The registry and settlements cost Google $125 million, which seems like a paltry fee to pay to create an online library of such scale. Millions of people will probably come through Google’s digital doors creating enormous revenue for the company. I am thrilled that people can access so much knowledge, but there are also other issues, including Google’s monopoly over orphan books, which are out of print book and who rights holders can’t be located. I am not sure why Google has any right to control orphan books. We are putting a lot of faith into one company.
Authors are notoriously poor negotiators so I have always been wary of the settlement, which seems to have several elements that favor Google, and not regular people. It seems like the search engine company has muscled authors and publishers to strike a deal, and I find it disconcerting that one company dominates all of these titles, which represent so much intellectual breadth.
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Gary I’m not really sure what you mean by google controlling orphan works. Aren’t these books pretty much in the public domain? How does Google by making these works easily available gain control over these works? How would this be any different then me making available a piece of open source code from my FTP server?
I can certainly understand publishers not liking it, after all I’m sure many publishers turn a tidy profit on printing in public domain classics and such, but is that really my problem if I feel like downloading a copy of Sense and Sensibility to my blackberry to read on the subway?
The issue about orphan works comes to power: giving Google too much of it, thus discouraging competition.
Here is a quote from PC World on the same subject:
Consumer Watchdog has charged that the proposed settlement gives Google special protections against lawsuits over orphan works.
“The danger of using such works is that a rights holder will emerge after the book has been exploited and demand substantial infringement penalties. The proposed settlement protects Google from such potentially damaging exposure, but provides no protection for others. This effectively is a barrier for competitors to enter the digital book business,” Consumer Watchdog said in a statement.
In response to another comment. See in context »Well I do agree that Google shouldn’t be afforded protection not afforded to anyone else who wants to make these works available once a reasonable effort has been made to insure they are indeed orphaned. That being said I do feel these works should be made readily available and free of charge.
In response to another comment. See in context »