Douglas Fevens, Halifax, Nova Scotia—The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me

What REALLY matters is that authors retain control of copyrights they have not explicitly and voluntarily tranferred to Google or to their publisher, and not have those rights signed away against their will either by the proposed Settlement, or by any other mechanism.

I, for example, own e-rights to all my self-published books. I do not want them published in e-form, ever, by anyone. (At least, not while they are still under copyright, which copyright exceeds my lifespan.) My feeling is that sales of e-books not protected by effective DRM (which does not seem to currently exist) will be gutted by piracy within a few years, making attempts to sell them increasingly worthless. I can’t afford that—it takes me longer than that just to recoup my print costs.

Some other publishers and authors disagree with my publishing model. That is fine. As long as they have either created the work, or voluntarily sold or licensed e-rights and other rights (the Settlement also lets Google sieze print-in-demand rights), it’s legal. If they choose a business model and it turns out badly for them, they chose it and it is their affair.

It is NOT, however, anyone’s right to force their business model (of unprotected e-books, of POD books, and of forced distribution through Google, with Google taking a cut) on me, sieze whatever revenues they wish from my work, and blithely let me suffer the loss of my livelihood.

J Garchik, S F Attorney

I too have been wondering about the delay in Google Editions. However, having worked in Silicon Valley, and seen numerous software projects progressively pushed further beyond their originally announced, overoptimistic release dates, I feel that Google Editions may be simply another instance of same.

Google has scanned enormous numbers of works old enough to be indisputably in the public domain. Google has also apparently cut deals with a number of publishers outside the Settlement. As long as the publisher-author contracts for those newer books explicitly grant the e-rights to the publishers that allow such a deal to be cut, there can be no problem with those books either.

In other words, Google could release a large number of books without violating any copyrights, so why not just do it? Is there some advantage to also releasing all those out-of-print, e-rights-not-granted-to-anyone, and (I fear) helpless-micropublisher-too-broke-to-sue-Google works at the same time?

Fran

“Even if Google today goes ahead with these [settlement] terms, Google five years from now might not,” Grimmelmann noted. “The settlement, for example, only says that Google ‘may’ provide public access service.” —Publishers Weekly, Will Google’s Net Neutrality Shift Complicate the Book Settlement?

Douglas Fevens, Halifax, Nova Scotia — The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me

US money is still printed and stamped with the slogan “In God We Trust.” Maybe they think it makes the Treasury sound more reliable, with that kind of backing.

Douglas Fevens, Halifax, Nova Scotia — The University of Wisconsin Google, & Me

This economy, however, usually depends on some kind of personal relationship, whether it’s friendship, family, community, or business. A certain tolerance is often extended, as in “she’s out of work, so I understand why she gave me an inexpensive wedding gift,” but if the giving of gifts or services is too one-sided the relationship starts to break down. Check out Dear Abby and Miss Manners for umpteen examples.

Businesses have exploited this personal economy for a long time, as in “if we send you a free ball-point pen, maybe you will feel an obligation to subscribe to our magazine, or at least consider our advertising instead of throwing it away unread.” But the Internet, and Internet-related businesses, have exploited this economy to the extent of breaking it down. E-groups consisting of hundreds or thousands of people are described as communities, but most of the members remain relative strangers, and membership is often anonymous or pseudonymous. So what happens is, a handful of people repeatedly supply the relatively higher quality of free information. Everyone else enjoys it with no sense that any return is ever required. There’s an assumption of a kind of Internet karma—no one feels obligated to return a favor because the person providing it will probably somehow, someday get some kind of return from someone else entirely.

And, Internet companies where the users are providing the information/favors/freebies—Google et al—are doing their best to exploit any remaining feeling of obligation by taking the credit for what the users give away (or what they sell and parties like Google have appropriated) and transferring that obligation to their companies.

Given all that, and setting aside the fact that Google is also scanning bound collections of magazines and lumping them in with books, I don’t see that Google is even bothering to count the number of unique books scanned. To be fair, the online library meta-catalog Worldcat also not infrequently has multiple entries for the same title, at least for older works. But Worldcat is not doing anything illegal.

I think Leonid Taycher’s post is merely an assertion that Google can, and will, scan all books, regardless of copyrights, lawsuits, protests by copyright owners, and any and all other actions on the part of everyone who opposes Google’s mighty will. Which is extremely troubling. I cannot address Jame’s statement as to what Google employees believe, but certainly any belief that pirating copyrighted works is good for society goes hand in hand with such piracy being extremely likely to yield enormous profits for Google.

Nope. It’d be nice if there was a world where that sort of conduct mattered, but it sure isn’t this one. All Google will have to do is spread some money around (again), and bygones will be bygones. The top policy people won’t give it a thought, then almost everyone else will follow like falling dominoes. Anyone who points out the history won’t get heard, and can simply be character-assassinated if it even matters.

Having many bright engineers does not prevent Google as a company from having ruthless and amoral lawyers and flacks. That’s the mistake you make in your post above.