Google Books

Google Books Settlement Rejected

March 22, 2011 By Mark Leave a Comment

This is extremely good news:

A New York federal judge has overturned a Nov. 2009 agreement on whether or not Google can digitize millions of books as part of its Google Books initiative.

My position has always been that the Google Books Settlement was a direct violation of copyright law and of the rights of copyright holders. Judge Denny Chin clearly agreed:

Indeed, the ASA would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.”

I’ll have more to say about this after I digest the ruling. Previous commentary on the issue here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Update: It’s reassuring to see that Google’s blatant larceny is being exposed and denied in this case (p. 35).

Second, it is incongruous with the purpose of the copyright laws to place the onus on copyright owners to come forward to protect their rights when Google copied their works without first seeking their permission.

If Google and the Author’s Guild could conspire to circumvent third-party copyrights, and copyright law itself, there would be no end to the abuses unleashed on authors — all at a time when authors of all stripes need copyright protection more than ever.

Independent authorship is premised on inviolate copyright law. This ruling and rebuke could not be more welcome.

— Mark Barrett

GBS 2.0

November 14, 2009 By Mark 1 Comment

It’s never a good sign when a corporation starts acting like a government agency.

Last night, late on a Friday, Google and its co-conspirators dropped the court-mandated revised settlement to the Google Books case. This was done to limit news coverage of the event over the weekend, which predisposes me to think bad thoughts about Google in general, and about the revised settlement in particular.

On the merits of the actual case, the New York Times says:

The revisions to the settlement primarily address the handling of so-called orphan works, the millions of books whose rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. The changes call for the appointment of an independent fiduciary, or trustee, who will be solely responsible for decisions regarding orphan works.

Cutting to the chase, if only because I’m loathe to deconstruct the disingenuous layers of marketing spin, legalese and outright fraud being marshalled by Google in their attempt to hijack other people’s copyrighted works, it seems to me that this revised settlement is pretty much what anyone would have expected. In sum, an attempt to polish up the chrome while making no changes to the underlying structure of the previous settlement, wherein Google becomes the beneficiary of a new legal standard of copyright ownership. If they scan a book, they own it until you prove it’s yours.

(Yes, I know, that’s probably not legally correct, but I’m not really a fan of the way the legal system has been functioning lately. See also: state-sponsored torture, Wall St. bailouts, housing bubble carnage.) [ Read more ]

Google As Benevolent Dictator

September 23, 2009 By Mark 2 Comments

It’s taken me a while to figure out the Google Books Case, and I’m still not sure I could accurately and fairly describe the motivations of all parties involved. In the end I’m not even confident there’s a good guy to point to, given that all parties seem eager to claim and exploit rights to other people’s property.

(Is it just me, or is it time to beat back some of these absurd online euphemisms? Currently a complete stranger who’s lying to you about who they are qualifies as a friend, and the idea of stealing other people’s property is redefined as sharing. “Because I am such a good person, I want to share these stolen — uh….I mean, orphaned — jewels with you. In fact, have a whole bag. And some MP3’s.”)

Yesterday, Google and the Justice League of Authors decided to avoid a ritualized gutting in the courts over a proposed mutually-beneficial settlement aimed squarely at exploiting other people’s legal rights. (When I say I’m still not sure I can ‘accurately and fairly describe the motivations of all parties involved,’ this is what I’m talking about.) At the strategic level this is nothing more than legal repositioning. Google and the Author’s Guild are almost certainly still intent on putting a deal together that passes the smell test without actually mitigating their mutual and individual legal objectives. [ Read more ]

Scott vs. Scribd

September 22, 2009 By Mark 7 Comments

There’s a fair bit of notice being given today to a lawsuit in which a writer (Elaine Scott) is suing an online publisher (Scribd) for copyright infringement. The trend in the comments I’ve seen is to go after the writer on a number of fronts, but I’m not going to join the chorus.

If there is any single point of focus needed in the current back-and-forth about publishing it’s that an author’s copyright is law. Not old law, not antiquated law, not mushy law, not if-we-can’t-find-the-author-it’s-no-longer-law law, but law. As in it’s the law and no one else — no third party of any kind — is allowed to take away, restrict, modify or in any way lay claim to an author’s copyright without the author’s approval.

If we’re not willing to say that unambiguously, collectively and individually, then we’re not serious about writing as a profession. Because copyright law is the only thing that allows us to produce a product that can be sold. We don’t have mines full of physical ore to sell. We don’t have stands of timber we can cut down. We don’t have items that can be warehoused and protected under guard. We have intellectual property which only has value to us if the law says we have a right to control it. [ Read more ]

My Take on the Google Books Case

September 5, 2009 By Mark 6 Comments

Following up on earlier posts about the Google Books case and the proposed settlement with the Authors Guild regarding past copyright infringement by Google, and after reading Scott Gant’s take on the case, I now feel like I have a handle on what’s going on.

1) Google broke the law by scanning and marketing a bunch of books it didn’t have the right to scan and market. They weren’t the copyright holders, but they went ahead and did it anyway, and that’s against the law.

2) The Authors Guild — which is also a corporation with its own self interests — sued Google for breaking the law, even though it may not have had standing to do so. It did so on behalf of its members, but it also did so on behalf of itself. If Google could break copyright laws with impunity, then the Authors Guild would be meaningless as an entity. [ Read more ]

More Google Books Hilarity

September 3, 2009 By Mark 1 Comment

In all the reading I’ve done about the Google Books class action suit, I completely missed this (from Reuters):

Under the settlement, authors have until the end of this week to opt out of the settlement.

Any time you have to opt out, it means the people opting you in have already won. As to the rest of the Reuters piece, it details an FTC letter urging Google to improve its privacy policy blah blah blah blah blah….

Please. Anyone who ever cracked open the bloody hatch on the political sausage machine knows that nothing matters except enforcement. And so far there’s nothing to enforce. Ergo Google will do whatever it wants and people will enjoy Google Books until SOMETHING BAD happens, at which point everyone will be shocked — shocked! — that there is gambling in Casablanca.

— Mark Barrett